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Chapter 7 In the court prison While the head guard of the women's division of the court prison was still dealing in whispers with the Gestapo, I leaned back a little against the wall and observed the woman who would now be guarding over me in prison. She had good, shining eyes, which I immediately and thankfully noticed. After the Gestapo had left, I had to follow her up the half-dark stairs. There is something peculiar about this cold half-darkness in each and every prison. It is really there only to increase the lonely horror in which the inmate lives. But I saw from the blooming flowers in the corridor of the second floor of this clean prison that at least a good heart held sway here, and that filled me with some level ofcomfort. It had nowbecome verylonesome and loveless all around me. I suffered inexpressibly. And when the head guard R. led me to my new lonesome cell #71, after she, too, had taken away myjewelry, watch, handbag, all sharp objects, coat, and hat, all the horror and suffering stood there before me so insurmountably that I could have despaired. I begged for strength and tenacity, for a sign from above, just a very small sign, that at least my God was with me. I thought of Christ's hours on Mount Olive and of his most unsettling of all proclamations: "My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?" Worn down, unconsoled, indescribably sad, I paced back and forth in my cell on this evening, again and again, back and forth. . . . The tears I had held back the whole day now poured forth again plentifully. My last energy went into this. But at certain times weakness can even turn into immense strength. Such moments are profound turning points for human beings. I now stood at such a point. On this evening, in this cell, this fact became very clear to me. I grew more calm. Now, for the first time, I began to look around in my cell, where for five months I would endure great suffering alone with the Lord God and my guardian angel, but where I would also learn and come to understand a great deal.. . . There was a narrow but clean prison bed covered in blue and white, a pillow filled with straw, a small closet with a brightly polished 79 The Blessed Abyss zinc key, a water glass, a blue towel, then a stool with a back and a very small table. Here, too, the unavoidable bucket stood in the corner, but this one was scrubbed clean, though only with a half-lid on top. The walls were gray—oh, so hopelessly gray—and up above on the front side was a barred window the size of about eighty square centimeters. It was too high: even if I stood on the stool I saw nothing more than the roof of the large court building. But if I pulled myself up on the bars, which I later did frequently, I could see down into the small prison courtyard and beyond the high walls to the back entrance of the court building. In the thick cell door I noticed the peephole, which I had seen already in the police prison, through which the inmate could be observed from the hallway. This cell was approximately four paces long and very narrow. After I had carefully looked around my accommodations, I crept back into myself, and the great bleakness of my situation began to torment me again. Oh, all the grief one feels cannot be expressed! How hotly and acutely a human heart can rebel. And then the powerlessness and great hopelessness, the speechless staring at the dungeon walls.. . . Buried alive! At times there was no glimmer of hope left in me. The deepest darkness surrounded me during the long, often completely sleepless nights. Oh, howl would have liked to hammer with balled fists against this door, force it open, how I could have screamed, unrestrainedly and wildly, as other prisoners in neighboring cells did at times, throwing true tantrums. Yes, the nights were long, endlessly long. Even today I can see the window bars creeping slowly over the gray floor in the moonshine. Then I often got up, stood on the stool or pulled myself up on the bars, and observed the endless starry skies and my quiet, beloved hometown, which slept under their protection; I saw the towers of the churches...

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