Father Patrick Desbois
This story is unfortunately a true story, and a dark one. This minister helps those in Eastern Europe, traveling and offering people a chance to talk and pray, and he keeps hearing stories about what the Nazis did in Eastern Europe. The whole world knows of the Holocaust proper, but this story is Father Desbois attempting to tell the often unheard story of how the Nazis killed Jews and Romany people throughout Eastern Europe.
The Nazi victims
Throughout the story, Father Desbois hears stories from WWII survivors who tell him of the atrocities of the Nazis, explaining that many people in their communities were executed on racial speculation. If they looked Jewish or Romany, they could be executed. Although other kinds of victims were counted, the Romany people were not counted in Nazi death tolls, and many of the Jews as well. The stories never circulated, so many people don't know that the Nazis did this in Ukraine and Russia. The victims are haunting to Desbois, especially since many of them received no funeral rites—often being buried in mass graves without count or identification.
The survivors
Father Desbois's story is a journey from person to person. Over the course of the novel, the reader hears about different men and women, all with unique suffering and shared suffering. By empathizing with these people whom he doesn't know all that well, Father Desbois finds a sublime commentary on WWII in the first place. As a minister, he helps where he can help, but sometimes helping is just listening to the stories in agony and sorrow. He is a witness of their suffering.
