"Fate has appointed me to play a specific role in the life of one of the rare individuals who, after the Great War, was to cause tremendous changes and unimaginable passions in Europe. Several times later, I wondered what drove me that autumn of 1918 to get involved in that affair, whether it was curiosity, the main quality of a researcher dealing with medical science, or a kind of omnipotence, the desire to define things for once myself."

This is how the last novel of the Austrian doctor and writer Ernst Weiss begins, for which he would write from Paris, where he was in exile, to a similarly exiled friend of his in the USA in August 1939: "It is, as I have probably already told you, a novel with doctors (of Psychiatry), in which Hitler plays a role; he is not the protagonist, but in a way revolves around him. I hardly think a publishing house here or in the Netherlands will have the courage to publish something like this."

"The Eyewitness" was first published in 1963, twenty-three years after the death of its author, causing a great sensation due to Ernst Weiss' penetrating insight into human nature and the phenomenon of the birth, rise, and triumph of Nazism. Eighty almost years after the writing of "The Eyewitness," it unfortunately seems more relevant than ever.