In probably around 1958, there was an... an article in Commentary about a man named Gans – G A N S – who was appointed by the Nazis to oversee the Jewish ghetto, I think in Vilna – I may be getting my facts somewhat wrong, but essentially what I'm saying is correct. And his job was to oversee the ghetto and be its... its administrator, its… the mayor of the ghetto and also to give them… yield up to the Nazis X number of people a month to be... to put on the trains to go to Auschwitz to be killed. Let's say he had to give them 500 people a month. Quite a job.

I was very struck by this article about Gans and decided to write a play about it, because there he was doing what he was doing. If he didn't do it, then his notion was the German's would do it themselves in a very horrible and ugly way and they'd lose more people than he had to lose each month. But nonetheless he had to be responsible for the selection. Well the... the situation begged for dramatization I thought – and so I wrote a play.