On the next day, they took my clothes and gave me prison garb; I figured out what that meant: my clothes were so soaked with blood that they did not want to leave such evidence of their atrocities.
So I lay for three days, undisturbed. On the fourth day, when it was time for a walk, one of the Gestapo officers said: “Du Musst [. . .] gehen Jude!”698 There was no other way; I dragged myself from my bunk, but in the prison yard my strength left me [15], and I lay in some puddle. Fortunately, I was allowed to lie there. It was only then that I realised what that “walk” actually was: gymnastics. Gymnastics which would give a heart attack even to the healthiest of men. The most common exercise was “get down, get up”, which in the Pawiak version went like this: prisoners had to run in a line around the yard, and when they were running fast enough, they were ordered to “get down”, which had to be done immediately. A few seconds later, “get up” was ordered followed by “run”, then again [16] “get down”, etc. Apart from the terrible exhaustion that this exercise brings, it should be taken into account that the courtyard was covered with sharp, piercing gravel, and a man who falls down while running moves a few centimetres further before he stops, carried by the power of inertia. Secondly, there were huge puddles of rainwater that we were not allowed to evade. Another exercise was the “frog”, which consisted in jumping around the courtyard while squatting.
This was more effective that the former one; namely, an average man would exhaust all his strength after a few jumps and had to crawl on [17] all fours, shredding the skin from his hands and knees. Now I understood why all my companions were limping and had swollen hands.
I was spared only for two days, and on the third day I had to perform all the exercises, not to mention the fact that I received several blows at every roll-call:
“No hast du, Jude!”699
So passed two weeks. On 10 March, I was suddenly transfered to the prison on Daniłowiczowska Street, where I was placed in a cell with other Jews [18] (there were 30 men in a cell designed for five or six). The contrast between that place and Pawiak was so great that I felt as if I had been released. The staff was Polish, there were no Germans, we were not beaten or tortured, no
