You do not mention possessing an audiotape or a transcript, and you certainly do not relate distributing copies to historians or libraries. In your otherwise seemingly thorough and exhaustive acknowledgments, I find none for help in preparing transcripts. You make not the slightest allusion to tape recording or transcribing. However, all of the above expectations were disappointed. In view of the fragmentation and incoherence of extemporaneous speech, I expected material that you offered as direct quotation to show some signs of this fragmentation and incoherence. I expected to read your allusions to the taping process, as for example of how Franz Stangl reacted to the prospect of being taped, or your mentions of pausing the interview in order to change tapes, or your encountering machine breakdowns, or your asking Stangl to clarify tape segments that proved inaudible or unintelligible. I expected that you would make copies of the tapes and transcripts, and distribute them among scholars, or to libraries which specialize in such materials. In order to create and edit such transcripts, I expected that considerable clerical help would be needed, and that this help would find a place in your acknowledgements. I would have expected Stangl to ask to be provided with a copy of each day's tapes and transcripts, and to listen to the tapes while reading along in the transcripts, so as to verify for himself that the transcripts were accurate, or to see whether he had at any time misspoken and needed to correct something, or to note on what topics he thought elaboration or clarification were called for. And the tape recording would be needed to provide the raw data which future historians might use in drawing their further conclusions.įrom Stangl's direction, I expected a concern that his words might be misrepresented or that he would be misquoted, and I expected that he would welcome the creation of an unedited audiotape along with a certified transcript as a protection against any such misrepresentation or misquoting. The tape recording would be essential also to establish the credibility of your account of the interviews, and to protect you from suspicions of bias or fabrication. You would also find such a taping advisable because you would appreciate that relying solely on memory, you would forget a lot, and misremember a lot, and as a historian or as a journalist, you would be motivated to be complete and accurate. This would be necessary so that you could more conveniently review what had been said, and use your review to ask for elaboration or clarification the following day, and generally to use it to guide future questioning. I expected, for example, that you would tape record your seventy hours with Stangl, and that your first order of priority after each day's session would be to get the tape recording transcribed. When I read there that you had spent 70 hours interviewing Franz Stangl, my hope that I would finally get to the bottom of what really happened in Treblinka revived.Įven before I read beyond the first few pages of your book � I realize now � I began implicitly to form certain expectations as to what might constitute standard practice in an interview of such historic significance as the one you conducted with Franz Stangl. The Plain Dealer of 1 which describes you as "a British historian," and "the author of Into That Darkness, considered the standard work on Treblinka," and wishing to learn more about Treblinka, I picked up a copy of that book and had a look inside. Having read on the CBC web site that you are "recognized as one of the most informed journalists of Nazi history," that you have "researched extensively the Third Reich archives," and that your book on Franz Stangl, the Kommandant of the Treblinka death camp, is a "landmark in the field," and hearing this high evaluation of you echoed in "But I think he died when he did because he had finally, however briefly, faced himself and told the truth it was a monumental effort to reach that fleeting moment when he became the man he should have been." � Gitta Sereny writing of Franz Stangl Gitta Sereny Letter 01 0 Franz Stangl's confession HOME DISINFORMATION PEOPLE SERENY
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