The fate of the Jews of the small town in Transylvania called Sighet; their blindness as they confronted a destiny from which they would have still had time to flee; the inconceivable passivity with which they surrendered to it, deaf to the warnings and pleas of a witness who, having escaped the massacre, relates to them what he has seen with his own eyes, but they refuse to believe him and call him a madman—this set of circumstances would surely have sufficed to inspire a book to which, I believe, no other can be compared.
