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Chapter 48 The Gestapo yet again During my release, I had been told by the political division of the concentration camp that I was to register with the Geheime Staatspolizei immediately upon my arrival in Minister. So on March 22,1943, according to this order, I made my last, difficult journey to Gutenbergstrafie, to the building in which I had been subjected to so many terrifying interrogations and had lived through so many hours of torment. Downstairs at the porter's, I had to sign my name and indicate to whom I wished to speak and what matter it concerned. Then the exact minute of my arrival was noted down and afterward the exact minute of my departure. How careful these gentlemen and underlings of Himmler were at that time, how uncertain of themselves they must have been, if they felt the need to meet their orders with such exactness! I climbed up the many steps and knocked on the door of the room that was so well known to me. When I entered, Herr Dehm called out to me: "Here's our Nanda, back again!" I was astonished by this impudence and answered icily: "To you I am not 'Nanda,' but Traulein Herbermann' as usual!" Then he wanted to know why I was being so cold, since I was, after all, free again. "Oh," I said, "don't you remember, Herr Dehm, how you in particular told me during the last interrogation, that, after all these interrogations, which you had spent so much precious time on, you were none the wiser than on the first day? And that I then replied to you thatyou could neverget anywiser through me, even if you interrogated me and locked me up for a hundred years, that I would never play the informer! Perhaps you no longer know how you answered me, but I have not forgotten it in any case: 'You'll be put where you belong. I'll take care of that!' And you certainly 'took care' of that." The conversation went back and forth on that morning. They even dared to ask me questions about the organization and procedures in the concentration camp, which was probably meant to be a trap. But I remained silent. If anyone in Germany was completely in the know as far as concentration camps, then it was the gentlemen of the Gestapo and SS, and 240 The Blessed Abyss of course those people who had themselves suffered and lived in need in the concentration camps. The large majority of others knew and heard hardly anything more detailed about it. Various officials and employees came in, probably out of pure curiosity to see a released inmate for once. And it was on this day, too, that they told me that the warrant for my arrest had said: "Until one year after the end of the war." At the very end, when I was all ready to go, an SS senior storm trooper came in and greeted me in the most friendly manner, although I had never seen him before. He said, clapping me on the shoulder (and I winced under this touch), "We could really use a woman like you here. What do you think about that? You know the bishop and all the priests here!" Aha, the friendliness was for this reason! Now I was supposed to play the spy for them in addition! He urged me to leave the Church, to leave "all that confessional junk" behind me, then I would be a "made woman." I could not grasp the fact that they would dare to make such an offer to me, of whom they knew well enough that I would never be disloyal to myflag.At the same moment I said goodbye with the words: "I went to the camp Catholic, and I came out even more Catholic." I could no longer breathe in there. 241 ...

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