The scene is set inside an Auschwitz bunkroom in which several prisoners are knowingly spending their final hours.
Out of the tension of their situation comes the decision to carry out a trial in which God is charged with breach of contract. Since God made a covenant with his people, they argue, and since that covenant included many promises that, as his chosen nation, Israel would survive under his protection, why then is the history of the Jewish people marked with destruction and suffering? Surely their slavery, their exile and the six million dead of the Final Solution all prove that God is guilty of going back on his word.
The trial is justified by the Jewish characters who claim that this style of questioning God follows in the tradition of Abraham haggling with God over Sodom, Jacob wrestling with God, and so on. Ironically, putting God in the dock also follows in the tradition of Adam and Eve’s folly when they doubt God’s wisdom and set themselves in judgment over him, with tragic results.
