Jared Kushner deserves a bit of sympathy. All his life he’s been serving his father or father-in-law. All his career he’s been thrust into roles he’s not ready for. His background has ill prepared him for national government. Now he is in a realm where his instincts seem to lead him astray and where there’s a chance he will end up in disgrace and possibly under indictment.

The Kushner family drama begins in the Holocaust. In 1941, Rae Kushner was living in Belarus and was among the teenage girls selected to clean blood from the cobblestones after one of the Nazi mass executions. Rae and other family members tunneled out from the ghetto and joined an armed resistance camp. After the war they eventually made it to New Jersey, where her husband set up a successful construction business that flourished under their son.

So far this is an inspiring story of family struggle and immigrant hustle. But as riches rained down on the family, so did betrayal. The feud between Jared’s father and uncle was over grabbing family money, and from the various accounts it’s hard to tell who betrayed the family most.

We do know that Jared’s father, Charles, hired a prostitute to have sex with his brother-in-law so he could send a tape of the act to his sister, and ended up pleading guilty to 18 felony counts.