ABSTRACT

However the war may end, we have won the war against you; none of you will be left to bear witness, but even if someone were to survive, the world would not believe him. There will perhaps be suspicions, discussions, research by historians, but there will be no certainities, because we will destroy the evidence together with you. And even if some proof should remain and some of you survive, people will say that the events you describe are too monstrous to be believed … We will be the ones to dictate the history of the Lagers [camps]. (Simon Wiesenthal recounting an SS officer's warning to the inhabitants of Auschwitz, Levi 1986: 11–12)