In November 1963 , shortly after the assassination of John F. Kennedy , Peter Miller , a German freelance crime reporter , follows an ambulance to the apartment of Salomon Tauber , a Holocaust survivor who has committed suicide . The next day , Miller is given the dead man 's diary by a friend in the police . After reading Tauber 's life story and learning that Tauber had been in Riga Ghetto commanded by Eduard Roschmann , " The Butcher of Riga " , Miller resolves to search for Roschmann whom Tauber recognised a few days earlier , alive and prosperous , in Hamburg . Miller 's attention is especially drawn to one diary passage in which Tauber describes having seen Roschmann shoot a German Army Captain who was wearing a distinctive military decoration
assassination
Assassination of John F. Kennedy
The Odessa File