What do you think?
Rate this book
The Investigation
The Investigation is a dramatic reconstruction of the Frankfurt War Crimes trials, based on the actual evidence given. This testimony, concerning Auschwitz and the atrocities which were enacted there, has been edited and extracted by Peter Weiss into a dramatic document that relies solely and completely on the facts for its effectiveness.
There is no artistic license, no manipulation of facts and figures, no rearrangement of events for theatrical effect. Nameless witnesses stand and recall their appalling memories of Auschwitz, allowing us to bear witness to their painful and painstaking search for truth and, ultimately, justice. What emerges is a chastening and purging documentary of deeply moving power.
Peter Weiss was born in 1916 and settled in Sweden before the outbreak of World War II. Apart from his writing, he was also well known as a painter, theatrical and operatic director, and a film maker. His magnificent play Marat/Sade , which is also available from Marion Boyars Publishers, established his reputation among English-speakling audiences as a revolutionary dramatist, and has continued to be a bestselling classic. He died in 1982.
There is no artistic license, no manipulation of facts and figures, no rearrangement of events for theatrical effect. Nameless witnesses stand and recall their appalling memories of Auschwitz, allowing us to bear witness to their painful and painstaking search for truth and, ultimately, justice. What emerges is a chastening and purging documentary of deeply moving power.
Peter Weiss was born in 1916 and settled in Sweden before the outbreak of World War II. Apart from his writing, he was also well known as a painter, theatrical and operatic director, and a film maker. His magnificent play Marat/Sade , which is also available from Marion Boyars Publishers, established his reputation among English-speakling audiences as a revolutionary dramatist, and has continued to be a bestselling classic. He died in 1982.
206 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1965
About the author
Peter Weiss
151 books98 followersPeter Ulrich Weiss was a German writer, painter, and artist of adopted Swedish nationality. He is particularly known for his play Marat/Sade and his novel The Aesthetics of Resistance.
Weiss' first art exhibition took place in 1936. His first produced play was Der Turm in 1950. In 1952 he joined the Swedish Experimental Film Studio, where he made films for several years. During this period, he also taught painting at Stockholm's People's University, and illustrated a Swedish edition of The Book of One Thousand and One Nights. Until the early 1960s, Weiss also wrote prose. His work consists of short and intense novels with Kafkaesque details and feelings, often with autobiographical background. One of the most known films made by Peter Weiss is an experimental one, The Mirage (1959) and the second one - it is very seldom mentioned - is a film Weiss directed in Paris 1960 together with Barbro Boman, titled Play Girls or The Flamboyant Sex (Schwedische Mädchen in Paris or Verlockung in German). Among the short films by Weiss, The Studio of Doctor Faust (1956) shows the extremely strong link of Weiss to a German cultural background.
Weiss' best-known work is the play Marat/Sade (1963), first performed in West Berlin in 1964, which brought him widespread international attention. The following year, legendary director Peter Brook staged a famous production in New York City. It studies the power in society through two extreme and extremely different historical persons, Jean-Paul Marat, a brutal hero of the French Revolution, and the Marquis de Sade, for whom sadism was named. In Marat/Sade, Weiss uses a technique which, to quote from the play itself, speaks of the play within a play within itself: "Our play's chief aim has been to take to bits great propositions and their opposites, see how they work, and let them fight it out." The play is considered a classic, and is still performed, although less regularly.
Weiss was honored with the Charles Veillon Award, 1963; the Lessing Prize, 1965; the Heinrich Mann Prize, 1966; the Carl Albert Anderson Prize, 1967; the Thomas Dehler Prize, 1978; the Cologne Literature Prize, 1981; the Bremen Literature Prize, 1982; the De Nios Prize, 1982; the Swedish Theatre Critics Prize, 1982; and the Georg Büchner Prize, 1982.
A translation of Weiss' L'instruction (Die Ermittlung) was performed at London's Young Vic theater by a Rwandan company in November 2007. The production presented a dramatic contrast between the play's view on the Holocaust and the Rwandan actors' own experience with their nation's genocide.
http://literaturkritik.de/public/reze...
http://literaturkritik.de/public/reze...
Weiss' first art exhibition took place in 1936. His first produced play was Der Turm in 1950. In 1952 he joined the Swedish Experimental Film Studio, where he made films for several years. During this period, he also taught painting at Stockholm's People's University, and illustrated a Swedish edition of The Book of One Thousand and One Nights. Until the early 1960s, Weiss also wrote prose. His work consists of short and intense novels with Kafkaesque details and feelings, often with autobiographical background. One of the most known films made by Peter Weiss is an experimental one, The Mirage (1959) and the second one - it is very seldom mentioned - is a film Weiss directed in Paris 1960 together with Barbro Boman, titled Play Girls or The Flamboyant Sex (Schwedische Mädchen in Paris or Verlockung in German). Among the short films by Weiss, The Studio of Doctor Faust (1956) shows the extremely strong link of Weiss to a German cultural background.
Weiss' best-known work is the play Marat/Sade (1963), first performed in West Berlin in 1964, which brought him widespread international attention. The following year, legendary director Peter Brook staged a famous production in New York City. It studies the power in society through two extreme and extremely different historical persons, Jean-Paul Marat, a brutal hero of the French Revolution, and the Marquis de Sade, for whom sadism was named. In Marat/Sade, Weiss uses a technique which, to quote from the play itself, speaks of the play within a play within itself: "Our play's chief aim has been to take to bits great propositions and their opposites, see how they work, and let them fight it out." The play is considered a classic, and is still performed, although less regularly.
Weiss was honored with the Charles Veillon Award, 1963; the Lessing Prize, 1965; the Heinrich Mann Prize, 1966; the Carl Albert Anderson Prize, 1967; the Thomas Dehler Prize, 1978; the Cologne Literature Prize, 1981; the Bremen Literature Prize, 1982; the De Nios Prize, 1982; the Swedish Theatre Critics Prize, 1982; and the Georg Büchner Prize, 1982.
A translation of Weiss' L'instruction (Die Ermittlung) was performed at London's Young Vic theater by a Rwandan company in November 2007. The production presented a dramatic contrast between the play's view on the Holocaust and the Rwandan actors' own experience with their nation's genocide.
http://literaturkritik.de/public/reze...
http://literaturkritik.de/public/reze...
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 30 of 106 reviews
October 19, 2016
This was the most terrifying thing I have ever read.
Peter Weiss brings us one of the most revealing and simultaneously unbiased views of the Auschwitz extermination camp. This play, created with actual words spoken during the Frankfurt War Crimes trials, mentions horrific happenings in the camp with over a million of confirmed killings. Your blood will literally chill in your veins. Horrible but unforgettable, it ends on an extremely powerful, and possibly the most scary note: the guards were just doing what they were told.
I truly have no words. Taking breaks while reading this was honestly necessary, otherwise I would have thrown up or just rolled up in a ball and cried (which I also did). I don't feel like it's appropriate to say I "enjoyed" this, because this play is one of those things which you can't enjoy but you will remember, quite possibly until the day you die.
Having said that I am so grateful that I have read it. An eye-opener that this is, it honestly makes me want to do anything possible in order to not let any war happen ever. Definitely such an important book that EVERYONE should read.
Peter Weiss brings us one of the most revealing and simultaneously unbiased views of the Auschwitz extermination camp. This play, created with actual words spoken during the Frankfurt War Crimes trials, mentions horrific happenings in the camp with over a million of confirmed killings. Your blood will literally chill in your veins. Horrible but unforgettable, it ends on an extremely powerful, and possibly the most scary note: the guards were just doing what they were told.
I truly have no words. Taking breaks while reading this was honestly necessary, otherwise I would have thrown up or just rolled up in a ball and cried (which I also did). I don't feel like it's appropriate to say I "enjoyed" this, because this play is one of those things which you can't enjoy but you will remember, quite possibly until the day you die.
Having said that I am so grateful that I have read it. An eye-opener that this is, it honestly makes me want to do anything possible in order to not let any war happen ever. Definitely such an important book that EVERYONE should read.
September 26, 2016
This book really surprised me! I had to read this for school and it looked really boring but actually it was very interesting! I learned a lot about the horrible things that were done in the camps by the Nazi's in WWII. Earlier this year I visited former concentration camp Buchenwald in Germany so that's probably the reason this meant so much to me... idk
April 2, 2017
Cuesta mucho encontrarle una explicación al horror. Este libro es crudo e indignante, sobre todo por la actitud de los acusados, pero necesario.
Creo que no merece someterse a la calificación objetiva, ya que el valor de este libro no pasa por si está bien o mal escrito, si sus personajes son interesantes, si la historia está bien desarrollada. El carácter dramático de La indagación constituye un acierto porque se deshace de varios intermediarios y sólo quedan las voces. Las cinco estrellas son viscerales.
Creo que no merece someterse a la calificación objetiva, ya que el valor de este libro no pasa por si está bien o mal escrito, si sus personajes son interesantes, si la historia está bien desarrollada. El carácter dramático de La indagación constituye un acierto porque se deshace de varios intermediarios y sólo quedan las voces. Las cinco estrellas son viscerales.
April 10, 2015
Peter Weiss’ play The Investigation details the lesser known “second Auschwitz trial” conducted in Frankfurt, Germany from 1963-1965. Unlike the “first,” famous Nuremberg Trials, the accused Nazi personnel in the Frankfurt court were tried under German federal law, not international law. Most of the accused had successfully re-integrated into German society. Many founded successful businesses on the plunder from the camp.
Weiss, inspired by Brechtian dramatic conventions, strips the trial down to its barest, most essential features. The play is composed of extracted testimony from witnesses and defendants, along with examination and cross-examination by prosecutors and the defense counsel. While the nine witness characters are amalgams of hundreds of individuals brought forth to testify to the atrocities perpetrated at Auschwitz, the 18 defendants are all named and allowed to speak for themselves without fictionalization.
The play is dreadfully efficient in its aim of letting the facts speak for themselves without rhetorical manipulation or theatrical flair. The lines are sparse, delivered without punctuation or literary emphasis. The testimony of the unnamed witnesses achieve a kind of hypnotic dirge, often blending together into a flat, matter-of-fact horror. The numb dread of the witness testimony is only interrupted by the sickening rationalizations, deflections, and denials of the defendants and their defense counsel.
In one of his final works, Theodor Adorno argued that it would have been more moral to summarily execute Nazi war criminals than put them on trial:
“If the men charged with torturing, along with their overseers and with the high and mighty protectors of the overseers, had been shot on the spot, this would have been more moral than putting them on trial. … Once a judicial machinery must be mobilized against them, with codes of procedure, black robes, and understanding defense lawyers, justice--incapable in any case of imposing sanctions that would fit the crimes--is falsified already, compromised by the same principle on which the killers were acting.”
I’ve always found this thought both alluring and troubling. I get the rage behind it, but to call that rage moral always seemed difficult to affirm. Reading The Investigation helped to clarify the point. It hinges on the qualification “more moral.” Shooting them in a ditch would not be moral, but it would be more moral than granting them a trial that they don’t deserve. It would have been more moral than the farce of allowing them to see the inside of a courtroom. What they did could not be adequately represented in any juridical context. In one of the most shocking moments in the trial, it is revealed that a state prosecutor was sent to Auschwitz to investigate what was actually going on there. The prosecutor was tipped off when, after inspecting the amount of gold (composed of melted down fillings) leaving the camp, he realized that each piece had to contain the fillings of thousands of people. After surveying the camp, he charged a few underlings. With larceny. For looting corpses. No other legal recourse was available. When asked why he didn’t tell any German authorities, he said they wouldn’t have believed it. When asked why he didn’t escape and tell the international community, he said he feared they would believe it--and annihilate the German people. I think he would have agreed with Adorno’s judgment.
There is something uniquely horrible about a defense attorney cross-examining a holocaust survivor in an attempt to characterize the victim (and all those who only left the camps in a plume of smoke) as complicit in their own extermination. It quickly becomes clear that, in addition to the well-known “just following orders” defense, another major line of defense rested on constructing a narrative that blamed the 3 million people murdered in Auschwitz for allowing themselves to be murdered. This repugnant line of defense notwithstanding, there’s something simply perverse about the perpetrators of these crimes being allowed to present themselves as sympathetic--even as victims themselves--in the presence of people that they refused to grant the smallest trace of humanity. Perhaps the most subtly obscene line in a play composed entirely of subtle obscenity is--”The Defendants Laugh”. And they do so with some frequency.
So the application of a legal apparatus to a group of men who systematically suspended it in order to murder 12 million people is hard to stomach. It feels unjust to indulge them in their testimony, to give them a platform to deny their crimes. In a particularly telling moment in the trial, Defendant 9 is worked into a position where he must admit to killing some people. The scene unfolds as follow:
“Judge: That means at least 200 dead
Defendant 9: It could have been 250 or 300
I don’t know exactly
It was an order
I couldn’t do anything about it
Witness 8: Sanitary Officer Klehr [Defendant 9]
was involved in the killing
of at least 16,000 prisoners
Defendant 9: That’s too much
everyone has a breaking point
I’m supposed to have killed 16,000 people
There were only 16,000 in the entire camp
No one would have been left
but the military band
The Defendants laugh”
The denial (in 1963) of the scale of the atrocity. The flippant rejection of being accused of killing 16,000 people. The laughter. Lie them stomach down on the ground and shoot them in the neck.
Weiss, inspired by Brechtian dramatic conventions, strips the trial down to its barest, most essential features. The play is composed of extracted testimony from witnesses and defendants, along with examination and cross-examination by prosecutors and the defense counsel. While the nine witness characters are amalgams of hundreds of individuals brought forth to testify to the atrocities perpetrated at Auschwitz, the 18 defendants are all named and allowed to speak for themselves without fictionalization.
The play is dreadfully efficient in its aim of letting the facts speak for themselves without rhetorical manipulation or theatrical flair. The lines are sparse, delivered without punctuation or literary emphasis. The testimony of the unnamed witnesses achieve a kind of hypnotic dirge, often blending together into a flat, matter-of-fact horror. The numb dread of the witness testimony is only interrupted by the sickening rationalizations, deflections, and denials of the defendants and their defense counsel.
In one of his final works, Theodor Adorno argued that it would have been more moral to summarily execute Nazi war criminals than put them on trial:
“If the men charged with torturing, along with their overseers and with the high and mighty protectors of the overseers, had been shot on the spot, this would have been more moral than putting them on trial. … Once a judicial machinery must be mobilized against them, with codes of procedure, black robes, and understanding defense lawyers, justice--incapable in any case of imposing sanctions that would fit the crimes--is falsified already, compromised by the same principle on which the killers were acting.”
I’ve always found this thought both alluring and troubling. I get the rage behind it, but to call that rage moral always seemed difficult to affirm. Reading The Investigation helped to clarify the point. It hinges on the qualification “more moral.” Shooting them in a ditch would not be moral, but it would be more moral than granting them a trial that they don’t deserve. It would have been more moral than the farce of allowing them to see the inside of a courtroom. What they did could not be adequately represented in any juridical context. In one of the most shocking moments in the trial, it is revealed that a state prosecutor was sent to Auschwitz to investigate what was actually going on there. The prosecutor was tipped off when, after inspecting the amount of gold (composed of melted down fillings) leaving the camp, he realized that each piece had to contain the fillings of thousands of people. After surveying the camp, he charged a few underlings. With larceny. For looting corpses. No other legal recourse was available. When asked why he didn’t tell any German authorities, he said they wouldn’t have believed it. When asked why he didn’t escape and tell the international community, he said he feared they would believe it--and annihilate the German people. I think he would have agreed with Adorno’s judgment.
There is something uniquely horrible about a defense attorney cross-examining a holocaust survivor in an attempt to characterize the victim (and all those who only left the camps in a plume of smoke) as complicit in their own extermination. It quickly becomes clear that, in addition to the well-known “just following orders” defense, another major line of defense rested on constructing a narrative that blamed the 3 million people murdered in Auschwitz for allowing themselves to be murdered. This repugnant line of defense notwithstanding, there’s something simply perverse about the perpetrators of these crimes being allowed to present themselves as sympathetic--even as victims themselves--in the presence of people that they refused to grant the smallest trace of humanity. Perhaps the most subtly obscene line in a play composed entirely of subtle obscenity is--”The Defendants Laugh”. And they do so with some frequency.
So the application of a legal apparatus to a group of men who systematically suspended it in order to murder 12 million people is hard to stomach. It feels unjust to indulge them in their testimony, to give them a platform to deny their crimes. In a particularly telling moment in the trial, Defendant 9 is worked into a position where he must admit to killing some people. The scene unfolds as follow:
“Judge: That means at least 200 dead
Defendant 9: It could have been 250 or 300
I don’t know exactly
It was an order
I couldn’t do anything about it
Witness 8: Sanitary Officer Klehr [Defendant 9]
was involved in the killing
of at least 16,000 prisoners
Defendant 9: That’s too much
everyone has a breaking point
I’m supposed to have killed 16,000 people
There were only 16,000 in the entire camp
No one would have been left
but the military band
The Defendants laugh”
The denial (in 1963) of the scale of the atrocity. The flippant rejection of being accused of killing 16,000 people. The laughter. Lie them stomach down on the ground and shoot them in the neck.
July 15, 2021
Genuinely just devastating.
October 20, 2020
Gerade der komplette Verzicht auf Poetisierung dieses schrecklichen Stoffes und die Form, die in ihren Grundzügen der göttlichen Komödie von Dante nachempfunden ist, zeigt mit beinahe unaushaltbarer Wucht die Schrecken der Massenvernichtung in Lagern während des zweiten Weltkriegs und die folgende Unfähigkeit ihrer Aufarbeitung duch die Mitverantwortlichen auf. Sie alle ziehen sich selbst aus der Verantwortung, halten ihre Kriegsverbrechen für "verjährt" oder ihre Taten nicht für gesetzeswidrig, hätten sie doch nur Befehle von oben ausgeführt. Ich habe selten einen besser konstuierten, verstörenderen, schrecklicheren Text gelesen.
August 5, 2017
TERRIBLE!! (como siempre digo en este tipo de libros, el puntaje es simbólico)
POR MAS QUE LEA MILES DE LIBROS SOBRE ESTE TEMA EL HORROR DE LO QUE PASÓ NO DEJA DE SORPRENDERME Y SE ME HACE INCOMPRENSIBLE!
POR MAS QUE LEA MILES DE LIBROS SOBRE ESTE TEMA EL HORROR DE LO QUE PASÓ NO DEJA DE SORPRENDERME Y SE ME HACE INCOMPRENSIBLE!
August 3, 2024
Res ipsa Loquitur. (The thing speaks for Itself.)
Opera teatrale che percorre l'iter dei deportati del lager, dalla banchina alla camera a gas.
I testimoni non posseggono nomi. Gli hanno perduti nel campo.
Gli imputati hanno un nome. Se lo sono fatto nel campo.
I testimoni ricordano, annotano, danno numeri e cifre.
Gli imputati negano, mentono, danno scuse e attenuanti. Alle volte ridono.
Ridono.
La fine di ogni canto, testimonianza o obiezione vi faranno chiudere il libro in un eterno gioco di lettura e ponderazione.
Va ricordato che anche il silenzio è un elemento di scena.
Opera teatrale che percorre l'iter dei deportati del lager, dalla banchina alla camera a gas.
I testimoni non posseggono nomi. Gli hanno perduti nel campo.
Gli imputati hanno un nome. Se lo sono fatto nel campo.
I testimoni ricordano, annotano, danno numeri e cifre.
Gli imputati negano, mentono, danno scuse e attenuanti. Alle volte ridono.
Ridono.
La fine di ogni canto, testimonianza o obiezione vi faranno chiudere il libro in un eterno gioco di lettura e ponderazione.
Va ricordato che anche il silenzio è un elemento di scena.
Read
July 31, 2021This seems built to work with Adorno's famous comment about poetry after Auschwitz. The desolation of the form - no punctuation, semi-poetic form on the page - seems to drive this home.
It seems both a strength and a weakness that it is presented as a play. Hopefully that is clear enough. A deeply effective use of silence.
It seems both a strength and a weakness that it is presented as a play. Hopefully that is clear enough. A deeply effective use of silence.
January 21, 2024
„Versucht man, die Todesmaschinerie darzustellen, besteht die Gefahr, in der Darstellung die Entmenschlichung und Verdinglichung der Opfer zu wiederholen. Stellt man ein Einzelschicksal dar, setzt man sich dem Vorwurf der Verharmlosung aus.“
Peter Weiss thematisiert in seinem Stück die Frankfurter Auschwitzprozesse der 1960er Jahre und die Monstrosität des Holocausts. Da ,die Ermittlung‘ eine Montage aus Fakten aus den Prozessen darstellt, ist mir eine Bewertung dieses Stücks zwar unmöglich, aber dennoch wichtig.
Das Stück ist erschreckend, beängstigend und schockierend, gerade durch die Aussagen der Täter und deren Verleugnung jeglicher Schuld. Die trockene und einfache Sprache der einzelnen Gesänge lassen das Stück so real, so fassbar erscheinen.
Das Stück hat nur wenige Regieanweisungen, die aber durch ihre Einfachheit und Nüchternheit die Absurdität von Auschwitz darstellen: „die Angeklagten lachen“ und „die Zeugin schweigt“.
Die nüchterne Erzählweise trägt dazu bei, die Grausamkeiten und Abgründe von Auschwitz auf beklemmende Weise zu verdeutlichen. Diese Nüchternheit verleiht dem Stück eine besondere Intensität, indem sie den Fokus auf die faktischen Details und die brutale Realität der Verbrechen legt.
⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
Peter Weiss thematisiert in seinem Stück die Frankfurter Auschwitzprozesse der 1960er Jahre und die Monstrosität des Holocausts. Da ,die Ermittlung‘ eine Montage aus Fakten aus den Prozessen darstellt, ist mir eine Bewertung dieses Stücks zwar unmöglich, aber dennoch wichtig.
Das Stück ist erschreckend, beängstigend und schockierend, gerade durch die Aussagen der Täter und deren Verleugnung jeglicher Schuld. Die trockene und einfache Sprache der einzelnen Gesänge lassen das Stück so real, so fassbar erscheinen.
Das Stück hat nur wenige Regieanweisungen, die aber durch ihre Einfachheit und Nüchternheit die Absurdität von Auschwitz darstellen: „die Angeklagten lachen“ und „die Zeugin schweigt“.
Die nüchterne Erzählweise trägt dazu bei, die Grausamkeiten und Abgründe von Auschwitz auf beklemmende Weise zu verdeutlichen. Diese Nüchternheit verleiht dem Stück eine besondere Intensität, indem sie den Fokus auf die faktischen Details und die brutale Realität der Verbrechen legt.
⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
Read
August 7, 2021Perhaps one of, if not the most, emotionally challenging literary works I’ve ever read. I can only imagine the difficulty of sitting through The Investigation in its intended form as a play. The Divine Comedy/Inferno parallels in the play’s structure of cantos and how the text is aligned in the manner of poetry are certainly unique, though I’m interested to know how they’d be represented when staged.
April 29, 2014
This play is life-changingly powerful. It does have horrifying scenes, but that's the point. Weiss offers an unflinching appraisal of the slaughter of millions of undesirables with this perfect example of documentary theatre at its finest and most brutal. At the very least, it provides a frame for what happened at Auschwitz in WW II.
September 14, 2014
Terrific.
Read
August 12, 2021managed to avoid reading this for 13 years because the reviews terrified me (reading this was still a horror trip after 'practicing' learning about Nazi Germany for 13 years- spoiler, this can't actually be practiced), can recommend to read on a busy train if you know you can't really want to completely get swallowed by this.
it's not merely horrifying by content; the detailed descriptions of the concentration camp and closeness to historical trial evidence are amplified by the lack of punctuation and widening the cantos range/ claim by stripping the roles of particular names, alluding to the millions who died under/ were active in the Nazi regime instead of limiting the play/ the nightmare scenes described to specific characters.
Most hated stage instruction ever seen is the defence laughing; might be smart to read this in German as a German but we'll see.
it's not merely horrifying by content; the detailed descriptions of the concentration camp and closeness to historical trial evidence are amplified by the lack of punctuation and widening the cantos range/ claim by stripping the roles of particular names, alluding to the millions who died under/ were active in the Nazi regime instead of limiting the play/ the nightmare scenes described to specific characters.
Most hated stage instruction ever seen is the defence laughing; might be smart to read this in German as a German but we'll see.
November 7, 2021
Es sin duda una de las obras más desgarradoras que he leído y que, a la vez, más claridad me han aportado. Me parece brillante la forma en que está escrito y la idea de mantener únicamente los nombres de los acusados, aquellos que mientras cometían crímenes quisieron ser conocidos mientras que sus presos eran números.
Terminarlo te hace preguntarte cómo vas a poder seguir viviendo después de saber todo lo que allí ocurrió. Visito lo que me dijo una amiga para darme ánimos (ambas estábamos comentando lo difícil que se estaba haciendo la lectura): “Si aquellas personas pudieron vivir eso, sobrevivir y contarlo, yo tengo que ser capaz de leerlo. Por ellos”.
Pues por ellos. Que se sepa siempre. Que los crímenes nos hablen de los acusados, pero también de las víctimas.
Terminarlo te hace preguntarte cómo vas a poder seguir viviendo después de saber todo lo que allí ocurrió. Visito lo que me dijo una amiga para darme ánimos (ambas estábamos comentando lo difícil que se estaba haciendo la lectura): “Si aquellas personas pudieron vivir eso, sobrevivir y contarlo, yo tengo que ser capaz de leerlo. Por ellos”.
Pues por ellos. Que se sepa siempre. Que los crímenes nos hablen de los acusados, pero también de las víctimas.
November 1, 2023
Fra la fine del 1963 e l’agosto del 1965, a Francoforte si svolse un processo contro un gruppo di SS e di funzionari del lager di Auschwitz. Peter Weiss assistette a molte sedute, a quel “tentativo di fare rientrare negli schemi della giustizia umana crimini non solo senza precedenti, ma inconcepibili”. Dai materiali raccolti direttamente o da altre fonti trasse questo testo teatrale, di un’attualità sconcertante. Con “versi liberi, brevi e brevissimi” non racconta solo l’inferno del campo si sterminio, ma, in una sorta di agghiacciante controcanto, mette in rilievo la “reticenza, malafede, viltà, cinismo, ottusità dei despoti, dei boia, dei carcerieri di un tempo” e l’indulgenza, “quando non l’appoggio attivo della società” tedesca del dopoguerra. Oggi, che quei crimini sono “il” precedente che li rende concepibili, siamo testimoni di come la storia, anche quando si ripete, possa rimanere una tragedia.
#fallabreve: La storia si ripete sempre due volte: la prima volta come tragedia, la seconda pure (semicit.).
#fallabreve: La storia si ripete sempre due volte: la prima volta come tragedia, la seconda pure (semicit.).
February 13, 2023
wrote a Spanish Literature paper contrasting The Investigation and Slaughter House Five. My main objective was to increase page count and as the two books have nothing in common I had a lot to unpack. Because the premise of the essay was so ludicrous it detracted from my slender grasp on spanish which was a relative boon in the grading process.
Never read the book but nevertheless I hold a soft spot for it. 3/5.
Never read the book but nevertheless I hold a soft spot for it. 3/5.
June 3, 2022
Comprendo que la intención de este libro es exasperar al lector y, desde luego, lo consigue. No se puede leer sin sentir impotencia (y un montón de emociones como asco, miedo y desconcierto, aunque se me quedan cortas como descripción).
Ha sido interesante, inquietante... No sé qué decir, no lo puedo comprender y menos aún poner en palabras. Las ganas de leer se juntan con las de dejarlo y permanecer en la ignorancia.
Ha sido interesante, inquietante... No sé qué decir, no lo puedo comprender y menos aún poner en palabras. Las ganas de leer se juntan con las de dejarlo y permanecer en la ignorancia.
May 30, 2020
This is the second play I read that uses real words from a real trial, arranging and composing, but not inventing. And it is powerful. Nothing could condem the perpetrators more than their own words, nothing horrify more that the reality.
This is a very strong piece of literature that should be read
This is a very strong piece of literature that should be read
Read
April 3, 2022Grauen erregend und Empathie steigernd.
Da die schrecklichen Kriegsverbrechen als "verjährt" angesehen werden, soll dieses Werk als Quelle der Wahrheit gelten. Und man sollte die Wahrheit nie mit Sternen bewerten.
Da die schrecklichen Kriegsverbrechen als "verjährt" angesehen werden, soll dieses Werk als Quelle der Wahrheit gelten. Und man sollte die Wahrheit nie mit Sternen bewerten.
September 17, 2020
Commentary to follow.
February 6, 2024
actually revolting and devastating documentary drama
Read
November 2, 2021I have no interest in giving a work made up of quotes from the Frankfurt Auschwitz trials a star rating. This is aestheticized insofar as to make this as high impact as possible. Weiss makes the multiplicitous witness accounts of Auschwitz atrocities into a distilled set of less than ten, and, by doing so, he allows his nameless truthbearers to expose the sheer depravity that we all know but never really do. Searingly essential as a historical text against genocide. Scary that the camp experience has clear parallels to the neo-slavery we have built into our American justice system. Businesses feed off of the oppressed with a complete disregard for human decency. Harrowing.
May 5, 2020
Herkese tavsiye ediyorum. Mutlaka okunmalı. Pdf gönderebilirim.
Read
November 5, 2023uno de los libros más duros que he leído en mi vida
January 6, 2020
das ist so gut wieso liest man das nicht in der schule @ deutsche landesregierungen
March 25, 2021
Un libro molto forte, a metà tra il report giudiziario e la messa in scena tragica. Lettura consigliata, ma da prendere di petto e con grande coraggio.
September 2, 2018
Es de los libros que más me ha costado leer. Me ha dejado una sensación de impotencia y de horror ante las masacres que se cometían diariamente en aras del Estado nazi. Leer las declaraciones de los testigos de las matanzas, algunos sin poder expresarse al estar traumatizados por el horror que han visto. Todo ello mientras los responsables de las matanzas niegan su participación en ella e incluso son capaces de reírse ante las mentiras de sus compañeros
January 7, 2024
L'istruttoria: Oratorio in undici canti è un testo teatrale scritto da Peter Weiss dopo aver assistito al processo ai funzionari del lager di Auschwitz, svoltosi a Francoforte dal 1963 al 1965. Come dice Zampa nell’introduzione, le battute di questo testo rispecchiano fedelmente quanto detto da testimoni e imputati durante il processo.
Il testo si divide in undici canti che ci accompagnano dalla banchina, dove si fermavano i treni ad Auschwitz, ai forni, passando per le uccisioni per fucilazione, le torture, le uccisioni per gas.
È un testo talmente crudo, talmente diretto, che nulla si può dire al riguardo, perché lascia letteralmente senza parole la brutalità che lo pervade. È forse quanto di più agghiacciante io abbia mai letto, e ne consiglio la lettura a tutti. Come ho letto da qualche parte, è un testo che dovrebbero adottare nelle scuole.
La recensione è volutamente brevissima, perché dopo aver letto questo libro ci vuole solo silenzio.
Il testo si divide in undici canti che ci accompagnano dalla banchina, dove si fermavano i treni ad Auschwitz, ai forni, passando per le uccisioni per fucilazione, le torture, le uccisioni per gas.
È un testo talmente crudo, talmente diretto, che nulla si può dire al riguardo, perché lascia letteralmente senza parole la brutalità che lo pervade. È forse quanto di più agghiacciante io abbia mai letto, e ne consiglio la lettura a tutti. Come ho letto da qualche parte, è un testo che dovrebbero adottare nelle scuole.
La recensione è volutamente brevissima, perché dopo aver letto questo libro ci vuole solo silenzio.
April 8, 2021
I never cried reading a play before. But here, I cried quite regularly. Every scene, every line - real passages from the Frankfurt Auschwitz trial, rearranged by Peter Weiss - was a punch in my guts. Anger, sadness, horror, shame, all these emotions swept over me while I read about the unimaginable atrocities committed at the camp and the way the perpetrators tried to brush them of. As a German and a historian, it's by far not my first encounter with the Shoa, but the gruesome realism of the trial hit me in a way I did not imagine was possible. With reference to Dante, Weiss names the chapters canto, but the hell he paints is much worse: A hell in the real world.
It is one of the absolute essential examinations of the Shoa (up there with Alain Renais' film NUIT ET BROUILLARD and Franz Josef Degenhardt's song WÖLFE MITTEN IM MAI) that need to be experienced.
As a post scriptum, I'd like to bow to the man whose name isn't in the play, but who should be remembered as a real world hero: Fritz Bauer, German prosecutor and the essential force behind the trials when too many were too eager to let the past go.
It is one of the absolute essential examinations of the Shoa (up there with Alain Renais' film NUIT ET BROUILLARD and Franz Josef Degenhardt's song WÖLFE MITTEN IM MAI) that need to be experienced.
As a post scriptum, I'd like to bow to the man whose name isn't in the play, but who should be remembered as a real world hero: Fritz Bauer, German prosecutor and the essential force behind the trials when too many were too eager to let the past go.
Displaying 1 - 30 of 106 reviews