An assimilated American Jew finding letters that had been returned from Poland over sixty years ago, seeks to discover what happened to his grandmother's family. Coincidently a retired German banker wishes to trace the wartime footsteps of his father, who was killed in action, from his conscription in 1938 until loss of contact in early 1945 while serving on the Eastern Front. When the two meet each has experienced a profound change in attitude from the start of their journey. Their moral discussion is the culmination of this story. The two themes are the German's shift from innocence and denial to awareness and contrition, as the American accepts his generation's relationship to the Holocaust.