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Chapter 5 The police prison The police prison in Miinster lay underground. It was a sinister, dirty dungeon, which stank horribly of unkempt bodies, dirty clothing, and the perspiration of sleep. We entered the room in which the sergeants ofthe municipal police sat. After the Gestapo people had whispered with them and taken their leave with "Heil Hitler until tomorrow morning," I was asked in a respectable way to give up myjewelry, rings, and watch, as well as my wallet, and, from my cosmetics bag, the scissors and nailfile.After myhandbaghad been searched, I was handed over to the prison guard, accompanied bythe sympathetic looks of the policemen. Out of pure exhaustion I had leaned on a wall and could hardly take another step. "Come," the old guard said to me in a friendly manner, while he reached for a giant set of keys—oh, this key ring with all the keys to the single cells, how often it scared and tormented me in the following months, and never, never, will I rid my ears of the memory of its sinister clanging! "Come with me!" I followed him down the long corridor through the stifling halflight of the dungeon. I saw the many heavy cell doors.. . . Oh, God, what heartfelt suffering must be hidden behind them! My attendant stopped before one of the doors and commanded me to step inside. Then I began to cry for the first time on this fateful day, thick, redeeming tears, which I could no longer hold back. Because of the many tears, I saw nothing in the darkness, which was sparingly lit by a dull lamp; I just stood there and sobbed. Finally I sank down onto a stool, my hands on the table, my head on my hands, and cried and cried . . . The guard came and asked me, "Have you eaten anything today?" No, only now did it occur to me that I had had absolutely nothing since the evening before. Even so, I couldn't have eaten anything, though I did ask urgently for water. The warden brought me cold water in an old enamel cup with a bona fide ring of grime around it. I was truly disgusted, but I 71 The Blessed Abyss overcame this, and drank the entire cupful in one gulp. How much good that did me! The concerned guard had also brought me a thick piece of bread with a blotch of jam in the middle. But I refused it thankfully. He, however, refused to take it back and said that I needed to keep up my energy, then I would certainly get out again soon: a woman like me did not belong in prison. How thankful I was to him for these words. Then he left me, shaking his head. All of a sudden, though I had thought I was alone in the cell, a raw female voice asked: "Did you have relations with a Pole, too?" I gave a start. On a cot in the corner lay a totally filthy, fully clothed female. I stared at her shyly and curiously, and unintentionally retreated further into the opposite corner of the cell. "No," I said, for I had to make some kind of an answer, "I didn't have relations with any Pole. Please don't ask me anything, just go back to sleep." "But give me the piece of bread if you're not going to eat it!" No, I wasn't going to eat it andwas glad to give it to her. Now she was content, and she greedily devoured the thick piece of bread and snored the whole night through. How was it possible to sleep in a prison? I, too, later learned to do it, just as I slowly adjusted to the informal address of my fellow prisoners as well. The warden came back and was happy that I had "eaten" the bread, as he said—and I was happy to let him think so. Then he told me to pick one of the three empty cots to sleep on. They were stacked one cot on top of the other. Now I looked around the cell with critical eyes for the first time and saw that on all the cots the bedsheets were no longer white but gray, indeed that the bedsheets stank of dirt, so that I was almost ill when I pulled back the top blanket. I was supposed to sleep here? Not like this! I asked for clean bedclothes...

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