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questions and placed them face down on the table.
    “You discarded the pages face down on the table when you finished each area of questioning, Herr Deschler.”
    Deschler leaned closer to Meyer, his eyes betraying a smile that did not sit on his lips.
    “Turning over a page and placing it face down puts a full stop on a series of questions. The jury will naturally see that gesture as the end of something. It helps them to understand that you have made your point. That there is nothing else that could possibly be understood from any further questions on that particular subject,” explained Deschler in a whisper.
    “Use this technique when you can. If you are lucky, and this is luck, the prosecutor may also unconsciously see this as an end to questioning and be unable to formulate any further questions of his own,” he continued.
    “Unfortunately, in this case, Herr Fuhrmann does not allow such things to trouble him.”
    The clerk of the court brought Dieter Färber to the witness box and reminded him that he was still under oath.
    Deschler stood and smiled at Dieter Färber. This time his eyes showed no smile. The smile that sat on Deschler’s face was a lie.
     
     
     
     
     
     

Auschwitz, 24th July 1943
     
     
    AFTER being photographed and catalogued, Meyer followed Kapo Langer to his hut and stood outside, along with the other men. The Kapo turned and stood with his arms folded, barring the way in through the door.
    “This is hut number seventy-two,” he said as he pointed to a faded number '7' and an almost imperceptible '2', both painted in what would once have been blood red but was now a rusty brown, flaked and nearly impossible to read.
    “This is my hut. It was built for a hundred men. It holds four times that number and is now your home.” He turned and pushed open the door, beckoning the men to follow him inside. The air was stifling in the summer heat. The smell of sweat and urine was oppressive and spilled from the wooden building to cover the waiting disinfected men with its putrid stench, making Meyer turn his head to try to get a lungful of cooler air.
    He took a deep breath and forced himself inside with the others. Sweat began to form on his forehead immediately, and he let out the spent air from his lungs and tentatively took a short breath. He could taste the filth.
    The wooden walls inside the hut had faded to grey, and mould and dirt covered the glass panes that remained in the windows, most of which were boarded up or cracked. The floorboards were filthy with dried mud and dust, and dirt lay in piles against the skirting. The ceiling was the direct underside of the roof and was stained from rainwater; white clouds from salts which had leached from the wood, and with fingers of black mould. Filling the room were stacked sets of wooden bunks. Most were three bunks high but some had four.
    Langer held out his arms, and with them outstretched and his index fingers pointing, he slowly turned, as if proud of the dirty, decrepit building.
    “This is my hut. Where you sleep and where you will probably die. I will outlive all of you. But, I will try to keep those who help me and, how can I put this, ‘work with me’, alive as long as possible.”
    He dropped his arms and looked at the men before him.
    “You get up at four am. You go outside no matter the weather and line up. This is for my roll call. Once I have a list of all those present I check the hut for those not there. I mark the sick and the dead.
    “You stay standing in line until the SS do their roll call. They have the dead and the sick removed from the hut. We don’t see them again. Ever.
    “You then get water to drink and are split into working parties by me. You go and do your work and return at a time determined by the guards. You go to the mess hut. Eat, drink. Come back to the hut and sleep.
    “Then the same the next day. And the next day. There is no day off. There is no Sabbath.”
    Langer looked from one face to