The Serbs Chose War, Ruth Mitchel 42. GUESTS OF THE GESTAPO IT IS UNLIKELY that many of my readers have been in a prison, very few indeed in a Gestapo prison, and no other American woman, I believe, has been in the Gestapo prison of Belgrade. So I shall describe the routine. There are no women wardresses, and never for an instant are we certain of being out of sight of the men guards. At seven in the morning a guard, rifle on shoulder, gun on hip, stamps into the cell and yells: "Aufstehen!" (In most Gestapo prisons it is much earlier; in Vienna, four-thirty.) We jump up from the moldy straw and hurry to stand in line at the door. Two by two the guard allows us to pass through the chain across the door and to run along the passage to the wash place. Sometimes discipline is lax and we all run together and even meet women from other cells. If there has been much sniping in the town we can tell at once by the excitement and fury of the guards. (They were local boys of German descent, and some of whom meant well enough at first. But the rabid Nazi poison was injected into their blood, and the weaker they were, the nastier they became.) The wash place, with two taps, cold water only, of course, and no bowls, is in a narrow passage leading to the one toilet and one urinal that serve both the office and thirty to forty women. The cement floor is always running with splashed water, and we stand with wet feet. (In the end I got severe rheumatism in one knee.) Now relatives begin to collect at the gate. All day long there is a group of these desperate people hoping against hope to catch a glimpse of some loved one when the gate opens a crack. The women in the prison used to try to hang a hand out of the window, hoping it would be recognized. Those whose relatives have brought them breakfast share with the rest of us. In the weeks before the American consul got word of my being in prison I received no food, with the ironical result that I had to eat much too much. We had rich women in the cell whose cooks sent in beautifully prepared food-eaten, of course, on the floor. Each of them insisted on my sharing with her, and to refuse meant hurt feelings. We take our blankets out into the yard to shake, and energetically we bang them up and down to get rid of bugs. The men are washing at the tap in the yard. I had a very ragged bright red blanket which, after Russia entered the war, I used to wave madly up and down every morning. The men would wink and nod; they knew what I meant. It cheered us all up. Now the "housework": the straw is aired, the floor washed with so much water that it too is always damp. We sweep the office, the guardroom, the corridor, and then we get down and scrub the cement. After the first few days even the most fragile women are eager for the work: it is the only chance of exercise. Katitsa and I polish the riding boots of Hahn, the second warder. I got a lot of fun out of this-and so did he: he used to sneer delightedly as he passed. So one day I said to him: "You can't imagine how glad I am to have learned so much about housekeeping. It will be very useful when I am outside again." He was taken aback. "That will be never," he grunted. But after that he passed by without looking. We carry out into the yard and dump into an outside urinal the night pails, standing in line with the men. Now comes the long day's drag. There is no occupation except endless talk: "My house is like this . . ." "My little girl said . . ." "Here is a good recipe for . . ." etc., etc. The bitter, hopeless homesickness is expressed in one corner in Serbian, in another in French, in another in German. There was no one else who spoke Once a week there is laundry: if you have pull with a warder it means a whole day out of doors, by the garbage cans above which the clotheslines are stretched. There are a long wooden trough and a little fire on a few bricks, with a pail to heat water. Katitsa was the expert at this as at everything useful. I was so hopeless at the washing that I could only carry water and did it gladly to keep my muscles in order. Back and forth I walked to the tap in the yard. One day I counted fifty-six full pails of fresh water carried about fifty yards in the broiling sun; then I carried the dirty water back to a near-by drain. The clothes were sometimes exceedingly dirty and often-how often! -covered with blood. Yet those washdays were our pleasantest times in that prison. The guards out of sight, we chatted and laughed under the bright sky between the narrow high walls. We are eager for any excuse to get outside. Being appointed "head woman" by the prison governor, I am tempted to take advantage of my position always to carry out the dust to the garbage cans. They are round the corner of the building, out of sight of the gate guard. At this blessed, smelly spot, we can hesitate a moment, pass a quick word with men on the same errand, hear the latest news brought in by last night's prisoners, take a quick pull at a cigarette or, if two are in love, even exchange a kiss. Risque behavior, however, is almost completely absent. How well those women, some of them very beautiful girls, conducted themselves! How gentle were the men! Passionate surges of feeling were, of course, only natural in that hothouse atmosphere of repressed emotion. Most were meaningless. But we had one really charming love affair. Previous Chapter | Content | Next Chapter The Serbs Chose War, Ruth Mitchel