Abstract

The topic of our discussion is extremely complex by virtue of the diversity of problems it covers, their contradictions, and their many layers. An objective analysis is complicated by the fact that we are "by origin from there," that we were all drawn into the process, and that it is difficult, if not impossible, for us to distance ourselves from this fact. Being involved in what happened is, on the one hand, a positive factor: it gives access to occurring events through a knowledge of facts and details that is difficult, if not impossible, to obtain for an investigator of the events many years later. But such involvement not only discloses the truth, it also creates the illusion that one possesses the truth, because a participant in events often makes his personal beliefs about them the basis of theoretical generalizations. A participant and a witness are very different categories in terms of their objective relation to actual facts.