A man was trying to slip out of the doors and on the presiding judge's cry an usher stopped him.

"Where are you going, counsel?"

"I am expecting a message, Herr Richter."

"You must not leave the court. I've told you before."

"It's a message to do with my clients, Herr -"

"Resume your place."

Both spoke wearily, repeating the formula. It was one of the recognised nuisance-tactics designed to wear down the patience of the court: a defence counsel would try to slip out unnoticed, so that later an appeal could be made under the Federal law on the grounds that some of the accused were technically unrepresented during a part of the hearing, their counsel being absent.

Procedural objections were also frequent. In the streets outside, the tabloids militated against this trial and all war-crime trials, while inside the court there were attempts at every turn to make a farce of the proceedings. They were totally unsuccessful. The presiding judge had the patience of a cat, and the legal and lay panel was disciplined by it.

I watched the spectators, only half-listening to the examination.

"Will you please tell us what your responsibility was at the camp, Herr Stroebling?"

He considered the question. Neat, silver-haired, professional-looking, his eyes calm behind heavy black-framed glasses, you'd take him for a top-ranking medical man and trust him with your life.

"To maintain calm, order and of course cleanliness."

"And your special duties?"

"I had no special duties."

"Evidence has been given that your special duty was select men, women and children for the gas-chambers they were unloaded from the cattle-trucks." It was the counsel for the prosecution speaking now: a young man with a face hollowed by months of sifting the reports whose every sheet recorded the unimaginable.