“I have written your words down on paper. Exactly as you have said them. I shall thus record each of your statements. Now continue. You were saying you wrote the law.” It was the Hungarian, Urinstein. He had a green fountain pen.

Wohltat swung around. “Who is this person?”

Urinstein tipped his black silk hat. “Ministry of Vital Statistics.”

Baggelman had more to say. “In the last Great War no one was deported. The invaders behaved with honor toward the Jews.”

There was a drop of sweat on Wohltat’s nose. Another formed on his chin. “The Great War was a long time ago.”

Gutfreind, of Education: “Wait a minute! He said sick people. What good are sick people on a farm? Or old people either? What kind of farm is that?”

“No list! No list!” cried the Judenrat members. It was a moment of courage and heroism. “Why should we give you a list when you can’t enter Kiev?”

The Volksdeutscher replaced his hat. “Because it’s either you or the Death’s-Head troops, that’s why! Do you want them to make up the quota? Do you know what that will be like? They grab the first person they see. No matter who. The more important, the better. It could even be a Judenrat official—or a member’s wife, or a member’s child. They do the job with rifles and fists. And no one’s counting, either! Take everyone you can! By the neck! By the throat! Get a good grip on their hair! Take two hundred, or three hundred! Watch them squirm!” Wohltat was like a different person. He was panting. His eyes were rapidly blinking. A button had come loose at his collar.

Paradyz, the percussionist, said, “Maybe we could ask for volunteers.”

“In my opinion,” said Nomberg, “we have acted hastily, spontaneously, without enough thought.”

Verble, the Housing Minister, twisted his waxed mustache. “What about the Jews in the Tsarnecka Street jail? They went before. Why shouldn’t they go again? The Judenrat has to feed these antisocial elements, the same as productive workers. That is something I never could understand.”

Urinstein—in his top hat and silk tie, his beard and his glasses, he looked like a statesman, not a commercial traveler—Urinstein stood up from his chair and leaned with his hands on the table. “It seems we are not able to come to a decision,” he told the head of the Civilian Authority. “We shall need time to continue our debate.”

Wohltat replied, “I am willing to turn my back for three minutes. You have three minutes to make up your minds.”

Schpitalnik’s neck was so relaxed from the snuff he had taken that his head kept nodding loosely, as if to a tune. “Three minutes is a short time. What about four minutes? Or even fifteen or twenty? Everybody wants to give his opinion.”

Schotter: “Not I! I have no opinion! I am not a Judenrat member!”

“Ten minutes then! After ten minutes Grundtripp will be informed that the Jewish Council requires his assistance.”