Summary

In Chapter 1, three Jewish children were ambushed by Muslim men in the streets of Paris, an attack that was downplayed by media. Jewish supporter Hannah Weinberg, whose grandparents were killed in the Holocaust, planned a conference about recent hate crimes against Jews at the Isaac Weinberg Center for Anti-Semitism in France. As she wrote her speech for the conference, Hannah thought about how her grandfather had hidden a Van Gogh painting under the floor of his library. His son, Hannah’s father, retrieved the painting after the war was over and had left it to Hannah. Only she and the unnamed person who had restored the painting knew its history.

Hannah’s conference was just beginning when she heard shots and people yelling “Khaybar, Khaybar, ya-Yahud!” (14), a battle cry against the Jews. She shouted at people to move away from the windows just...