Thus, neither guilt nor innocence are ontological elements in history; they are merely ideological factors to which a skillful propaganda can seem to lend a causal force, and in that fashion furnish others—in disguise of their greed as it may be, their terror sometimes, pride possibly, remorse even, or, more often, surly resentment —a superficially plausible apologia for tomorrow’s acts of robbery or cowardice, revenge, rape, or other criminalities already under way; because the past cannot promise its future the way a premise stands in line with a ticket good for its conclusion (the past is never a justification, only a poor excuse; it confers no rights, and rights no wrongs; it is even more heartless than Hitler); and if there is a truly diabolical ingredient to events, in the victims and vicissitudes of Time, as has been lately alleged, it lies in the nature of History itself, for it is the chronicle of the cause which causes, not the cause . . . as has herein been amply deduced, clearly and repeatedly explained . . . cruelly proved.

I let the spoon sink slowly through my soup until I saw it shimmering beneath the surface of the broth like the dappled shadow of a swimmer. The handle warmed my fingers like another finger. And I meditated as Monet might have upon the painted glitter of a silver fish. Then I let the liquid spill steadily from the bowl as I brought it to my lips, so that when my smile shut like a shark’s on the emptied spoon, Martha threw down her napkin, rose, and released herself from the room.

THEN must I ink the outlines of my feelings in to keep me company, year a strip of comedy across the News of the World? I’ve all these words around me—worthy and famous, wise and wisely chosen—no comfort—they have not befriended me. For things have taken a strange turn. I have put years—-my life—in this work: Guilt and Innocence in Hitler’s Germany. I have suffered stuffy light and bad air, rooms as lonely as I was, cornered in them; I have endured much weary journeying, scenery postered onto moving windows, twilights in bleak towns, German snowfalls, heavy food, uneasy sleep. I have come down with both flu and nightmare, given my nose nothing, pawned my ears for a bit more vision, yet watched my sight, once so acute, become as worn down as a doorsill or a stair, as though everything I’ve seen and tried to learn had stepped upon my eyes in coming to me. I’ve wrapped wet galoshes in newspapers, read Nazi periodicals in parks, had my privates handled by a boy in Prague who told me, Mister, you’re no bigger here than I am. I’ve had clothing stolen (three balled socks, some underwear, two shirts), and I have taken from the German swans fistfuls of feathers to mail home in my letters, mementos which did not add a penny to the postage and enabled me to dissolve the sweeter of my lies on my tongue. I have given up—and given up—and given up—to get there. It was always the work, the work, the Great Work. And now things have taken a strange turn. lye dug patiently through documents, examined testimonies, also taken them, gathered facts and sifted evidence—data swept in endless drifts like snowed clouds seeking support for my theories, my beautiful opinions, in the diaries of all those destined to be gassed, burned, buried alive, cut apart, shot . . . the journals of those who mourned their possessions more than their murdered and violated wives, in the callous words of those for whom a piece of the fat pork they abhorred meant more than their children’s deboned bodies . . .