Holocaust History and The Law: Recent Trials Emerging Theories

Perhaps I was among the first dressed in "zebra" clothes to appear in that place called Trzebinia; I immediately found myself the centre of a dense group of curious people, who interrogated me volubly in Polish. I replied as best I could in German: and in the middle of the group of workers and peasants a bourgeois appeared, with felt hat, glasses and a leather briefcase in his hand a lawyer. He was Polish, he spoke French and German well, he was an extremely courteous and benevolent person: in short, he possessed all the requisites enabling me finally, after the long year ofslavery and silence, to recognize in him the messenger, the spokesman of the civilized world, the first that I had met. I had a torrent of urgent things to tell the civilized world: my things, but everyone's, things of blood, things which (it seemed to me) ought to shake every conscience to its very foundations. In truth, the lawyer was courteous and benevolent: he questioned me, and I spoke at dizzy speed of those so recent experiences of mine, ofAuschwitz nearby, yet, it seemed, unknown to all, of the hecatomb from which I alone had escaped, of everything. The lawyer translated into Polish for thepublic. Now, I do not know Polish, but I know how one says "Jew" and how one says 'political"and I soon realized that the translation of my account, although sympathetic, was not faithful to it. The lawyer described me to the public not as an Italian Jew, but as an Italian political prisoner. I had dreamed, we had always dreamed, of something like this, in the nights at Auschwitz; of speaking and not being listened to, offinding liberty and remaining alone.