To the death

A friendship torn by history

Czechoslovakia in 1928. Two friends, high school graduates from Ružomberok, Viktor, a Jew, and Karel, a German, inadvertently shoot the son of a local businessman. Victor flees to relatives in New York and becomes a member of the mafia organization Murder, Inc. Karel studies medicine in Munich and, under the guidance of Reinhard Heydrich, turns into a devoted follower of Nazi ideology. They find themselves on opposite sides of the emerging war frenzy.
To Death is the largest Slovak post-revolutionary novel in terms of scope and plot arc, warmly received by readers and critics alike, linking the world of the American mafia with the horrors of Nazism. A detailed and readable account of the war between mafia families in America, the rise of Nazism in Germany, Night of the Long Knives, Kristallnacht, Nazi euthanasia programs, extermination operations on the eastern front, the Holocaust and the functioning of the Nazi concentration camps, especially Auschwitz. To death, set in 1928-1945 in Czechoslovakia, Germany, United States, Polish, in Ukraine and the Baltics, and culminating in the Slovak National Uprising is a powerful and frightening reminder how little it takes to ...to shed the veneer of civilization and become cruel, heartless monsters.
The novel To the Death is a unique genre mix of historical saga, thriller and horror.