 In this way, the play's central lesson is how the Nazis were able to perpetrate the Holocaust, how they were able to get away with it for so long.The café proprietor Ferrand notably does nothing to intervene on behalf of his friend the Waiter with the interrogators.The main confrontation in the second half is between Leduc and the Major, a disabled veteran of the German Army, as Leduc tries to persuade the Major to let them go free.