Ernst Mannheim, an ex-Nazi thought to be dead, feels ashamed he didn’t do more to save Freda, his Jewish wife, from his own people. Haunted by his failure, he tries to find his ‘orphaned’ son Willy—“the last Mannheim.” After years of searching, he finds his son (now David Menard) working as a bookbinder in New York City. Longing for contact, he begins a correspondence not as a father but as an uncle. It makes the telling of his side of the story bearable.
Berlin 1933: as a boy of nine, Willy Mannheim (the son) is tricked by the Gestapo into revealing his mother’s whereabouts. She is ultimately tortured and left to die, but not before she tells Willy the name, Anton Kessler. His uncle’s letters reveal a brutal and unforgiving past, his involvement in the search for the men responsible for his wife’s death. Menard, too, has been searching for the men responsible. This in turn causes his painful journey to take on greater urgency. Years later, at an auction of Kessler’s work, Menard finds more than he’d hoped for. The auctioneer turns out to be the son of the man who built the furnaces at the death-camps. By now, it is clear that both father and son are of the same mind. But, the father is old and while Menard seems to be outmanned, and outmaneuvered, he relentlessly forces out the truth and his chance for redemption.