That night, fists suddenly pounded on our door, we heard an uproar and yelling in the hallways, a guard opened the cell and shone a candle into our room where we had all awoken with a start and stared at him, sitting on our straw sacks.

"Everyone out!" he yelled. "Alarm! Out, right now, line up in the square downstairs, move, move!" He entered the cell, yanked some of us to their feet and tried to shove them, half-dressed as they were, out into the corridor. But Udo Roth stepped in and said, in a controlled voice whose very calm brought the Poles a little to their senses, that we at least had to put our shoes on. To the constant impatient urging of the guard who specifically forbade us to take any of our few possessions, we finally stepped out into the utterly dark hallway, groped our way along the walls and thumped down the stairs. Three or four of our number had had the presence of mind to take one of the prison blankets with them; I myself had nothing more than a thin prison shirt, jacket and pants, socks and shoes, and the other comrades were dressed the same. Suspenders and belts had been taken from us.

We did not stand long in the square. In the light of stable lanterns we were arranged in rows of four. The Polish criminals who constituted the bulk of the prison's population were put at the end, so that now we even lost the company of our Killer Senior, and we were marched out the same wide gate through which we had marched in three nights before. A man in Polish uniform stood at the corner, we thought he was one of the prison wardens but in the dark it was impossible to be sure.

Walking beside me, short, tough, indomitable Lemke wanted to do something to lift our spirits. Besides, at that moment we all felt something akin to gratitude for the two days of relative peace we had spent in this prison. Lemke therefore said to the man at the corner as we marched past him out into the street, softly and in German: "Many thanks for your hospitality, good sir! We shall recommend your establishment to our friends."

His words prompted great merriment among us, which was heightened by the fact that we knew we could not dare laugh out loud. The relief of being out of the prison may have contributed to the lightening of our mood as well – in any case, stifled snorts of laughter kept pushing their way out among us for minutes on end. Those walking beside us would give us startled slaps on the shoulder, might even warn us to "hush up, man!", but they would then have a hard time keeping their own laughter down. Of course the guards noticed what was happening, but didn't know why we were so gleeful, and immediately began with threats. Their words returned us to grim reality. We'd see, they yelled, we'd see we had nothing to laugh about, they'd make sure of that, and we should take care. Some of them distributed punches and slaps among us. We quickly fell silent.

All of us knew what Poles were capable of, but still we were optimistic, overall.

We were amongst ourselves again, only Germans, we no longer felt spied on – for that was the only reason the three Poles had been put in our cell, to watch us – we again felt that we were in the honest company of comrades. Despite the uncertainty of our future it gave us new courage. And we needed courage. We all assumed that we had been removed so hastily from the city of Wloclawek – which now bears its ancient German name, Leslau, again – because our troops were approaching. It strengthened us, but it also showed that there would still be some bad days ahead. This was how we would always be removed from our advancing troops' reach; whenever we were close to being liberated, they would march off with us again – that's what we all thought, and some spoke their thoughts aloud. When one of us again did so, sounding rather miserable and fearful, I heard Walter Lemke, marching beside me, reply, softly so the Polish guards would not understand, but with strong emphasis: "Yes, but only until the day they are faster than we and the Poles!"

For anyone with poor eyesight the march was torture. Though it's true that even the comrades with good eyes could see next to nothing in the dark, still anyone who needs to wear glasses and has ever tried to find his way in the unfamiliar dark without them will know what a feeling of uncertainty it creates.

After about an hour we stopped at a forest edge; panje carts were waiting for us on the road. We were distributed equally among them, told to squat down on the boards, and a six-hour ride began. At that point all of us, even our most aged comrades, would have preferred to continue on foot, for on the bad roads we were constantly shaken until our teeth rattled. Really it is wrong to say that we sat on the carts; rather, we were continually flung into the air, sometimes higher, sometimes not as high, to land equally harshly each time on the boards on our posterior that soon passed sore. To increase the discomfort, the boards, which ran the length of the cart and also formed its floor, also banged and snapped up and down in a rhythm all their own. After only half an hour every bone hurt, our bodies were totally shaken out of order, and our stomachs were no longer where they should be.

It won't be hard to understand that, being men in only other men's company, we did not censor our speech. Especially later on, when we had all realized that we were constantly in danger of a painful death, we resorted to a kind of front-lines talk whose strongest fount was not only a stoic disregard of our surroundings but also the determination to counter the Poles' hatred with equanimity. But at the same time it's understandable that a rattling cart and a painful posterior are not the best prerequisites for proud and calm composure. Walter Lemke, who rode on the same cart as me, suddenly said:

"Hey, Reinhold, tell me, what are those monkeys with the naked red butt?"

Since my selfsame butt was hurting as badly as never since my early childhood, when my father or teacher had tanned it thoroughly for some silly boyish prank, I grumbled back in a pretty bad mood: "Man, why? Baboon, I think. Or, no, wait: mandrill! Yes, they're called mandrills!"

"Well, then," he said with a cheerful growl, "if this keeps up for another hour I'll be a mandrill."

Suppressed laughter filled our cart again. Of course it did not last long, for the ride continued for another five hours.

The September nights of 1939 were cold under clear starry skies. As dawn approached the cold grew bitter, and we shivered badly in our thin clothes. In the end we huddled together, shivering silently, and the shaking and rattling of the cart, throwing us every which way and against each other, now served to warm us a little.

As the sun rose in the east to the left of our road, behind a stand of those tall ragged poplars that are characteristic of former Russian Poland, we saw the first of our convoy of carts stop. We pulled up close to the first cart and stopped as well. We had arrived. Some large red buildings seemed to grow out of the landscape, surrounded by a high exterior wall. As we found out later, it was the sugar factory of Chodsen.

When we disembarked we had to lift old man Heinecke, with his heart condition, down from his cart. He was stiff with exhaustion, did not speak or move, and we feared that he would die in our hands. But once he had felt firm ground under his feet for half a minute, he opened his eyes and looked around. Slowly an awareness of his and our situation returned. He moaned in a weak raspy voice and tried to walk; it must have been painful – for a moment the look in his old eyes was almost one of despair. But when he saw our concern his demeanor changed; the old gentleman's eyes flashed at us, and suddenly he said in a voice almost as strong as before: "Well, let's go!" He moved his legs, and it worked; slowly and with difficulty, but better with each passing step. Nonetheless it may have been his salvation that we had to wait in the ditch for a few minutes first, and were permitted to sit down. When we got underway, two comrades supported him on either side.

There seemed to be no end to the walk. Our bodies ached – all our limbs, arms no less than legs and back – brain and stomach were shaken through and through – and when we were told to stop outside a small brick house we felt as though we had marched two or three kilometers with heavy luggage.

(A few weeks later Walter Lemke and I went back to look at this place again. We could hardly believe that the stretch of road we had walked was actually no more than one hundred and fifty meters, at most. We walked it over and over again, tried to determine locations and to recognize the buildings, we asked Polish inhabitants of the hamlet who had witnessed our arrival as described – but it was correct, the road was no longer than that. It wasn't until then that we realized fully how exhausted, disoriented and battered we had been at that time.)

We had to wait again here, and again we were herded into the ditch to do so. Ahead of us was a building which we thought was the police station, and behind and beside it were the grounds of the sugar factory. Behind us, the side street was lined with several low, single-family homes surrounded by gardens sporting autumn colors.

While we sat thus in the ditch, more new transports of ethnic Germans arrived from the main country road. Since we had been the first to arrive at the building, our guards wanted to be the first to be checked in, and so they sent the new arrivals to our left wing. As a result every new group was led past us.

The very first group that was herded past us showed us that our time in Wloclawek prison had been a stay in paradise. A farmer and his wife walked at the head of the group, carrying a large laundry basket between them, covered with a cloth. The man's right hand was handcuffed to his neighbor's left. He was a strong, stocky fellow whose face was covered in big dark blotches; his left ear was crusted with blood. He walked past us with heavy, shuffling steps without raising his eyes from the ground, and we saw that he was dragging one leg. His wife, with a round white face under masses of brown hair – I still see her in my mind as though it were now – stared straight ahead, wide-eyed, while tears coursed down her face.

In the middle of the road directly before us stood a policeman with a pince-nez and goatee. It will be a long time before I will forget the crow of his voice. He watched the new arrivals approach, and when the man and wife stopped before him – since he did not move out of the way – he pointed with a thick willow switch to the basket and asked what it contained. In a trembling voice the woman replied that their child was in it, an infant, but that it was asleep. The commissar hesitated, and for a moment we who were watching in breathless suspense thought we saw a trace of embarrassment and human compassion on his face. But he swung the willow rod and barked: "Take the cloth off."

The couple set the basket down and the mother removed the cloth. We had stood up to look in as well. The basket did in fact contain a child, perhaps six months old, lying on some pillows. But something about the position of the sleeping child must have struck the mother as odd, she bent over it, and with a low cry that made my heart tremble she took its arm. Then the woman snatched her daughter up, falling to her knees. The child was dead. And while the farmer's wife clutched the little corpse to her breast as if turned to stone, and made no sound at first, her husband began to sob uncontrollably. And the man's crying was even worse than the woman's stiff silence. The guards screamed at the two of them to move on, and the woman obeyed; she walked past us like a sleepwalker, still pressing the child's body close. Her husband, manacled to his neighbor, pulled her close to him with his left, put his free arm around her and stumbled, staggering and sobbing, along the street. Only now that his will to endure had been broken, we saw how badly he limped. And we also realized what the dark blotches on his face were; he had been beaten with fists and probably also with hard objects, and blood pooling under his skin had marked him thus. Two comrades walking behind the couple took up the basket and carried it away.

Some fifty Germans were in this group. More than half of them showed visible signs of maltreatment, several had blood-soaked bandages around their head or hands. A gray-haired old man had his right arm in a sling. We saw that they had all bandaged themselves, for they had clearly torn shirts and other articles of clothing to make something with which to stem the flow of blood.

Men and women from the town of Kruschwitz passed by. I recognized Rentmeister (administrator) Ortwich, a calm, matter-of-fact man. He was staggering back and forth like a drunk. Walking behind him was a farmer I did not know, being supported on either side by two others. A hoarse voice behind me spoke: "My God – that's Witt... he's been shot in the side!" I could not see it, but Lemke insisted that he had clearly seen the gunshot wound. It turned out later that he had seen correctly. And suddenly I felt a hand clutching my forearm. I had seen it too: a young girl, eighteen or twenty years of age, was walking behind Adolf Witt. Her head was wrapped in a completely blood-soaked bandage clearly intended to support her jaw. "Reinhold, Reinhold, that's his daughter," Lemke groaned. And at that moment we knew far from the whole story. Three members of the Witt family had been shot to death; the mother lay at home, gravely injured. Father and daughter were herded past us here, wounded.

One young fellow carried an old man past us, with white hair, stiff as a wooden figurine, as though he had just been taken off a crucifix. "Old man Diesing. He's more than seventy-five years old!" Lemke's voice was hoarse in my ear. I saw the old man's face, it was lifeless, and looking out of his eyes was the indifference of a man who sees his death approaching and has come to terms with it.

Thus the prisoners filed past us, staggering, silent, looking straight ahead or down at the ground. Hardly any of them ever looked to the side where we lined the ditch, bearded and with shaven heads. Anyone who could not continue was forcibly driven on by the guards with punches and blows from rifle butts. Woe to anyone who made a move that might have been taken for resistance! The policemen hit such unfortunates over the head or neck without so much as batting an eye. Not far from me, a young man received such a blow that he slowly sank to his knees and could not go on. But the comrade walking to his right pulled him up, another from the row behind them leaped forward and lifted him onto the first man's back, and the latter walked on, carrying the unconscious man while the policeman sauntered alongside, mocking them.

At that moment an uproar ensued to our right, perhaps twenty meters away. We heard the guards roaring and another voice pleading. In the confusion we could not make out the words or see exactly what was going on, we could only tell that several men had been forced out of their row by the guards. Suddenly the air was rent by a piercing scream of terror, it was a very high voice that cracked and then broke off, and then we heard two shots. The column just being marched past us panicked, everyone began to run, to rush past us, the guards yelled and rained blows on our terrified disoriented comrades, more shots rang out, and now we saw two men lying on the ground under the arch of a gateway and five or six men in uniform standing around them. Two of them grabbed the shot men and dragged them into the yard. We did not see them again.

A terrible silence reigned in our small group. I could not bear to look at any of them. I had clenched both fists and rested my head on them, sitting in the ditch trembling with indescribable rage. I did not notice until much later that even though it was a cold foggy September morning I was bathed in sweat. Later, body and soul had become so dulled that they responded only tiredly to such events.

A new convoy of fellow-sufferers arrived on the main road. They too were herded onto the side road and past us. Several women walked at its head. I noticed an older peasant woman, she carried herself with unbroken will and did not have the same desperate or helpless air that many of our women showed. The corners of her mouth held something like disdain. She was also one of the few who looked closely at all of us. She was wearing wooden slippers; they had not even given her enough time to put on proper footwear.

We saw boys and girls, seven to ten years of age, walking along holding their father's or mother's hand. We saw a woman carrying an infant in her arms. We saw one group of men, almost all of whom had injured, bleeding hands. They had been made to lie on their stomachs on the ground, stretch out their arms over their heads, and the Poles – we learned all this later, from the abused men themselves – the Poles, wearing nailed boots, had stomped back and forth over the backs of their victims' hands. Not a few of them had sustained broken fingers or knuckles. We saw several fellow Germans whose age we could not estimate because their faces were so swollen from countless blows and so darkened by the blood pooling under their skin that there was not a white or even a pale spot to be seen; these people gave the impression of being Negroes. We saw an old white-haired man who was so badly beaten that he could no longer walk on his feet. Two neighbors had linked their arms with his on either side and were dragging him past us, while he tried to make it easier for them by crawling through the sand on the street on his knees. This group, which brought up the staggering rear of the marching column, was accompanied by two young Poles no older than seventeen or eighteen, who urged them to greater speed with howls and jeers; these brutal fellows beat the old invalid's two helpers with switches as thick as their thumbs. But the samaritans did not leave the old man, they dragged him on.

Our own guards, who had still showed a hint of pity when they saw the dead child in the laundry basket, had been caught up in the general madness that characterized these Poles. They had joined the other guards in yelling at the people staggering past, they screamed in approval, cheered and howled, give it to the Hitler-swine, the rotting dog corpses, the spies, the cholerras, the filthy Germans, give it to them! They yelled at us, look, watch, this is what will happen to all you Hitlerists, this is how we'll do it to all of you, all of you have to die like dogs, you'll see!

Meanwhile, men and women, young fellows and girls, even children had emerged from the houses of the small settlement around the sugar factory, and it was gruesome to see how even ten- and twelve-year-olds joined in with the mob's howling and cursing and the hate-filled cheering. But to give the truth its due, I also saw the horrified eyes of a ten-year-old girl who suddenly stood, pale-faced, at the opposite edge of the road and then ran away sobbing when a woman, who had tried in her terror to hide in a lilac bush off to our right, was routed by the police and hounded past us with punches, kicks and blows from rifle butts.

The sight of the poor comrades trudging past us, of the men and women and children who were Germans like us, kindled a passionate sense of unity and a common bond in us; even the lowest, no matter how dull and sluggish he might be in his thoughts and feelings, now knew what it meant to have a Fatherland – now that it was so far from us. The sullying of our honor which we had to endure without defense filled us with a tired horror. Many, many among us would have had the strength to step forward and say: Stop! Shoot us if you must, but stop this! But they would not have been shot, they would have been beaten down, pounded with punches and kicks, spat on, cursed – and no-one managed to take that on himself voluntarily. That went beyond what we could take. The violation of dignity, the desecration of all things human that the Polish nation committed there right before our eyes while demeaning and besmirching itself in such an unspeakable, incomprehensible way – that robbed us of the last of our strength. Dully, we watched the spectacle before us. I could not form a clear thought, and my comrades felt the same. Grief, shame, dismay, fear, pity and horror weighed on us, and no-one could bear it with the strength of his soul intact.

Now we all knew what was in store for us, but even that could no longer frighten us very much.

Long Night's Journey Into Day.
The Death March of Lowicz.
Erhard Wittek