Evento

The Investigation by Peter Weiss

"The Investigation" is an intense drama about the Nazi war crime trials stemming from the horrific atrocities at Auschwitz, written by Peter Weiss, author of Marat/Sade.

"The Investigation" is Weiss' ruthless documentary drama of the Frankfurt Auschwitz trials, which he attended. These proceedings, held in 1963-5, are not to be confused with the Nrnberg trials held right after the war. In Frankfurt it was the German government itself that held the war-crimes trial, focusing on the crimes perpetrated at Auschwitz.

Using the actual testimony of survivors from Auschwitz, testifying as witnesses against those who exploited them and others, Weiss creates a riveting drama. The drama is based on the trial, but Weiss insists that it should not be staged as a courtroom-docudrama.

In the presentation of this play, no attempt is made to reconstruct the courtroom before which the proceedings of the camp trial took place. Any such reconstruction would, in the opinion of the author, be as impossible as trying to present the camp itself on the stage.

No names are used in describing the characters -- they appear merely as "Judge", "Witness", "Prosecuting Attorney", and "Defendant" -- though the defendants do have corresponding names by which they are called. The play is presented in eleven cantos, beginning with "The Platform" where the trains arrived, proceeding to "The Camp", and ending with two cantos on "Zyklon B" and then "The Fire Ovens".

The stark, largely anonymous portrayal of this unspeakable evil is very effective. Weiss carefully shaped the text, culling, cutting, and changing very little from the original transcripts to create what is truly a poetic text. His dramatic sense and lyric ear allowed him to create a text that is also literary, and can stand on those merits alone. But of course it is much more.

An important contribution to the literature about World War II, and an impressive drama in its own right.