Claude Lanzmann constructed this documentary around an interview he conducted with Maurice Rossel in 1979, during the shooting of "Shoah" (France/Switzerland/1985). Theresienstadt, a fortified town 50 miles northeast of Prague, had been chosen by the Nazis as the place for a "model ghetto," a ghetto for show. As an International Red Cross representative, Rossel was selected to inspect the "model ghetto" at Theresienstadt in June 1944. Lanzmann documents how the Holocaust was allowed to happen by a world full of so-called decent human beings.