Includes bibliographical references and index.

"A single photograph--an exceptionally rare "action shot" documenting the horrific final moment of the murder of a family--drives a riveting process of discovery for a gifted Holocaust scholar"--

This book is about the potential of discovery that exists, if we choose to delve into it. It is also about the voids that exist in the history of genocide. Perpetrators of genocide not only kill, they seek to erase the victims from the written records and even from memory. When we find one trace, we must pursue it both to prevent the intended extinction, and to counter it through research, education, and memorialization.

In 2009, a single photograph-- an exceptionally rare "action shot" documenting the horrific final moment of the murder of a family-- was shown to Lower at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. A Ukrainian shooter's riffle was inches from a woman's head, obscured in a cloud of smoke. She holds the hand of a barefoot boy-- and another child slips from the woman's lap. Lower's forensic and archival detective work led to the identities of mother and children; of the killers; and of the Slovakian photographer who took the image. This single image unlocked a new understanding of the place of the family unit in the ideology of Nazi genocide. -- adapted from jacket.