After his mother’s death, Charlie Scheidt discovers a trove of papers that set him on a decades-long journey to unearth his family’s hidden past during the Holocaust. She had left him, her only child, nearly a thousand documents that told the story of their family’s painstaking and often dangerous escape from Nazi Germany to safety in the United States. Stashed in an old armoire, he found transit visas, marriage licenses, residency permits, photographs, autopsy reports, letters from distant family members, and much more. Yellowed, wavy, and brittle, the documents brought to life a past he never knew.

Joined by Kat Rohrer, the granddaughter of a Nazi officer, Charlie embarks on a quest to trace his parents’ harrowing efforts to escape from Nazi-occupied Europe. As they investigate, they discover stories of survival and loss. Piece by piece, they fill the silences that shaped Charlie’s childhood and find a deeper understanding of his heritage. Taught by his parents to live in the present and avoid dwelling on the past, he now grapples with questions about the lasting effects of inherited trauma and whether it is possible to break free of a familial cycle.

Inheritance accompanies Charlie and Kat on a journey across generations and continents, unearthing the painful rifts and silent shadows that had shaped his life. In confronting haunting legacies of historical trauma, his story reveals how our parents’ wounds and scars shape us in ways we don’t understand, until maybe—if we’re lucky enough—we do.