"Necessity is the mother of invention" - Aesop

The Castello in Milan held a great museum with quite a few exhibits.  While these exhibits alone had nothing to do with the escaping Nazis, and arguably nothing to do with our actual study of the Nazi Trail; one exhibit provided some context to our trip.  In the furniture exhibit, there was a set of chairs that were embroidered with different fables coming from Aesop, and on of these vignettes portraid was the fable known as the "Crow and the Pitcher".  In this specific fable, a thirsty crow comes across a pitcher of water, but the water level is far to low for the crow to actually drink it.  Therefore the crow dropped pebbles into the pitcher making the water level rise to a reachable point so that he could drink from it.  That crows ability to think on its feet made it so that he could survive and satisfy his thirst.

Now what does that fable have to do with Nazi officials like Adolf Eichmann and Josef Mengele?  Well, if you think about it, you can draw a parallel from the crow and the pitcher to the Nazis and their "Rat Line".  The Nazis knew that they needed to escape persecution from the allied forces in order to facilitate their personal survival much the like the crow needed to drink from the pitcher of water in order to quench its thirst.  The Nazi war criminals are really no different than the Crow in the fable trying to survive.  They had an obstacle they needed to overcome, so they found a way to do so.  The crow dropped pebbles, the Nazis set up a "Rat Line" with the help of various actors ranging from foreign nationals to the individuals in the Roman Catholic Church.  Each asset the Nazis came up with on their so called "Nazi Trail" to freedom is the equivalent to a pebble the crow dropped in pitcher.  Therefore, because of the need to survive, the Nazis (the Crow) and the people who believed in the Nazi ideal (the Pebbles) were able to make the metaphorical water level rise in the metaphorical pitcher (the Escape) so that they could reach the water (Argentina).

To tie this into our trial,  the Grand Jury chose to indict not the Crows, but the pebbles that helped the crows.


- Jeff Zuckerman (Group 1)