Evil Beneath the Ashes

On Blood, Education, and the Burning Coal of Evil
(Reflections on Tsuriel Sdomi’s The Case of The German Doctor)

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Dear Wanderer,

Moderato — On Inheritance and the Ashes of the Past

Can evil be passed on like an illness of the blood, or is it something buried deeper — a burning coal beneath the ashes, ready to catch fire at the smallest breath? Tsuriel Sdomi, in his haunting novel The Case of The German Doctor, forces us to look at these questions without flinching.

The book tells the story of an American doctor who, with the help of his cousin — a geneticist with a Nazi past — dedicates his life and fortune to impregnating Jewish women who survived the Holocaust. His twisted justification is that he is giving them “new blood,” a form of restitution. Yet his method is deception: he fertilizes them without their knowledge. What he calls reparation becomes violation; what he frames as healing is prosecuted as attempted genocide.

At the heart of the story lies the tension of inheritance. Is evil encoded in genes, a permanent stain, or can nurture, education, and culture redeem what history has scorched? The children of Ida Goldstone, born from this act of manipulation, grow up healthy, intelligent, untouched by the shadow of their father’s crimes. They embody a paradox: that even when blood carries the memory of horror, the soul can still be shaped by learning, compassion, and culture.

Adagio — On the Conceptual Nature of Evil

Evil, I believe, is not foreign to us. It does not arrive from outside, nor is it confined to a particular nation, bloodline, or ideology. It lives within each person, like a glowing ember hidden beneath ash. Sometimes it is smothered by conscience, sometimes by fear, sometimes by love. Yet under the right winds — trauma, hatred, silence — the ember can blaze again.

This is why the crimes of the Holocaust are not merely history. They are a reminder of how easily the ember can flare. The trauma inflicted on the Jewish people cannot be excused, cannot be softened by the passing of time. Forgiveness is not a balm that erases the wound. It is, at best, an uneasy truce with memory.

Sdomi’s book raises an unbearable question: what does it mean when someone claims to “repair” evil by repeating violation in another form? The American doctor, in his attempt to rewrite history, merely proves that evil is not only an act of bloodshed but also of arrogance, of presuming to play fate. Here the existential weight presses down: if evil lives in all of us, then every generation must struggle with its own embers. It is not only the Germans, not only the Nazis — it is the human condition.

Allegro — On Education, Memory, and the Fate of New Blood

And yet, Wanderer, the story does not end in despair. For in Sdomi’s tale, three children are born of this darkness — and they are not monsters. They are bright, healthy, educated. Their lives suggest that what truly defines us is not the blood that runs through our veins, but the stories and teachings we receive.

Evil may live within, but so too does good. If evil is a coal under ashes, then education is the hand that refuses to fan it, that teaches us to channel fire into warmth, not destruction. Books, music, language, memory — these are the tools by which humanity rewrites its inheritance. The past cannot be undone, the coal cannot be removed, but the way we guard it, the way we teach the next generation, decides whether it becomes a blaze or a quiet glow.

This, perhaps, is the final lesson of Tsuriel Sdomi’s book: that we cannot erase the crimes of history, nor should we ever forget them. But we can choose what to transmit to our children — not the flame of hatred, but the discipline of thought, the beauty of culture, the courage to remember. Evil is in us, yes. But so is the possibility of transcendence.

From one wanderer to another,
D. Orlando

About the author- Tsuriel Sdomi is the writer of The Case of the German Doctor, a novel that confronts the shadows of history and the questions of inheritance.

Tsuriel Sdomi- author of The Case of The German Doctor