[Night of the Aurochs] is a hodgepodge of a book, incorporating 10 consecutive, completed chapters, an outline of the rest of the plot, together with random scenes, notes, and oddments of every description, including several letters pertaining to the project. (pp. 45-6)

Here was a novel that, if completed, would be different not only from anything Trumbo had ever done, but also (as far as I knew) different from anything any writer, European or American, had ever attempted—the Holocaust from the point of view of a Nazi….

Had Trumbo ever gotten to the Auschwitz chapters of the book, Grieben's powers of rhetorical rationalization would have been sorely taxed—particularly since they would have contained the episode that brought him the greatest sense of personal pain and shame: the story of his programmatic violation and degradation of Liesel, an inmate whom he had loved in his fashion. Night of...