A Moral Absolutist

Curiosity may have killed the cat, but it has also spawned legions of journalists. The prospect of learning something new every day by asking nosy questions, searching the internet for long-forgotten connections, and digging deep into the morgue — as the archives are known at most media outlets — gets us out of bed in the morning and often keeps us up long into the night. I loved even that most reviled of newspaper jobs — the dead beat — because writing obituaries offered variety and the chance to assess complicated lives in all their shades and lustres. Yes, there was escalating deadline pressure and editorial interference in direct proportion to the significance of my subject — Pierre Berton, Nelson Mandela, and, of course, the Queen come to mind — but that intensity was exhilarating, at least in retrospect. Besides, you never repeat yourself. There is no follow-up on an obituary.

I knew very little about the unheralded Holocaust hero Rudolf Vrba before I...