“[A relative came to Ruta at one of the bookfair and said she was a relative of Leonas Stonkus, whom Ruta described as having confessed that he “had shot only one Jew”.]

“No,” she says. “Not just one.”

“How do you know?”

“You see, when there were family parties, Leonas used to get drunk, and he would grab an imaginary machine gun and shoot at everyone present. Later, when they came to arrest him, when he saw the police, he said, “I have been waiting for you for thirty years.” Leonas was a very handsome man. And his son was also very handsome, and horribly unhappy. Later Leonas’s son committed suicide. His father was still alive serving his sentence.”

Story after story makes clear something I didn't expect when writing the book: The fate of the majority of the killers was horrible. But not just their fate; the fate of their children was often tragic as well.

My good friend from Samogitia comes up to the booth and says that the faces of the children of the local murderers were different somehow; they were marked in a horrible way. They were heavy drinkers, just like their fathers who had shot Jews. There was something wrong with them: They were born deaf, or they became very ill and died young. They were killed in an accident, or they committed suicide.”