With these empty faces of ours, with these sheared craniums, with these shameful clothes, to take a chemical examinations. And obviously it will be in German; and we will have to go in front of some blond Aryan doktor hoping that we do not have to blow our noses, because perhaps he will not know that we do not have handkerchiefs, and it will certainly not be possible to explain it to him. And we will hardly be able to stand still on our feet. But have the Germans such great need of chemists? Or is it a new trick, a new machine "pour faire chier les Juifs"? Are they aware of the grotesque and absurd test asked of us, of us who are no longer alive, of us who have already gone half-crazy in the dreary expectation of nothing?
Primo Levi, If This Is a Man (London: Everyman's Library, 2000), p. 122
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