First Paragraph

I first met Franz Stangl on the morning of April 2, 1971, in a little room which was ordinarily used as a waiting and rest room for lawyers visiting the Dusseldorf remand prison. The room was the same size as the cells in the prison's modern block, the block in which Stangl was detained. It had the same barred windows, the same dreary view of the paved inside yard, and the same kind of minimal furnishings in blond polished pine. It was impersonal, neutral, with nothing in it to please or edify, but equally nothing to distract the eye or mind: the right place for the particular seventy hours I was to spend with this particular man.

- From Into That Darkness by Gitta Sereny