The two counsels for the prosecution had been chosen for their youth, so that the new Germany could demand the account of the old. "It is claimed by an established eye-witness that while ordering the selection of disabled deportees for the gas-chambers you took a crutch from a cripple and beat him to death with it because he wouldn't hurry to the chambers."

"I know nothing of that."

"You cannot claim to know nothing. You can say that you did this thing, or that you didn't. You cannot just forget."

Was it a camellia or a gardenia in the buttonhole? I couldn't see from where I sat.

"It was twenty years ago."

"It was twenty years ago for the witness too, but he hasn't forgotten."

I watched the spectators. The voices droned.

"You say these people went willingly into the gas-chambers on that occasion?"

"Yes. We had told them they were de-lousing rooms."

"So they left all their clothes in the changing-room, hanging on pegs, and followed one another into the gas-chamber, peacefully?"

"Yes. There was no persuasion."

"But the evidence has it that some of them knew they were going to die. Several women left their babies hidden under the clothes in the changing-room, hoping to save them. The evidence has it that you personally, Herr Stroebling, led a hunt for such infants, and that you spitted them on bayonets when they were found."