auf Jude!”695 But because, even if [10] he had not been standing on me, I did not have enough strength to stand up, I could not obey that order. Then the Germans told the guards to grab me from both sides by the arm and lift me—and again, all three started to beat me unconscious, after which I was allowed to fall again; then I was resuscitated with a couple of buckets of water, then again, the guards lifted me upright and so on, da capo.696 This was repeated three times. When I came around the fourth time, I was not raised up as before, but two Germans grabbed hard [11] brushes used for scrubbing floors, dipped them in water, and started rubbing me with them with all their might. Each such rub scraped a piece of my skin off. This torture was so much more sophisticated than the beating, as I did not faint, but I suffered it for a long time, filling the whole prison with my howling. After perhaps 30 minutes of this massage, the Germans left, while the guards put some clothes on me and carried me to a cell, where there were a few Poles, and laid me on a bunk bed.
I was in a horrible state. My whole [12] body was swollen, covered with wounds, and so bruised (even those bruises did not have a normal colour; they were black, purple or brown) that there was not one square centimetre in regular colour. In addition, my whole back was entirely stripped of skin. Although I was not unconscious, it was as if I had been stunned—even the pain felt as if through a fog.
The prisoners in the cell tended to me very caringly; they nursed me, they gave me everything; many even wept when they saw me. All of them were [13] “political”. You want to know who is “political” for the Germans? One of them, for example, worked in a factory where another worker brought a secret newspaper; another one repeated news from the English radio, and some of them had no idea why they had been arrested.
When roll-call was ordered the next morning, everyone (except me, of course, because I could not move) stood at attention in a line, and one of those Germans who had tortured me came in. Seeing me lying, he frowned, but then apparently he realized that I was not able to get up, because he walked over and struck [14] me with a stick, saying: “No! Der Jude—soll er liegen!”697
At 12 noon there was a walk, to which I also did not go.
