T HE TRIAL could not have gone any worse for Hanna. She had already made a bad impression on the court during the preliminary questioning. After the indictment had been read out, she spoke up to say that something was incorrect; the presiding judge rebuked her irritably, telling her that she had had plenty of time before the trial to study the charges and register objections; now the trial was in progress and the evidence would show what was correct and incorrect. When the presiding judge proposed at the beginning of the actual testimony that the German version of the daughter’s book not be read into the record, as it had been prepared for publication by a German publisher and the manuscript made available to all participants in the trial, Hanna had to be argued into it by her lawyer under the exasperated eyes of the judge. She did not willingly agree. She also did not want to acknowledge that she had admitted, in an earlier deposition, to having had the key to the church. She had not had the key, no one had had the key, there had not been any one key to the church, but several keys to several different doors, and they had all been left outside in the locks. But the court record of her examination by the judge, approved and signed by her, read differently, and the fact that she asked why they were trying to hang something on her did not make matters any better. She didn’t ask loudly or arrogantly, but with determination, and, I think, in visible and audible confusion and helplessness, and the fact that she spoke of others trying to hang something on her did not mean she was claiming any miscarriage of justice by the court. But the presiding judge interpreted it that way and responded sharply. Hanna’s lawyer leapt to his feet and let loose, overeagerly; he was asked whether he was agreeing with his client’s accusations, and sat down again.

Hanna wanted to do the right thing. When she thought she was being done an injustice, she contradicted it, and when something was rightly claimed or alleged, she acknowledged it. She contradicted vigorously and admitted willingly, as though her admissions gave her the right to her contradictions or as though, along with her contradictions, she took on a responsibility to admit what she could not deny. But she did not notice that her insistence annoyed the presiding judge. She had no sense of context, of the rules of the game, of the formulas by which her statements and those of the others were toted up into guilt and innocence, conviction and acquittal. To compensate for her defective grasp of the situation, her lawyer would have had to have more experience and self-confidence, or simply to have been better. But Hanna should not have made things so hard for him; she was obviously withholding her trust from him, but had not chosen another lawyer she trusted more. Her lawyer was a public defender appointed by the court.

Sometimes Hanna achieved her own kind of success. I remember her examination on the selections in the camp. The other defendants denied ever............