In today’s parlance we call this Operations Research Modelling, a particularly complex paradigm involving quantifiable behaviour models that can be studied by doctors, and other factors which cannot, like the impact of long winters on behaviour, the stench that saps the soul and tears it apart, the boundless agonising loneliness, the squabbles between prisoners, the impact of rumours, the arrival of new prisoners which may spark new tensions or bring fresh despair, the prevailing winds; what do I know, morale is like a wisp of smoke, it takes little to send it one way or the other and eventually it fades, dissipates into madness. Only the intuition and experience of old hands in the camps made it possible to overcome these problems. All of the solutions were discovered in the camps through trial and error, never in the labs in Berlin where researchers indulged in wild speculation and secret experiments. As with most problems solutions proved more likely to present themselves in the field, rather than in sterile, artificial reconstructions designed to impress the Bonzen, to curry favour, to earn their stripes. Small-scale models are meaningless, they have no bearing on reality, revulsion is not some minor experimental variable, it is at the very heart of the Machine. In the camps, the personnel are constantly dealing with blood and shit, they risk their souls, they struggle, everything depends on keeping up staff morale, on fostering rivalry, you organise parties, competitions, fights, you disseminate false information, tell the guards the camp is about to be liberated, that there are massive new deliveries of potatoes, of bread, of pots and pans, that the camp is to be expanded, the work detail reorganised, that real showers are being installed, that libraries will be opened, that they will be able to send letters, why not? In a vacuum you can say anything, there is always someone to believe it. Then again, you can do the reverse, you can crush the spirits of the guards, deprive them of everything, thrash them, spread fear, work them day and night, beat them hollow. When they have a glimmer of hope, they become animated, they work hard, they become daring, it only takes a single spark. By lying to them, blowing hot and cold at precisely the right moment, it is possible to regulate working conditions, stamp out subversion, break up factions and, in doing so, gain time and maintain – or perhaps even improve – productivity. It is the age-old method used in drilling army conscripts: you march them around for no reason until they are exhausted, force them to muster every five minutes for no reason until they are dazed, work them from dawn till dusk for no reason until they forget even the notion of freedom, organise alerts for no reason until they are constantly unsettled, punish them for no reason until they realise their lives hang by a thread, then one morning you hound them out of their barracks for no reason and send them off to die somewhere else. The only difference is that, in the camps, work is death, punishment is death, cruelty is death, kindness is death, time off is death, recreation is death, rations are death, alerts are death and redundancy is summary execution. A man who dies at a yes or a no. The safest strategy, obviously, is to weed out old hands before they become inured, before they infect the new recruits. The problem with this approach is that it is the old hands, the veterans, who maintain productivity, new recruits are too terrified to work efficiently. Fear spreads and in a twinkling fear turns to panic. This, too, presents a difficult operational problem, a balance needs to be struck so that the system runs efficiently, constantly, without excessive risk. Let us not forget that the purpose of the camps is extermination, and although everyone knows this, no one says it or even thinks it – neither the prisoners, who need to cling to hope, nor their executioners who think only of productivity – everyone behaves as though death were simply one particularly harsh punishment in the disciplinary arsenal, it is this which makes their working relationships exceptionally complex.