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Chapter21 Block elder over four hundred prostitutes . . We are not as children, who naively play, by this cold age our hot mouths have been shut. . . Against our love we have been chafed and cut and are discarded before we gratify. . . The current block elder in Block II was generally called "brothel mother" by the prostitutes. And so I had the "great honor," after a few months' work as barracks elder, of being promoted by the administration of the camp to mother of the prostitutes. I dont know what I would have given to have avoided this post. I was not the robust person who unquestionably belonged in such a post. I took everything too seriously, too conscientiously, and I suffered from the threats and vulgarities and betrayals of the inmates among one another. How often I was advised to find myself a thicker skin, but, despite every effort, I did not succeed in this. What can one do if one is simply made a certain way? When Sascha, our previous block elder, was gone, I stayed behind, alone among almost four hundred prostitutes and asocials, spiritually and intellectually lonesome. Since Sascha, with whom I had on occasion been able to pursue a bit of intellectual exchange late at night, was no longer there, I longed doubly as much to be able to read a good book once again. Having to do entirely without any reading material is not easy for someone who for manylongyears has had almost solelyto do withbooks. The inmates ofBlock II did not feel this way. But for an inmate with intellectual interests, this torment existed in addition to the mental and physical torments. Admittedly, however, the average inmate had no inkling of this. Only someone who has 134 The Blessed Abyss experienced the same thing can really completely understand what it means to have to renounce every intellectual occupation, all intellectual needs, in such a hell. It had become winter, the bitter cold winter of the year 1941-42. Our barracks was iced over, inside and out. If everything had not been so completely horrible, one could have found this block house, completely covered in snow and ice, surrounded by snow meters high, to be quite enchanting. Oh yes, if only. . . . A deep sadness and despair settled in my soul during this winter. I was not permitted to think. The grim cold did its bit as well. To starve and to freeze was our parole. I had long since lost the ability to cry. At some point even the tears stop. Poor, sorrowful life! My prostitutes could not be tamed. I was hoarse from screaming. It was a torment to have to set up three to four hundred inmates of this kind in rank and file for roll call at the crack of dawn, in complete darkness, and twice a day to boot. I lived from the most extreme expenditure of strength, from an energy which said to me again and again: You must endure! I still wanted to go home again some day, to my hometown—as long as I didn't "croak" in the camp! I defended myself against every sickness, and it remains inconceivable to me, to this day, what unbelievable things even aweakperson is in the condition to bear. A strong, untamed faith held me up. The words of Paul often went through my head: "I have the power of Him, who gives me strength!" How visible God's grace was with me, how it held me up again and again; for this I can never thank heaven enough. I knew that everyone at home was praying and offering up sacrifices for me, and the consciousness of this bore me up. I was and remained safe in God's love and in the loyalty and prayers of my relatives and friends, and knew them all to be deeply connected to me in my great suffering. So I lived on with my prostitutes, watching over them and working for them, being good to them as much as I was able. There were great differences among them, though they adhered to the same depravity almost without exception. A small number of inmates in this block had been delivered to the concentration camp as asocials because of a refusal to work. In manner, disposition, and conduct they were all quite different again. There is one kind who finds her fate hard to bear, who slowly extinguishes like the light of a candle. And the other...

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