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La indagación
La obra reproduce los juicios de Auschwitz llevados a cabo a los políticos y funcionarios de dichos campos de concentración durante el régimen nazi, a los que Peter Weiss acudió en calidad de testigo.
En 1965 estrenó la obra que marcaría su incursión en el llamado teatro-documento: «La indagación», un definitivo alegato contra el nazismo. Basada en verdaderos documentos históricos, Weiss se documentó concienzudamente asistiendo a diario a las sesiones públicas del proceso celebrado en Frankfurt contra los autores de los crímenes del campo de exterminio nazi de Auschwitz. Lo documental no reduce en ningún momento la poderosa dramaticidad de la obra.
La obra original, completa y sin pausas, tendría una duración de aproximadamente ocho horas y media. Las intenciones del autor al crear un drama de tal extensión eran, precisamente, desesperar al público. Según Peter Weiss, el punto de la indagación no es ni era entretener, era hastiar a la gente a tal grado que no quisieran volver al teatro en meses, era mostrar la realidad de un modo tan crudo y poco didáctico que la audiencia tuviera ganas de salirse a la mitad de la función. Es un tema que debe ser incómodo para toda la raza humana.
En 1965 estrenó la obra que marcaría su incursión en el llamado teatro-documento: «La indagación», un definitivo alegato contra el nazismo. Basada en verdaderos documentos históricos, Weiss se documentó concienzudamente asistiendo a diario a las sesiones públicas del proceso celebrado en Frankfurt contra los autores de los crímenes del campo de exterminio nazi de Auschwitz. Lo documental no reduce en ningún momento la poderosa dramaticidad de la obra.
La obra original, completa y sin pausas, tendría una duración de aproximadamente ocho horas y media. Las intenciones del autor al crear un drama de tal extensión eran, precisamente, desesperar al público. Según Peter Weiss, el punto de la indagación no es ni era entretener, era hastiar a la gente a tal grado que no quisieran volver al teatro en meses, era mostrar la realidad de un modo tan crudo y poco didáctico que la audiencia tuviera ganas de salirse a la mitad de la función. Es un tema que debe ser incómodo para toda la raza humana.
234 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1965
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About the author
Peter Weiss
200 books116 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...
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 122 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!
January 29, 2025
Anlässlich der Befreiung des Vernichtungslagers Auschwitz vor 80 Jahren habe ich "Die Ermittlung" nochmals gelesen. Die knappe, nüchterne und bürokratische Sprache, so gut wie ent-emotionalisiert, lässt das unglaubliche und monströs schreckliche Geschehen umso eindringlicher aufschreien. Was Menschen Menschen antun können - "Nie wieder".
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.
⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
March 29, 2025
Es ist schwer, passende Worte für dieses Drama zu finden, denn es gibt keine Worte, die die Schwere dieser Verbrechen und Gräueltaten darstellen können. Und wie die Täter, die kein Schuldbewusstsein haben, nichts bereuen, lässt einen mehr als nur fassungslos zurück.
February 15, 2019
Zutiefst bedrückend, erschreckend, furchtbar! Ich bin einfach nur fassungslos und finde gar keine Worte für dieses Theaterstück... Obwohl ich mich mit der Shoah schon viel beschäftigt habe, hat mich dieses Werk zutiefst erschüttert. Gerade durch die Sachlichkeit des Gerichtsprozesses wird die gesamt Monstrosität der NS-Verbrechen deutlich. Keiner der Angeklagten bereut seine Taten, niemand will etwas gewusst haben, die Opfer werden sogar noch hämisch verlacht. Ich kann dieses Buch nur jedem empfehlen auch wenn es wirklich Überwindung kostet diese Unmenschlichkeit zu lesen!
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.
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.
February 11, 2025
Uno de los libros más crudos y aterradores que he tenido que leer.
Peter Weiss es considerado uno de los primeros escritores en utilizar el llamado teatro documental, con el fin de mostrar una obra de teatro basada en testimonios reales del primer juicio de Auschwitz.
Nada de lo leído en esta obra es ficción, todo son documentos reales, eso hace que la lectura sea hasta cierto punto incómoda ante la crudeza de los crímenes de guerra y la negativa de aceptar estas acciones que han cometido los soldados alemanes acusados, frente a los mismos sobrevivientes del Holocausto.
La intención de Peter Weiss es presentar una obra que incomode al espectador, que recuerde que estos crímenes se han cometido en una realidad inmediata para generar conciencia y debate. Esta obra se escribe y realiza justamente mientras aún este caso se está desarrollando.
Peter Weiss es considerado uno de los primeros escritores en utilizar el llamado teatro documental, con el fin de mostrar una obra de teatro basada en testimonios reales del primer juicio de Auschwitz.
Nada de lo leído en esta obra es ficción, todo son documentos reales, eso hace que la lectura sea hasta cierto punto incómoda ante la crudeza de los crímenes de guerra y la negativa de aceptar estas acciones que han cometido los soldados alemanes acusados, frente a los mismos sobrevivientes del Holocausto.
La intención de Peter Weiss es presentar una obra que incomode al espectador, que recuerde que estos crímenes se han cometido en una realidad inmediata para generar conciencia y debate. Esta obra se escribe y realiza justamente mientras aún este caso se está desarrollando.
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.
April 11, 2025
I did scenes from this play in my high school drama class. I wanted to revisit it. It's a very difficult read, but an important read not just to understand the atrocities of the Holocaust and to remember what actually happened as today people continue to doubt or deny the truths, but to also understand how so many everyday German people helped orchestrate these murders and justified it in real time and even afterwards while being prosecuted for their crimes against humanity. The testimony of the witnesses is heartbreaking, and the indifference from the defense and accused is mind boggling. Painful, emotional read.
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
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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 5, 2026
Que rápido olvidamos y repetimos la historia.
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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.
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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
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