On June 23, 1944, a few weeks before the Allies landed in Normandy and more than a thousand kilometers away, near Prague, preparations for an important visit were completed. For the first time the Nazi regime will consent to an inspection visit to a concentration camp. International delegates are surprised by what they see: gardens and playgrounds surrounded by tulips, a concert hall where an orchestra rehearses Verdi's Requiem, a theater designed for ballet and cabaret shows, a café restaurant, a well-stocked lodge , A school, a library ... The Jewish prisoners are apparently in good health, smile smiling from the windows, the children leave the school singing in a row of two, the mail delivers parcels and letters on time, the tables are Servings and portions are plentiful. After a four-hour visit, the head of the Red Cross delegation, Maurice Rossel, gives a detailed report, extolling the more than acceptable living conditions of the Theresienstadt prisoners, who, however, Deportation to Auschwitz and death.

Maurice Rossell himself is interviewed later by Claude Lanzmann. The content of this conversation is filmed and, detached from the initial project of Shoah, comes to constitute a new film: Someone alive happens. And, just as with Shoah, the text takes on a new dimension at the moment when, converted into a book, it is given to reading.