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CHAPTER II

COLUMBIA

MY position was growing precarious. For a week now I had been noting various signs which convinced me that the street was under surveillance. A stocky individual, recognizable twenty yards off as a plain-clothes bull, kept bobbing up. One morning I caught sight of him as he was leaving the superintendent's apartment, another time as he stood deep in conversation with the porter of the house next door.

I made up my mind to quit the place as soon as I could get a new address to my contact man with the subdistrict bureau. Meantime I redoubled my precautions.

On July 17, at five-thirty in the morning, the doorbell rang. I rose noiselessly and set fire to the letters lying ready in the bedroom stove.

A knock sounded at the door. "Open up!"

I stood motionless. The knocking grew louder.

"Open up! It's the police!" I waited till the flame had died down and the glow was extinguished. Then I opened my bedroom door and called sleepily, "What's wrong?"

"Open the door! Secret police!"

I cast another glance about the apartment. Everything in order. Then I went to the outer door and unlocked it. There stood a solitary detective.

"Herr Billinger?"

"Yes."

"May I speak to you for a moment?"

"Certainly."

He stepped into the entry and faced about. From the shadows of the staircase, where he had been hiding, a second man emerged.

I had imagined the scene of my arrest a hundred times over, wondering how I should come through it. Now everything was quite simple.

"You used to live in -- Street?"

"Yes."

"You were last employed by the firm of -- ?"

"Yes."

"That's right, then. Kindly hand over to us all material connected with your illegal Party work."

I feigned blank astonishment. "What do you mean?"

"Better not make any trouble. We know all about you. You've continued to do underground work for the Communist Party, and you're in possession of certain forbidden material."

"I know nothing of any underground work and I have no forbidden material. You can look for your selves."

For two hours they ransacked the apartment-nosed through my books, unscrewed the toilet seat, sifted the ashes of the kitchen stove, emptied the garbage can, poured a bag of salt into a pot. One of them actually ferreted out of the kitchen closet a list of names, coded as a milk bill, of people enrolled for a course in Communism. I watched the proceedings indifferently, though I had nothing to do with all this.

The fruitless search ended, they ordered me to ac company them-where, they didn't say. One on either side of me, each with a hand in his coat pocket, they steered me to the subway.

The car was packed with petty tradespeople, laborers, uniformed Storm Troopers. No one noticed that I was a prisoner between two detectives. I considered the possibility of flight. The crowded train would have been in my favor, preventing my captors from shooting. But there were too many volunteer helpers about, ready to rush to their aid. And I knew too well what lay in store for me if I should be recaptured.

We left the train at Potsdamer Platz. That meant tbe Gestapa ¹ then--in Prinz Albrechtstrasse. The neighborhood of the building was alive with detectives, SS-men and police. The plain-clothes men were careful to betray their calling by no outward sign. They didn't even wear swastikas on their coat lapels, and, when they met on the street, greeted each other by lifting the hands at their sides in a barely perceptible salute.

A double guard was stationed outside the building, and an SS sentry posted on every floor within. My escort led me up the broad staircase, higher and higher, till we were directly under the roof. There they pushed me into a corner and ordered me to wait.

I took advantage of the time to rehearse once more the details of strategy in the scene to come. I went over in my mind the questions I might be asked, the answers I should make, what I might say without implicating comrades or harming the party. I still had in my watch the address of a sympathizer, with whom I bad been talking the evening before. I tore it up and swallowed the pieces. So far, so good. Only the thought of a still uncoded list of I80 Kampfbund comrades which I had hidden in my apartment plagued me.

Half an hour later one of the detectives returned, made several fruitless telephone calls for a typist, and finally sat down at the machine himself.

"Once more I warn you to tell the whole truth. We've been watching you for four months. Here are the documents in your case."

He pointed to a thick portfolio lying in front of him.

"You're a Communist?"

"I was a member of the Communist Party of Germany."

"How long?"

"Since 1923."

His forefinger picked out the letters laboriously, one by one.

"You deny, then, that you belong to the underground Communist Party?"

"I do."

"What were your functions in the Party?"

"No special functions. I wasn't fitted for organizational enterprises and confined myself to theoretical work."

"Did you speak at meetings?"

I remembered two meetings at which the police had taken my name. "Twice, from the floor in a general discussion."

"You've been in Russia?"

"Yes." (My passport had a Soviet visa.)

"What were you doing there?"

"Working in the Leningrad electric plant."

"You worked for the Russian munitions industry, too.

"I did not."

"You took part in the collectivization of the German peasants on the Volga."

"I did not. I was not, as a matter of fact, even in the Volga region."

"You're on friendly terms with a Bulgarian student connected with the three Bulgarian scoundrels who set fire to the Reichstag?"

"I don't know any Bulgarian students."

The forefinger typed on.

"Empty your pockets."

I obeyed; He went through my letter case and read my mother's letters which I carried with me.

"Aha--so you've been planning to return to Russia."

"No."

"I beg your pardon!" Triumphantly he handed me a letter in wbich my mother begged me to come and see her before I went to Russia. The letter had been written in I93, I and, luckily for me, was dated.

"What unit did you work with?"

"Former unit No. 2026."

"Who was the unit organizer?"

"A man named Rudolf."

"You refuse to give us his last name?"

"I don't know it. The functionaries of our unit were all changed in January, and the Party's instructions were that comrades should be called by their first names only."

"Where is he now?"

"I saw him last in January, 1933. I don't know where he lives."

He eyed me derisively. "Your memory's going to be considerably improved while you're here with us. Come with me."

He led me down stairs and along corridors till we reached a door marked: "SS GUARD."

"Wait in there," he ordered, and pushed me inside.

I found myself standing in a room large enough for meeting hall. Some SS guards sat around a table opposite the door, playing cards and drinking beer. They ignored me. Revolvers and blackjacks were heaped on the table. Straw-palleted cots stood along the wall at the left.

As I glanced to the right, my heart leaped to my throat. Their backs to the room, a line of about thirty prisoners stood facing the wall. An SS guard, under twenty, paced back and forth behind them.

"Can't you stand still, you --, when you're told to stand still?" he bellowed at an old man, kicking him with all his might in the back. The old man's head crashed against the wall. He fell to the floor. The trooper promptly seized him by the back of the neck, pulled him up and punched him in the face. "You weren't too old for the Commune, were you, you dirty dog?"

The old man made no answer. The others stood like stone images.

"What are you standing there for, you blockhead?" he shouted suddenly at me. "Come over here and don't budge from the spot."

Behind us we could hear the card-playing troopers thumping on the table. Messengers came and went. Guards were relieved and flung themselves down on the cots. The telephone rang incessantly. Every telephone conversation began and ended with "Heil Hitler!"- even if it was only an order for more beer. Fresh prisoners were brought in a never-ending stream. Most of them entered silently; a few clicked their heels, flung up their arms and tried their luck with "Heil Hitlerl" No one answered them.

The second man to my right began gasping softly. I tried to get a glimpse of him without moving my head. He was a sturdy fellow of twenty-five or so--a worker, to judge by his clothing--and his face was livid green. A few minutes later he started swaying, then suddenly collapsed. Our guard was just then talking to the card players and did not notice the incident. A trooper who entered the room at that moment caught sight of the man lying on the floor.

"Think you can get a good day's rest here, do you, you son of a bitch?"

He seized the man on the floor, pulled him to his knees, and struck him a terrific blow in the face. Blood spurted from the man's mouth and nose. Our guard rose from the card table and came over. "You're drunk, you bastard," he said. The two guards kicked the groaning man in the stomach, back, and face. Dragging himself to his feet, the man tried to stand up. His head drooped, his legs refused to support him. To keep himself from collapsing again, he dug his fingernails into the plastered wall. You could hear the nails crunch and break off as he dropped again like a sack to the floor.

Toward noon we heard a commotion in the corridor outside - loud talking, shouting, running back and forth. Finally the door burst open to admit a number of Black Shirts.

"Here's the bastard who rode with the driver.

From the confusion of questions and answers it w~ possible to glean the information that a truckload of illegal literature had been seized by the Secret Police.

"Damn it all, I know that fellow! You've been here before, haven't you?"

"Yes, sir," came the reply in a clear, boyish voice.

"What were you arrested for the first time?"

"I was accused of distributing pamphlets."

"And this time?"

"I was standing at the corner of Muller- and Seestrasse, and a chauffeur offered me five marks to help him drive his load."

"Never mind the fairy tales. You knew perfectly well what was in those boxes."

"No, he didn't tell me a thing. And I didn't ask any questions, either. I was glad enough to earn the money."

"Now look here, my boy, what did you do it for?" It was the voice of an older trooper speaking. "Now they won't believe what you told them before, either. You're done for now."

"I've been unemployed since I left school. They wouldn't accept me for the labor camps because I'm a Communist. What am I supposed to do?"

One of the troopers in the group surrounding him replied with a blow that knocked the boy to the floor. "Leave him alone, Max," said the older man quietly, apparently unable to suppress his pity.

The pamphlets were passed from hand to hand. A trooper started reading aloud from one of them:

ENEMY PLANES OVER BERLIN

DR. JOSEPH GOEBBELS

"What a bunch of bastards!" another cried. "Just turn the page."

The first man gasped as he went on reading:

THE BRUTAL SLAUGHTER OF REICHSBANNER AND

RED FRONT LEAGUE COMRADES IN NOWAWES BY

HITLER'S BROWN MURDER-HORDES

Party of Germany

In a fresh access of rage they began again to beat the boy, from whose lips not a sound broke.

We continued to stand at rigid attention until seven that evening, chins in, heels together, eyes fixed on the white-plastered wall. To prevent dizziness I picked out a small black spot on the wall in front of me on which I focused my attention. Standing thus, unable to see what went on behind us, we were nevertheless being familiarized with the first educational measures practiced by the Third Reich on our unfortunate comrades.

At seven one of our torturers snarled, "Company, about-face! Right-face! Forward-march!"

We were led through a long corridor into an inner court, and marched at double quick time into a number of police trucks that stood waiting for us. The Green Minna ² was closed, and the trucks rumbled off. A small barred window at one side admitted a narrow ray of light, and I watched the street signs rushing by us in an effort to discover our destination. It was not until we were halted by traffic for a moment that I was able to get my bearings. I found that we were at the Halle Gate, headed south-which meant that they were taking us either to General-Pape-Strasse or to the Columbia House. After a drive of half an hour or so the column halted. A sign outside our little window bore the name Columbiastrasse.

We were at the Tempelhof Flying Field, facing the building which had once been a notorious military prison but had since been talken over by the Black Shirts as one of their various torture chambers. The door of our truck was flung open.

"Get out!"

Driven by kicks and blows, we were herded into the corridor of the first floor and ordered to fall into line. One by one each of the prisoners was led into a room whose door promptly closed behind him. While the rest of us waited outside, the SS-men entertained each other for our benefit with vivid descriptions of what lay in store for us. I watched the line in front of me growing smaller and smaller.

"Next!" The two men pushed me into the room. I saw an SS guard sitting at a table. Other guards surrounded us. The guard at the table wrote down my name, age, and so on. Then he ordered me to hand over my hat, coat, watch, handkerchiefs, fountain pen, pocketknife, belt, and shoelaces. The articles were checked off on a printed form and stuffed into a paper bag. I was be ginning to nurse the silent hope that I had cleared my first hurdle. The man at the desk was looking through some papers.

"So you can't remember the name of your unit organizer," he said, smiling pleasantly. Then without warning he bellowed like a bull, "Trying to put some thing over on us, are you, you horse's ass? Who was he?"

I could feel all my physical fear melting away. I was conscious only of the working of my brain as it registered the blows that cracked down on me. They picked me up from the floor. "We'll have another talk tomorrow," the man at the table said genially. "You'll tell us everything, my friend. Again the smile became a bellow. "Get out, you bastard!" I was hurled out of the room.

"Next!"

We were kept waiting in another corridor till all that day's prisoners had been dispatched. The guards on patrol talked in loud voices.

"Is that son of a bitch in sixty-two alive yet?"

"They just took him to the State Hospital."

"And Barricade Fritz?"

"Sick with the clap. Has to get injections all the time."

"What are you doing tonight?"

"My girl's calling for me. My nuts are hot. I haven't been out in three days."

One of the guards halted in front of a prisoner.

"What are you here for?"

' I don't know."

"Jew?"

"Yes."

"And you don't know what you're here for, you Assyrian son of the desert? Wait-I'll pay you a special call tonight."

It was late at night before we were led to our cells. The guards took advantage of the opportunity to wallop us again. Those in the rear kicked us with their heavy boots so that we surged forward. Those in front beat us back with their fists and leather whips.

In a long bare wing of the building, the jailer opened door after door.

"No. 876."

"Here." The door slammed shut.

"No. 877."

"Here."

"No. 878."

"No. 879."

"No. 880."

Locked in my cell, I heard the numbers being called--to 900 and beyond. The tread of the sentry sounded at irregular intervals in the corridor outside.

I groped my way about in the darkness. Four steps from the door to the back wall, two and a half steps across. A wooden stool-the only object I could discover stood in the right-hand corner. The barred window, high in the wall, framed a small, pale square of the night sky. Though I had eaten nothing all day, I was conscious of neither hunger nor fatigue. All the energy of my body seemed concentrated in my head, and my thoughts ran riot.

How would Kathe hear of my arrest? How would she take the news? Would she be calm and courageous or would her impulsiveness betray her into follies and blunders? If only they didn't find that list! No one knew where it was. How could I get in touch with the outside world? Had Michael wired promptly? He might wait too long and then they'd catch Otto at Halle. How would the comrades discover my whereabouts? How in excusable not to have coded the list the moment I received it! A hundred and eighty comrades - many of them married. It was well hidden - but suppose they tore the furniture apart and found it! I couldn't stand it - I'd kill myself....

Yes, that was a comfort. I'd kill myself. I clung to the notion - as though my death could atone for my carelessness.

I heard footsteps in the corridor.

"Where is he?"

"Cell I28."

They passed my door. Farther down a cell door was opened and closed again. The jailer had apparently admitted some SS-men into a cell.

From the lower end of the corridor a fearful cry rang out, followed by a long-drawn gasp-again and again and again....

They were throttling a comrade to stop him from screaming. Presently the jailer opened the door, and I heard them say, "Down to the cellar."

A stumbling on the stairs-then silence again, till the moans of the tortured man rose from below. I had never heard men cry; it was unbearable. I stuck my fingers into my ears to keep out the sound.

The guard roused us at six next morning. Naked to the waist, we were ordered to line up in the corridor outside.

"Right face - forward march!"

At the head of the staircase we were joined by prisoners from other wings.

"Mark time march!"

Through the noise of the tramping feet I heard my neighbor whisper, "How long have you been here?"

"Since yesterday."

"How are things outside?"

"Quiet."

"Party?"

"Yes--and you?"

"Of course."

"How long have you been here?"

"Ninth week."

Going down the narrow staircase we were separated. The man on my left, who had been brought in with me the day before was on the point of leaning over to whisper something to me when a trooper, who had been watching us unobserved, let fly with a long artillery whip.

"Let me see you jabbering together again, you crooks, and you'll be ripe for the cellar."

The lash had cut straight across my companion's face.

In the corner of the small square that formed the prison courtyard a ditch had been dug and a board laid across it-our latrine where, ten at a time, crowded close together, we took care of our needs. The others stood lined up in front of us, facing the latrine.

I took advantage of the precious opportunity to look for acquaintances. There in the front row stood Ernst, pale as death, a ragged stubble disfiguring his sensitive face. Not an eyelash twitched as we greeted each other.

For three weeks his people had been hunting for him, ignorant of his fate or his whereabouts, not knowing whether he were alive or dead. He had had a job as assistant in a research laboratory, and I knew he had been arrested in the act of mimeographing a Party newspaper. A Jew, an intellectual, a Communist, caught red-handed at his underground work! His face seemed to be all eyes--the grave and sorrowful eyes of a sage.

A trooper shouted, "Get up!" The row of ten stood

As I was buttoning my trousers a prisoner behind me cleared his throat. I pretended to adjust my clothing and turned around. I found myself staring straight into Hans's young face. The lid of his left eye came down in his usual wink, and he could not refrain from murmuring between his teeth.

"A wonderful s--t, no?"

I promptly lost my feeling of desolation. Hans was here - Hans with whom I'd been working in the movement for years - Hans, the shrewdest and most fearless antifa ³ fighter of my section.

After the latrine came the "bear dance." ⁴

"Right-face! By row, forward-march! At the trot, march--march!"

In single file we ran round the narrow yard - round and round and round and round. Again I searched for a familiar face among those that passed me this time without success.

Two of the older prisoners fell out of the ranks, too exhausted to go on. The squad leader promptly stepped up beside them. "Forward-march!"

Once more they broke into a run but, after a single round, one of them collapsed. The squad leader flogged him to his feet.

"Knee bending! Lower-lower-that's it. Hands

out"

Across the outstretched arms, already trembling with fatigue, he laid a wooden club. "There! You get all this training free of charge here. Never too late to start being a good German."

"I can't stand any more," muttered the old man. "Go a bullet wound in my lung."

"The hell with your bullet wound! It didn't bother you when you were with the Communists, you old swine!"

The elite of the Third Reich were tendering a war veteran the thanks of the Fatherland.

After the "bear dance" we had to wash at a pump without soap and towel. The newcomers then received their green "Bolle" shirts, so called from their resemblance to the uniforms of the employees of the Bolle Milk Company of Berlin. The SS had confiscated these shirts from dissolved organizations of the German Nationalist Party and used them now as prison uniforms to show their contempt for the German Nationalist "Bolle milkmen."

"Coffee"--a brown brew of some sort--and a chunk of bread, two inches thick and scraped with lard, came at seven. Since there was no mug in my cell I received no coffee. I choked down the dry bread and started to examine my cell. The plaster walls were scarred with signs to mark the passing of the days. Most of them had been scratched in with fingernails, and some of them were as carefully and precisely set down as the columns of a ledger.

By and large, they were simple weekly calendars - six lines scored through by a seventh. I counted fourteen weeks in one place, eighteen in another, twenty here, nine there. I found too that improvements had been made in the original calendar. Since the prisoner knew on what day of the week he had been admitted, he would mark off the days to Sunday, and then set the days of the following weeks in their corresponding places below. This table, for example, indicated that the prisoner had been admitted on a Friday and had left his cell on Thursday of the fifth week:

/ / /

/ / / / / / /

/ / / / / / /

/ / / / / / /

/ / / /

High up on the right wall stood a laconic "31/2 years," probably an echo of the days before the Nazi regime when the Columbia House was a military prison. The upper left-hand corner of the door bore in crude letters the words: "Red Front Lives!"

I sought out a small unmarred surface and scratched in my first stroke. It was a Saturday.

A faint sound at my cell door warned me that I was being watched from the corridor. As I make my way slowly to the stool, the iron disk over the peephole, which had been cautiously raised, clattered back and the door opened to admit a Black Shirt. I rose and looked at him.

"Why don't you report?" he said.

Not understanding the question, I remained silent.

"What's the matter?" he roared, his face purpling with rage. "What have you got in you head--brains or s--t? Don’t you know the house regulations?"

"No."

"Get out! At the trot, march--march!"

I ran down the corridor. On the window sill, at the end of the hallway, sat the guard with the keys. I stopped and the guard hauled off, with the heavy bunch of keys in his hand, and smashed into my face. "About--face! Forward, march--march!"

The two guards kept me running back and forth between them. Each one greeted me with a punch in the face when I arrived and booted my rear when I left.

"Get in! Do you know the regulations now?"

What was I to say? If I said no, they'd beat me; if I said yes, they would beat me still more the moment I showed any ignorance of the "regulations."

"I only came yesterday," I said.

The guard condescended to explain that, the instant my cell door was opened, I was to stand at attention against the rear wall and report my name, my number, and the reason for my arrest.

"Understand?"

"Yes."

"Say, yes, sir, you punk!"

"Yes, sir."

They went on to the next prisoner.

My cell faced south. At about ten in the morning a slender sunbeam began playing about the walls. It was a beautiful summer. I could hear planes taking off from the Tempelhof Field and landing. Sometimes I managed to catch a glimpse of a plane passing across the narrow opening of the barred window. Prom the yard came the cries of the SS guards. Cars drove in. Commands. People running back and forth. The ringing of a telephone.

I began gradually to feel how tired I was. I moved the stool into the sunlight and, completely exhausted, fell asleep. The grating of the iron flap over the peephole woke me with a start. My door was flung open.

I leaped to my feet and reported: "Billinger--No. 8 80 Communist." "Don't you know you're not supposed to sleep in the daytime, you s--t ass!" This was a new sentry, who had apparently just come on duty. "Knee bending!"

I bent my knees. The dog knew to the exact millimeter when legs and toes were strained to the utmost. Leaving me in that position, he went out and slammed the door. Fortunately, I could watch the peephole out of the corner of my eye. While it was covered I would rest on my heels. The moment I heard a suspicious sound at the door, I would swing back to my toes again. He kept me waiting for about half an hour before making his second entry.

"What are you here for, you bastard?"

"I was a member of the CPG."

"How long?"

"Till the national revolution."

"Still got the cheek to tell me that?" he yelled, and floored me with a blow to the chin.

At noon there was a thin potato gruel from the field kitchen which had been set up in the courtyard. We were taken down again. As we passed the closed cells I could see chalk writing on the massive wooden doors. Several of them read:

ATTENTION!

On other doors were pasted red paper crosses with the explanation:

CLAP!

On the door of the last cell in one corridor I read, four days running:

MAY NOT LIE DOWN

TO BE VISITED EVERY TEN MINUTES

LIGHT TO BURN ALL NIGHT

In the afternoon-when we had returned to our cells from our meager meal-I heard the guard bellowing in the corridor: "Singers, flags out!" Several cells opened and after a few minutes there rang out from the courtyard below a many-voiced choir: "Aennchen von Tharau, ist's die mir gefallt." . . . "Es ritten drei Reiter zum Tore hinaus." . . . "Wenn du noch eine Mutter hast." ⁵

Toward seven in the evening I heard cells opening and closing in my corridor. Footsteps passed my cell but it was not opened. Half an hour later the guard shouted, "Sitters, flags out!" Again cell doors were opened and I heard a group being taken down to the courtyard. When these were back in their cells, I heard a second command: "Standers, flags out!" Again cell doors opened and closed, feet scraped, keys turned, silence.

So the first day slowly came to an end, and slowly I realized that it was only the first.

At eight the lights went out. I put my coat under my head and tried to sleep on the floor. I would doze off, but again and again would wake up in fright. I h1d no idea how long I had lain like this, when I heard cell opening at the end of my corridor. Voices of the guards. Heavy thumping. Cries. Clang. The cell door closed, and another opened. Again blows, cries, ant silence, the opening and closing of cells. The sound of the clanging cell doors came nearer and nearer. With g rowing anxiety I counted, seventeen times, the scene I heard but could not see.

My cell door opened. In the lights of the corridor stood about a dozen SS guards. I stood against the back wall of my cell and reported:

"Billinger-No. 880-Communist."

"Why are you here?"

"I was a member of the CPG."

"How long?"

"Until the national revolution."

"You expect us to believe that? You did underground work."

"No."

"You're lying, you dog."

They beat my head with their fists till I fell down unconscious. When I came to they were kicking me furiously. I tried to stand up. They knocked me down again and left me lying on the floor. I could hear the door of my cell closing behind them.

Later I discovered that these preliminary episodes were part of the judicial technique of the investigating court. From the moment that the prisoners were taken into "protective" custody, their morale was to be broken by every possible means. These nightly "investigations" were repeated with every change of guard.

Late at night it got very cold. I knocked at my cell door and the SS guard opened it.

"What in hell do you want?"

"It's cold. Could I have a blanket or a burlap bag?"

The guard, a boy of no more than twenty-two, flew into a hysteric rage.

"Do you want me to wipe your ass, too-you Communist swine?"

As punishment for my gall in daring to call the guard I had to take off my trousers, shoes, and socks. The cement floor of my cell was so cold it was impossible to sleep.

In the afternoon of the fourth day I was taken to the investigating judge. His office was on the third floor. As I was going up the stairs the guard kicked me from behind.

"Make it snappy, young man. We haven't got much time."

The investigating judge, an SS officer, must have been in civil life a butcher, a traveling salesman, or a law clerk. His authority was absolute. Methodically and without any "Jewish subtleties" he directed the hearing.

"Jew?"

"No."

"Communist?"

"Yes."

"RFB?"

"No."

"I said--RFB?"

"No."

"Fifty," he said calmly, settling himself back in his armchair. The two Black Shirts standing behind me seized me and rushed me downstairs to the cellar, where the "preparatory squad" was already on hand. From a tin pan they lifted wet horsewhips, which cut sharper after being soaked in water.

"Pants down!"

I stood motionless. In a moment I lay, stripped from the waist down, across a table. Four men held me; three others flogged me. At the first lash I thought I should leap to the ceiling. My whole body contracted convulsively. Against my will I let out a shrill cry. The second stroke, the third, the fourth-not quickly but at measured intervals, spaced so as to keep me from losing consciousness, to make certain that my nerves would register each blow in all its agonizing pain. I was aware of but one racking desire- to be dead, to be dead, to be dead, and have this over, finished, done. My body did not seem to belong to me any more. After ten or twelve lashes I felt the blows only as dull detonations in my head. I no longer had the strength to cry out. The twenty-fifth stroke was followed by a brief pause, during which the men changed places. One of them poured a pitcher of cold water over my head to render me fit for further treatment. Then they started afresh. When it was over they dragged me back to my cell. Closing the door, they said they would be back shortly to return me to the investigation court.

What kept me from suicide during those hours was neither courage nor cowardice, neither the thought of my wife nor of my mother. It was the realization that within those four walls five hundred prisoners were sharing my fate. It was my sense of unity with the staunch Party workers, with the proletarians defenseless in the hands of their enemies. It was the thought of all the pallid faces, of Ernst, of the young boy caught distributing illegal literature. They stood it--I could stand it too

I was unable to report for the "bear dance" at six that evening. When they opened my cell I remained lying motionless in my corner, indifferent to what they might do

"Get up!"

I did not stir.

"Get up!" yelled the guard, kicking me in the stomach.

Resistance was out of the question. I dragged myself up and leaned on the stool

"Why don't you report, you son of a bitch?'

"Billinger-No. 880-Cornmunist."

"What are you lying around here for?"

"I can't stand up."

"Why not?"

"I've just been examined."

"What do you mean by that?"

I did not answer.

"You mean you fell down the stairs, don't you?"

I did not answer.

"Answer me, you son of a bitch! You fell down the stairs!"

"Yes, sir.

"All right, then."

At seven supper arrived--the same coffee, and the slice of bread and lard. A prisoner poured the coffee into my bowl, which was still dirty from the noon meal. He nudged me in passing. Looking up, I saw it was Hans. Over his gay, impudent face there passed a shadow of anxiety at the sight of my miserable condition. He tried to comfort me by winking his eye.

Late that night--the lights had long been turned out--we received a visit of inspection. A short, full-fed storm-troopleader, named Otto, known far and wide as a notorious drunkard, ordered the cell doors opened, once after another. Closer and closer came the roar of his voice, the slamming of doors. Finally they reached me.

"Billinger--No. 880--Communist."

"Troopleader Otto came toward me, staring at me out of his vacant, protruding eyes. He stank of bad liquor.

"What are you here for?"

"Member of the CPG."

"How long?"

"Till the national government was established."

"Why not longer?"

I hesitated

"You have realized," he said impressively, stressing each word, "you have realized that our Leader-who is our Leader?"

"Adolf Hitler."

"You have realized that our Leader, Adolf Hitler, was working day and night to make the German people happy again."

"Yes, sir."

"Where were you born?"

"In the Rhineland."

Alcohol, the Leader, the German Rhine--German wine, blonde girls--his sentimentality won the upper hand.

"The Rhine remains German," he declaimed.

"Yes, sir."

"And when you return to the Rhine, will you be a loyal German citizen?"

"Yes, sir."

A little more, and he would have embraced me. His men escorted him out, steadying him on his feet.

The night was a torment. I could neither sit nor lie nor stand. My coat and shirt were soaked through with blood and water. My body was racked with chills and fever. Tomorrow they would take me out and examine me again. No escape, no help. My comrades dead or imprisoned. Kathe penniless in a foreign country. What would she do? The list at home. Anton arrested. Had he really hanged himself? In a fit of despair? Had they murdered him? We were all lost.

Trucks with new prisoners rattled into the courtyard. The SS received them with shouts and curses and whipped them into their cells. The building was becoming overcrowded. Newcomers were isolated to prevent them from communicating with other prisoners; but those who had already been "investigated" were jammed two and three and even four into a single cell.

Into my cell they brought next day two prisoners; one was a stranger, the other Hans. Somehow he had managed to get himself transferred to my cell. Hardly had the guards closed the door behind them when Hans leaned over and whispered to me, "Well, I did it. After fourteen weeks in this hell-hole you learn something about it." It turned out Hans knew the place inside out.

To me one SS guard was like another; I hated them so much that I could not distinguish their faces. But Hans knew every single man in the guard, his individual peculiarities, and how to handle him.

He had the proletarian's gift of adapting himself to the practical demands of a situation. Despite the terror and the rigid supervision he had succeeded in establishing connections with comrades in other cells. He helped with the distribution of coffee, he belonged to the potato-peeling squad which was privileged to sit in the yard several hours a day, he brushed the uniform coats of the SS officers, and enjoyed the patronage of the cook--an ex-prizefighter with cauliflower ears--because he could kindle a fire in the field kitchen as no one else could.

Yet he was no lickspittle. For all his activity he remained an incorruptible class-conscious worker. Into our cell he brought with him a pallet, crusted with dirt, blood, and excrement, and insisted upon my using it. He consoled me with the assurance that, since I had already signed my protocol at the Gestapa, my examination was at an end and I was here only to be gleich-geschaltet. His knowledge of the routine processes of our incorporation into the Third Reich was complete to the last detail.

After breakfast he returned with a blanket. Heaven knows where he had managed to get it. What no one else could do, what no one else dared do, Hans did.

It was he who finally initiated me into the mystery of "flags out." I had noticed the six-inch iron rod sticking out of the cell wall near the door, but had no idea what it was and certainly no desire to experiment with it. It turned out that when you pushed this rod it projected into the corridor. From its end hung a metal disk. It was the equivalent of raising your hand in the classroom; it meant you wanted out. So for the first time I was able to respond to the guards' calls, "Sitters flags out!" or "Standers-flags out!" Hans explained the reason for the two categories. It took much less time to lead out and bring back five hundred standers than five hundred sitters. The guards, in order to save time, separated the two functions.

That evening we were lined up in the yard in square formation. An SS officer called the names of two Jewish prisoners. They stepped forward. Their faces were pale and bruised. One was a man of fifty, the other thirty or thereabouts.

"Well, kike," sneered the stormleader, "what's your profession?"

"Writer."

"Where did your writing appear, Cohen?"

"In various newspapers."

"Come on--don't be bashful--what newspapers?"

"The Berliner Tageblatt and the trade-union papers."

"Aha-what did you write about?"

"Cultural matters.'

The SS-men roared in laughter.

"lkey writes about German culture!"

"Did you write about peace and the League of Nations, too?"

"Yes."

"Are you a pacifist?"

"Yes."

"All right, yiddle, now you're going to be a fighter. Here-take the broom."

The guards grinned in anticipation of the forthcoming spectacle.

"And you, Egyptian son of the desert, what s your profession?"

"Physician.'

"Party?"

"CPG."

"You did abortions for the Communist whores, I suppose?"

The man didn't answer.

"Come on, kike, take your sword." He forced a stick into the prisoner's hand. "When I count three, you begin. The loser goes to the cellar. One, two-three."

Neither of the men stirred.

"Well," bawled the officer, "how long do 1 have to wait?"

The older of the two raised his broom--and lowered it again. The younger stood motionless. The guards, armed with their whips, stationed themselves behind the pair.

"For the last time-go!"

Still the men did not move. The SS began to rain blows thick and fast over their heads and necks and backs, while, like a maniac, the officer kept yelling, "Forward! Forward!"

Hesitantly--appalled by what he was doing--then more rapidly, to escape the onslaught of the guards, the older Jew struck the younger a blow--and another, till at length he was laying about him in a frenzy, his face racked with agony, his eyes glaring with madness. The younger man never so much as lifted his arm to ward off the blows about his head. Neither did he stir under the horsewhips. Erect and silent, he stood till he collapsed. The faces of the watching prisoners were gray and sunken.

The third man in our cell, Richard M., was a man of forty-two, a registered member of the Social-Democratic Party for twenty years, an electrical engineer in the employ of the Berlin Traffic Company since 1924,and, more recently, a member of the Betriebsrat. ⁶ That was all the information he gave us at first.

Everyone guarded his secrets carefully. No one trusted his neighbor. Hans was one of those comrades predisposed by his temperament, youth, and personal experience to see in any Social-Democratic functionary a conscious traitor to the working class. For him M. simply did not exist. He never addressed a word to him. When he managed to get hold of food for our cell he would shove M.'s share toward him in silence. Occasionally he would relieve his mind by exclaiming, without so much as a glance at M.: "Defeat Hitler elect Hindenburg." Don't let yourselves be provoked by the Kozis." ⁷ "Let your ballot be your answer." He was repeating Social-Democratic election slogans. M. said nothing.

One day several former police officials of the Social-Democratic Party, who had just been arrested, were being "measured" by the troopers in the cellar. As their screams rose to our ears Hans muttered spitefully to M., "Now you're reaping the reward for your labors of love."

For the first time the Social-Democrat lost his temper. "You paved the way for them, didn't you? You preferred to make a united front with them rather than with us."

"Better ten times with Groner ⁸ than once with the Communists," Hans replied, quoting a speech by Schopflin, former Social-Democratic deputy.

"What about your Red Plebiscite?" M. retorted.

"Who dissolved the Red Front League? Who gave the orders to shoot workers? Did you expect us to back the Social-Democratic scoundrels into the bargain?"

Both workers, both victims of the fascist hangmen, they suffered in the same cell in mutual hatred and rancor. The history of the German labor movement in the last fifteen years was not to be wiped out in a day or two.

"Air-raid alarm!" roared the sentry in the corridor.

"Quick!" Hans ordered. "Lie down! Head under the stool!"

We flung ourselves flat on the cement floor. Hans grabbed my soup bowl and inverted it over my head. The Social-Democrat, equally familiar with the proper etiquette, seized his tin mug and pressed it to his nose. Thus we lay motionless till the end of the "alarm" was sounded. My comrades explained to me that this "air-defense" drill had been devised by the aviation guard of Columbia House as an amusement for the Black Shirts.

That night our corridor was visited five times by an "inspection" squad. From one of the open cells we heard a guard trooper cry, "Damned if it isn't Hail-Moscow Georgie! Rotten luck for you, Georgie, my finding you here. Still, remember Weberstrasse. Do you remember, you louse? Well, I've got you now. Come on!"

They flogged the anti-fascist down the corridor and stairs into the cellar.

When we lined up outside our cells the following morning, the guard surveyed the results of the night's "investigation."

"What's that on your head?"

"I fell downstairs," replied the man addressed-a tall, skinny worker whose starved face looked like a death mask as a result of the night's manhandling.

"What stairs and when?"

"The stairs to the yard when I went to the latrine."

"How many steps?"

"Five.

"You'll have to be more careful next time- understand?"

" Yes, sir."

The sentries, highly diverted, grinned at each other.

"Are you a Jew?" the guard asked a dark-haired worker.

"No, sir."

"Easy enough to say. Prove it."

"My parents are Catholics."

"Baptized Jews, I suppose.

"No, sir."

"Prove it," bellowed the guard. Some of the other SS-men, scenting a good joke, joined the group. The worker, completely at a loss, remained silent.

"Are you circumcised?"

"No, sir."

"Unbutton! Let's see."

The man obeyed.

"Jews, step out!"

A tall, fair man stepped forward.

"You a specialist in circumcision, Munzer?"

"Yes, sir."

"Take a look at that."

"He's not a Jew."

"You trying to help out a coreligionist, Munzer?"

"No, sir. He really isn't a Jew."

"How many more strokes coming to you, Munzer?"

"Two hundred."

"A hundred off, if you tell the truth."

You could see the man's thoughts speeding to the cellar-toward the two hundred lashes still due him. A hundred off. He was silent.

"Well, have you thought it over?"

"I can't tell."

"Want me to sharpen your eyesight for you?" threatened the guard.

"He may be a Jew," said the man slowly.

"All right, brethren. Now you'll both get it for having lied in the first place. Payment due tonight."

Still harder to endure than the mistreatment itself were the advance announcements of brutalities to come. A genial Bavarian among the Black Shirts had raised this pleasure to a system. He would order certain comrades-against whom for some reason he nursed a private grudge--to fall out of line, would eye them appraisingly as a butcher eyes a cow to determine its fitness for slaughter, and proceed to make notes in his notebook:

"No. 524-day after tomorrow."

"No. 578-next Tuesday."

"No. 619-tonight. Fall in!"

The prisoner, certain that the Bavarian would make good his threat, would wait day after day, hour after hour, for the appearance of the "inspection" squad.

The pressure of this life was unheard of. Stout-hearted workers, courageous intellectuals, broke under the strain. Captain Stennes, former SA leader in Berlin, who had revolted against Hitler in I931 and who was imprisoned with us, opened his veins. The guard found him before he had bled to death and bandaged the wounds. When the captain tried to tear the bandages off they gave him a cellmate to watch him constantly. A forty-seven-year-old metal worker, who had survived four years of the horrors of war as a front-line private, found himself unable to endure the horrors of Columbia House, and managed to hang himself without rousing his cellmate.

I had never in my life seen so much anguish, deadly terror, despair, and suffering. I had never thought men capable of such monstrosities.

It seemed to be endless.

We were forbidden to write or receive letters. Nobody knew what he was charged with or what lay in store for him. We were denied the most elementary rights of common criminals.

Outside, the new Germany celebrated one national holiday after another. The officers were constantly ordering the prisoners out into the courtyard to beat and brush their uniforms, polish their boots, and wash their stolen ("requisitioned") motor cars, till everything sparkled. Off duty and on, the "heroes" of the "revolution" were in great demand.

Every day new prisoners were brought in, gleichge-schaltet, trained to be good Germans, and murdered.

It seemed to be endless....

I do not know what would have happened to me without Hans. He diminished the horror of our hell by acquainting me with its mechanism. Columbia was under the jurisdiction of the Polizeiabteilung Wecke, z.b.V. ⁹ This is the‚ elite outfit of Goering's secret state police. The SS-men were especially picked; both by inclination and training they regarded all Jews, Communists, Socialists, and pacifists as so much offal; the foulest crust of bread was too much for them. The mere idea of feeding us, instead of exterminating us like the plague, was for them an insufferable form of kindness. Their conduct was a compromise between the

imperious internal needs of the Third Reich and the need for conciliating foreign opinion. Much as they would have liked to murder half of the German people for the sake of the volksgemeinschaft, ¹⁰ their relations with other countries prevented them from achieving this ideal. But they made the best of these circumstances. They were highly qualified specialists who murdered without leaving proofs of their crimes. In many cases they left the last act to the prisoner himself. He committed suicide. They merely-on the basis of a carefully developed technique tortured him to the point where there was no other way out for him.

I soon found out the meaning of red paper crosses on the cell doors with the chalk inscriptions: CLAP! They were actually cases where the loins and genitals had been injured during the floggings in the cellar. ATTENTION meant that the prisoner had been beaten to the point where he was in danger of dying and required medical treatment. I also discovered the meaning of the male chorus in the courtyard and the meaning of the court plaster on the left temple of prisoners.

It was the Polizeiabteilung Wecke, Goering's elite, which fostered the cult of the folk song. Daily we could hear from the courtyard:

Es ritten drei Reiter zum Tore hinaus, kling, klang,

Feins Liebchen blieb traurig allein zu Haus, kling, klang.

This cultural work had at the same time a practical purpose. The singing society was obliged to begin its activities at the very moment when the guards in the cellar were at work. The massed voices of the chorus drowned out the shrieks and groans of the tortured prisoners. If the singing society was mobilized at eight in the evening it was, as a rule, in the interests of pure art for the SS. But if they sang in the daytime it was another story; under the gay tunes of old German folk songs stubborn prisoners were "prepared" for the investigating judge. However, for the sake of historic truth I must add that after the cellar was made soundproof by double doors and all windows had been walled up with bricks, the chorus sang chiefly at night. With German soulfulness the SS troopers abandoned themselves to sentiment as they ordered their chorus, consisting entirely of prisoners, to sing their favorite ditty:

Wenn du noch eine Mutter hast, so danke Gott und sei zufrieden;

Nicht allen auf dem Erdenrund ist dieses hohe Gluck beschieden.

On a number of prisoners I observed court plaster, which was invariably pasted on their left temples. At the end of two weeks, at the regular morning hour when all the cells were opened, the guard finally opened the cell at the end of the corridor which had been closed and was marked with the chalk sign MAY NOT LIE DOWN. Out of it came the boy arrested for riding on a truck of illegal literature. His face was white, his ears as translucent as a dead man's. On his left temple he carried the court plaster of Columbia.

The German tends to be systematic in everything he does. The SS-men were splendid physical specimens, powerfully developed and well trained. It was inevitable that their activities among the prisoners should be raised to a system. The Columbia guard troopers had their own rules of sportsmanship. Into the beating of the prisoners they brought the spirit of athletic competition. The goal was to knock down the prisoner, no matter how strong he was, with one blow to his temple. This sport, which went on day after day, had only one disagreeable after-effect. It split the victim's face to the bone and blackened his temple. But a gay SS hospital orderly overcame this defect with his ever-ready court plaster, which he pasted over the bruised spot.

"There," he would encourage his patient. "All you need is three dabs of iodine on the back and you'll be for service again"-an ironic phrase invented by German soldiers to describe the treatment they received from illiterate doctors at the front. In this case the "three dabs of iodine" were administered in the cellar with the heavy leather whips soaked in water used by the German artillery on their horses. Whipping, too, had its rules developed as a result of long practice, high

animal spirits, and the craftsman's pride in his handiwork. Bored with the routine of daily beating the prisoners, the SS-men raised their work to an art. The idea was to see how long you could beat a man across his naked body without breaking his skin. Any damned fool could go on for a long time without breaking the skin if he used a blackiack, but the wet whip called for real skill.

There were twenty-eight strokes on my wall calendar when, late one afternoon, the guard shouted, "No. 880-flag out."

I pushed the iron rod. "Watch," Hans whispered. "You're getting out." The cell door was opened.

"Into the corridor!" I didn't even have time to nod to my cellmates.

Ten prisoners were already lined up outside, some of them trembling visibly with hope and anticipation. The burly G.--one of the most popular figures in the workers' revolutionary movement in Berlin-was pulling off his green "Bolle" shirt. Up to that moment I did not know he was at Columbia.

"Where does the tour take us now?" he inquired coolly of an SS-man. The guard shrugged his shoulders.

After an endless wait our belongings were returned to us. We were all convinced that release was at hand. My neighbor was rummaging through his bag and muttering to himself.

"Anything missing?" asked the guard.

"I can't find my chewing tobacco," the old man grumbled.

"Where you're going," the guard replied, "you won't need chewing tobacco." None of us took the implied threat seriously. We were getting out of this hell-that was the chief thing.

It was dark by the time we found ourselves clambering into a truck in the courtyard. No one knew where we were going. We were still hoping to be released.

Seven Black Shirts, armed with pistols and rifles, distributed themselves about the truck. At the last moment some whips were handed in. It was then that our hopes died, and the same thought must have flashed through all our minds: they were going to shoot us while "attempting to escape."

Before the truck started, the troopleader, having taken his place in front beside the driver, delivered a brief address to us:

"Anyone who makes a single suspicious movement as we drive through the city will be shot. There won't be enough left of the bastard to put into a coffin."

It was easy to sense the nervousness of the SS. They obviously feared the indignant populace might assault the truck and free us by force.

The truck drove through the city at a furious pace, avoiding as far as possible the livelier streets. It delivered us at the gates of the Plotzensee Prison. After Columbia, this gloomy place seemed to me a haven of peace. Plotzensee was the jail normally used for prisoners awaiting trial. I racked my brain in an effort to determine what evidence the Secret Police might have gathered, upon which to try me. The protocol I had signed would certainly not suffice.

Three days later the mystery was solved. A large group was assembled for transport to a concentration camp. On August 15 I was transferred, together with 127 other prisoners, to the concentration camp at Hubertshof.

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