Low Numbers Will Be Excluded

Low Numbers Will Be Excluded

It was that shame we knew so well, that shame that drowned us after the selections, and every time we had to watch, or submit to, some outrage; the shame the Germans did not know, that the just man experiences at another man’s crime. I meet my brief for the first time twenty minutes before. In my best suit, shoes shined, anger shining through at being accused of violence. Maybe I was guilty of foolishness. maybe you could charge me with naivety; That the charge did not relate to my crimes and the officers bringing it are smirking like schoolboys adds to the light of fury: regardless of the punishment. Two months ago, I stopped feeling happy at the death of police officers; anger does not always need to end in vengeance. Though I sink past the status of musselman and occasionally meet myself on the way back that urge to build a lorry bomb and prove my pain exists has eased into the background, behind my need to heal. And here is the laugh that occasionally keeps me awake; up on the bench were three middle class ladies; a florist, a housewife and Mrs Slocomb. And into the witness stand steps a succession of policemen repeating the two same mistakes, cooked up in the canteen, and then there is me; behind bombproof glass. All the musselmans who finished in the gas chambers have the same story, or more exactly, have no story; they followed the slope down to the bottom, like streams that run down to the sea. On their entry into the camp, through basic incapacity, or by misfortune, or through some banal incident, they are overcome… I have PTSD, or I did until a doctor said my panic attacks were paranoia. Though the years of unemployment, failed relationships, running, and hiding would suggest she might be wrong. I know to keep away from doctors. I know that the powerlessness will increase with the drugs. Instead the timber of my body absorbs the seas of sorrow and because from the deep I still see the sun, that I can be seen. And you are right to turn away and not look. For though I have the appearance of humanity you are not looking on a man. Rather, you see something twisted by callous disregard: a product of newspaper headlines calling for a tough approach, the product of police discipline being in the hands of the threat to strike. There is nothing surprising about these mistakes; the examination is too quick and summary, and in any case, the important thing about the Lager is not that the most useless prisoners be eliminated, but that free posts be quickly created, according to a certain percentage previously fixed. Primo Levi, If This is a Man, The Truce