Content Warning: This section of the guide discusses mass violence, antisemitic discrimination, and hate crimes.

Two critical events that occur in the novel’s past, Kristallnacht and the El Mozote Massacre, each play a role in the development of the novel’s plotlines and themes. Kristallnacht, or Crystal Night, occurred in November 1938 across Nazi-occupied territories, including Austria. The novel describes the night’s events as they affect the Adlers in Vienna. Kristallnacht was an organized riot carried out by Nazi party members, Hitler Youth, and paramilitary organizations to vandalize, brutalize, and displace members of the Jewish communities. Storefronts and homes were broken into and destroyed, and people were attacked in the streets, as the novel describes. Although Kristallnacht was a single event, it followed more than a decade of growing oppression against Jews living in Germany. After World War I, which ended in 1918 with a crushing defeat for Germany, many Germans sought groups and organizations to blame for their subsequent economic downturn, and Jews became scapegoats. With the appointment of Adolf Hitler as Chancellor in 1933, tensions within Germany rose, and the German military began threatening and attacking neighboring countries. Austria thus came under German occupation, and, by 1938, when Kristallnacht occurred, many German people had either been indoctrinated into the Nazi party’s antisemitism or become complacent about the hate crimes perpetrated by Nazi groups.