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150 D Chapter Forty-Two d aftermath A month after my father’s disappearance,Wipper summoned me to his office,an invitation I felt I was in no position to decline.As if nothing had happened, he told me that my father was being held at Lehrterstrasse Prison in the heart of Berlin. He regretted to inform me that, not having confessed and consequently with the date of his trial not yet determined, my father was being kept in strict isolation,and we could not write to him or see him.However , we would receive permission to bring him a package with provisions once a month. Examining the carefully groomed fingernails of his fat white hands and letting his fishy eyes wander from the ceiling to the courtyard, he added in a plaintive tone that he sincerely hoped my father would come to his senses and admit his complicity, the sooner the better, and certainly for his own good! For his own good? I shuddered, imagining just what they might do to him to force such a confession. Feeling a sudden urge to wring the man’s neck, I realized that, in order to free my father ,I would be capable of committing cold-blooded murder,starting with this soft-spoken, well-fed, well-mannered, slimy monster across the desk from me, who had once tactfully left the room before the SS brute beat me up. This time, I did not return home with a black and blue face, but with something unique as well as valuable. During our polite “conversation,” or rather his monologue, Wipper had been called away to take a telephone call in the adjacent office.His absence gave me the chance to swiftly steal some of the official stationary neatly piled on his desk,all with the letterhead Reichsführer -SS—Geheime Staatspolizei, adorned with a couple of imposing red and green stamps. I stuffed several sheets into my purse,in the correct assumption that I would be not be frisked on my way out.Very soon I was able to put my loot to good use. Two weeks later, my mother and I received permission to bring a package of provisions to Lehrterstrasse Prison. We took a woolen sweater, some underwear, and a blanket, as well as bread and other perishable goods that we had been able to purchase on the flourishing black market, where the price of a pound of butter was set at three hundred and a pound of coffee at five hundred reichsmarks. By far the most precious item was hot coffee in a thermos bottle. We somehow made our way through the mountain of rubble that had once been the city of Berlin in the record time of three hours. Once inside the gate of the dismally forbidding building, we received a stern warning by an SS guard not to dare use the“Hitler salute,”of which we, kin of traitors, were considered unworthy. Since we had al- Destruction unlimiteD 151 ways avoided the ridiculous wing beating, as my mother called it, this news did not exactly crush us. A young man in the gray uniform of the Waffen-SS led us through endless dimly lit hallways and told us to wait our turn on one of the benches. Soon we realized we were not alone. We recognized several of the women, waiting to deliver their precious goods, although none of us dared to betray a glance of recognition. The air in the corridors was stifling, heavy with the pungent smell of a cheap disinfectant ,of fear,of blood,and of naked horror.Black-clad SS men dragged prisoners by,returning them to their cells after an interrogation, some of the victims literally hanging between their tormentors. These spectacles were obviously staged with the purpose of scaring us, who knew all too well about practices in the torture chambers of Gestapo headquarters and elsewhere.At the end of the dark corridor was a cubicle with a small window, from which a uniformed SS man called out a name,whereupon a woman took her bag to him for inspection . At his sight, my mother whispered,“Just look at him, a regular Satan!” When it was our turn, we approached the window, in which the dark-haired official with the emblems of an Unterscharführer (Junior Squad Leader),a sharp nose,piercing eyes, and a pinched mouth examined the contents of our package. We had been told by others that dropping thermos bottles...

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