Night and Fog (Season 3, Episode 13)
Premise: An apparent assisted suicide by a devoted husband turns into a murder case tied to wartime collaboration in a Nazi ghetto.
- Air date
- Season/Episode
- Season 3, Episode 13
- Detectives
- Det. Lennie Briscoe (Jerry Orbach), Det. Mike Logan (Chris Noth)
- ADAs/DA
- Exec. ADA Ben Stone (Michael Moriarty), ADA Paul Robinette (Richard Brooks), DA Adam Schiff (Steven Hill)
- Guest stars
- Nehemiah Persoff as David Steinmetz, Diane Venora as Mara Feder, Eric Bogosian as Gary Lowenthal, Reizl Bozyk as Mrs. Liebmann
- Director
- Ed Sherin
- Writers
- Michael S. Chernuchin & René Balcer
Summary
The Investigation
“Night and Fog” begins when a neighbor complains about a loud television and police find Ursula Steinmetz, 70, dead with a broken nose. She had multiple sclerosis, and half of her husband’s sleeping pills are gone. Her husband, David, also a Holocaust survivor, tells the detectives he helped her take the pills because she was in pain and wanted to die. Stone charges him with second-degree manslaughter.
A judge suppresses the confession because police refused David’s request to see his daughter, Mara Feder, a social worker. The toxicology results show Ursula had not absorbed enough of the drug to die, and a bloodstained pillow suggests she was smothered. An employee at the couple’s tailor shop recalls Ursula getting upset over a Polish newspaper article about war crimes trials, including that of Jacub Skulman, a Jewish ghetto policeman in Lodz convicted in absentia. A survivor, Mrs. Liebmann, describes Skulman as a brutal sweatshop boss and says Ursula asked her about him.
The Trial
Steinmetz is arrested for murder. Records show that the prisoners who reached Auschwitz with Skulman were tattooed with numbers from 7566 to 7696, and a judge orders Steinmetz to show his: 7581. The Justice Department wants him extradited to Poland, but the judge lets the state trial go first. In court, Mrs. Liebmann testifies that Skulman sent her sick sister to Auschwitz, and Ursula’s rabbi, a therapist for survivors, says Ursula believed her husband was Skulman. Mara then testifies that her mother had been putting her affairs in order to die.
Stone confronts Mara with evidence that she lied on the stand and warns that she could be prosecuted.
Spoiler, the ending: To protect his daughter, Steinmetz pleads guilty to second-degree murder on the condition that charges against Mara are dropped and his trial record is sealed. In the plea meeting he admits he helped the Nazis as a young man. He is sent to prison for life, and the extradition effort collapses.
Why it stands out
- A judge orders the defendant to reveal his concentration camp tattoo number, treating it like a fingerprint rather than testimony.
- Federal efforts to extradite him to Poland collide with the state’s murder prosecution.
- Schiff insists the office is in the crime business, not the evil business.