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Chapter 3 "You are under arrest!" On the morning of February 4, 1941, at around half past eight, I went to holy mass in the cathedral.1 As I entered through the vestibule, I saw three men standing under the giant figure of Christopher and conspicuously inspecting me. Apparently they were not in the cathedral to worship. All of their mannerisms were too peculiar. They also weren't the kind of nonCatholics who want to visit a church because they are interested in art. If I am not mistaken, one of them even had his hat still on his head. I thought immediately: those are people from the Gestapo; I knew that type well enough. In the course of the past years I had often come into contact with them through my editorial work. Sometimes they scared us and disrupted and impeded our work, without ever finding whatever it was they were searching us for. I listened to the rest of the holy mass, and by the time I left the church I had already forgotten these men entirely. When I went back to my apartment afterward (I had picked up the skim milk I was entitled to at the little store across the street and had just closed the door of the building), the doorbell rang. I stood with the milk can in my arm in the entrance hall of the building and opened the door. How horrified I was to see these three men from the cathedral in front of me. I immediately understood everything that was to happen to me. "Fraulein Herbermann?" "Yes, please, what do you want?" "Geheime Staatspolizei!" One of them showed his identification. "Lead us to your apartment! What we want from you cannot be accomplished in passing on the doorstep." I led the three terriblefiguresdown into an official, little-used room. But the room did not satisfy them. "We want to go to your living and working quarters!" 1. Miinster Cathedral was the seat of Bishop von Galen, one of the most outspoken Catholic clergy against the Third Reich. 66 The Blessed Abyss It set my teeth on edge. The blood drained from my head; my heart seemed to stand still. I could hardly take another step. I set down my milk can and had to take them up to my beautiful, large work room. I had hardly opened the door when one ofthe three rushed to the desk, pulled the desk drawer out, sat down in a low rocking chair, the drawer on his knee, and there, comfortably rocking, read every piece of writing the drawer contained. The second man rummaged through the side compartments of the desk, while the third set about turning everything on its head in the adjoining bedroom. I asked what the meaning of this was and what exactly they were searching for in my apartment. "Just wait and see!" was the short reply. My telephone rang. I went to pick up the receiver. Then the oldest of them approached me brusquely and made things clear to me: "You may no longer use the telephone! You are under arrest!" He pulled the plug out of the contact so that it couldn't ring any more. It took me a while to come to my senses. The horrifying realization was awful: Now you are no longer a free person! From now on you will find yourself in the claws of the sinister Gestapo. Until noon, and thus for manyhours, my apartment was ransacked. Manuscripts, documents, letters, and booksflewabout in wild confusion and lay in all corners; clothes and laundry cupboards were cleared out, and even the kitchen and adjoining side room were not spared. On the kitchen table lay a bag with five unrationed eggs I had received as a gift the day before. The Gestapo pressed me to tell them from whom I had gotten these unrationed eggs. I replied that they would never hear it from me. It went the same way with a few packets of soap powder, for which I had honestly saved. Here, too, they wanted to know how I had come to possess this small reserve. It was all so ridiculous and looked manifestly like a dirty trick. I pointed this out to them as well: since they hadn't found anything among my papers that could somehow incriminate me, they obviously desperately wanted to find something in this other way. Finally I was commanded to pack up some nightclothes and toiletries . My...

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