Arbeit macht frei: - Fredrick Töben

I smiled at him. ‘Thanks for that, Sir, but I’ve lived with constant pain in my
legs for over 40 years. A little more or less doesn’t bother me’. I smiled
again and give him that good old Australian eye wink as I march back to my
cell where the inspection is not good. Dust is found on the floor.
‘See that on my finger?’.
‘Yes, Sir!’. This time it has no consequences
The next day, Thursday, two things happen. As I stood outside the cell
waiting to be called in to receive the inspection report, the guard fellow who
called me ‘Nazi scum’ kept his bulging eyes glued to me. I expected him to
say something to me, but he remained silent while continuing to stare at
me. Funny fellow, I thought. I was called into the cell. I stood to attention
against the table and the four men crowded around me again. Then the
bearded fellow with bulging eyes shouts at me, ‘You eyeballed me outside
the door! If you do that again I’ll knock you through the wall’.
I could see the other three officers falling back and I sensed that what was
about to happen was not scripted. I reply: ‘What do you mean?’.
‘You stared at me!’.
‘You looked at me and I was taught to be polite and looked back. What do
you expect me to do?’.
‘Look down!’.
‘But that’s rude’.
Another officer comes to the rescue and begins with the cell inspection
report. A tiny black hair is found at the top end of the concrete bed base,
between the mattress and wall, and a spot is found on the washbasin.
‘See this hair?’.
‘Can’t be, can’t be …’, I softly protest.
‘Are you telling me I planted that hair?’.
‘No, Sir – no Sir!’.
But we both knew that I knew he knew I knew – the triple contingency at its
best. Why the cell was not inspected with me present is now clear to me.
This was one reason that as a teacher I would always try to do mark essays
with the student present; and if that was not practicable, then at least be
there to justify my marking system to anyone who contested it.
Friday morning an officer finds some dust near the one, cold, water tap in
the basin. As I re-enter the cell the officer comments, ‘You’ve done a very
good job but you missed some little sprinkle of dust, most likely from the
cloth used to put on the polish’.
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