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"Because he was a Jew, my father died in Auschwitz: How can it not be said? And how can it be said? How can one speak of that before which all possibility of speech ceases?"¹ Berek Kofman was buried alive in Auschwitz because he stopped working in order to celebrate the Sabbath. He refused not by opposing his power to the power of his captors. He knew what would happened if he stopped to pray. Work, for Berek Kofman, would neither liberate him nor provide his rehabilitation; he refused to perform his tasks on the run. But to refuse work was also to refuse the entire order of power of which such work was an emblem. He was not one of those who would hold himself back in the midst of his labours in order, later, to bear witness. It was left to his daughter to bear witness in his place, or rather to write of the witnessing of others, and of those who, she argues, teach us to witness and to learn from witnessing.

DOI: 10.1057/9780230503977_6

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