Although being part of the Nazi army is Bereyter's sin, there are two important events in his life that make his sin even greater on a personal level. First of all, it would be the death of his father and mother. His father, “Theodor Bereyter died on Palm Sunday 1936” (Page 53). The “official cause of death was given as heart failure” (Page 53), but this was caused by the “fury and fear that had consumed him since, exactly two years before his death, the Jewish families residing in his town Gunzenhausen's hometown had been the target of violent attacks for generations." (Page 53) His mother, Thekla Bereyter, lost her father's general store, because she was half Jewish and was not allowed to own a business. She “had to sell it for a pittance to Alfons Kienzle” (Page 54). Then he "fell into depression and died within a few weeks." (Page 54) The second of these events would be the deportation of his wife, Helen Hollaender, and her mother. "there could be no doubt that Helen and her mother had been deported in one of those trains which left Vienna at dawn, probably primarily to Theresienstadt." (Pages 49-50) No doubt “special trains” means that they were taken to a concentration camp, where they most likely died. These events must have left Bereyter a broken man and haunted by his past for the rest of his life