Evening came. I could not take Lemke's and Roth's well-meant advice to lie down and sleep. My inner unrest was far too great. And so I got up to wander around the large factory yard where other comrades were walking around just like me, or stood silently in small groups. It was even more dangerous to do so now than during the day. If a guard had seen me, I would have been given a beating at the very least.

At the door to one of the sugar warehouses someone suddenly, questioningly, called me by name. I saw a man I could not recognize in the dark, even though I stepped close to him. I remembered once again how I had been relieved of my glasses. It turned out that I had met Bruno Schneider, the leading official of a large estate near Hohensalza. Delighted, we began to talk; as in all these conversations, we immediately recounted what had happened to us. In our eagerness to share our news we did not realize that more and more comrades were crowding around us, and they in turn could not know that I did not belong to their group. It was dark all around us. The entire group suddenly began to move, involuntarily I moved along with them, until suddenly I found myself standing right at the door of the warehouse. The two halves of the iron gate had been swung back just enough to make an opening at most half a meter in width; two guards each were posted to the right and left of this opening. I shied away, tried to step back, the guards roared at me, I called back that I was not even part of the warehouse group, but at that they descended on me, the other prisoners behind me became frightened and pushed me forward, I protested, received a harsh blow to my back that sent me staggering forward, in the dark I saw a rifle butt swung towards me, tried to evade it, found myself being dragged forward, and that was my salvation. "Come on, man, you can leave tomorrow morning!" Schneider had grabbed me in a powerful grip and dragged me into the building. Outside the guards were yelling, the last of the small group crowded in, pale as ghosts, and then the gates were swung closed and the opening was sealed. I was locked up in the sugar warehouse.

We knew that many Germans had been locked into these two large brick structures for days already, and we had also heard about the awful conditions said to exist in there, but because the doors were always under guard and none of us engaged a Pole in conversation unnecessarily or even came near them, since one was only ever cursed obscenely for it, I had only heard third- or fourth-hand accounts.

Now I stood in one of these warehouses myself. A wave of used-up air, a wall of stench hit me in the face, foul-smelling vapors of urine and worse, of sweat and toilet effluvium, and half-unconscious I turned back and pounded with my fists against the iron gate through which I had just been shoved in. But again Schneider pulled me back. "They'll beat you to a pulp, come on now, there's nothing to be done about it!" He took me by the arm and pulled me away from the entrance, and I followed in a daze. It took all my self-control not to give in to the choking urge to vomit.

Ahead of me – he had let go of my arm again – Schneider walked down a narrow aisle running down the center of the huge hall. Crowded rows of men of all ages squatted to the left and right of it. Their faces were dull, the looks they gave me, indifferent. I felt as though I were walking through a colony of sloths; every move these people made was unbelievably slow, dragging. Their faces were pale and drained. Some of them slept, cramped into a ball as small as they could make themselves, others on their back and with mouth wide open; still others had burrowed into the straw or at least covered their head with a jacket, a hat, a blanket, trying not to see or hear; many rasped and moaned in their sleep; others huddled together, talking softly or staring silently at each other. A pale fog of sticky miasma lay over the entire scene and the sharp scent of half-rotted straw enhanced the rest of the malodorous mixture that passed for air. Together with the dust stirred up by the many passing feet, it crept into one's airways, clung to one's mucous membranes, dried out one's tongue and soon formed a bitter crust on one's lips.

Schneider led me to his place in the second-to-last row from the outside wall. The occupants already there willingly moved over, and I sat down on the stone floor covered only by a thin layer of filthy straw. Right away my neighbor addressed me by name, and I recognized Rentmeister Ortwich, whom I had seen arrive that morning. We began to talk about our experiences to date, and as always the first question was about our friends and relatives. Schneider gestured silently at a man lying four or five places over from us. At the distance I could not recognize him. "Old man Diesing!" Ortwich said softly. "He just lies there, barely moving. If he could have spent the day outside, lying in the sun, we might have got him back on his feet. He's a little better already. The ride on the cart all but did it for him. It's ninety kilometers from Kruschwitz to here."

I reached into my pocket where I had a lemon that I had jealously guarded until now. "Give him this. He should suck on it. Maybe it'll help." The yellow fruit was passed over and I saw how one of his neighbors bent over the prostrate figure and held it to his lips over and over.

Gradually time passed with talking and observation, and eventually I ceased to notice the semisolid air in which I was sitting.

The hall was approximately sixty to seventy meters long and perhaps eighteen to twenty meters wide. Eight hundred people inhabited it. Schneider had counted the rows; each row had between eighty and eighty-five people, and there were ten rows, five on either side of the center aisle. The air vents in the room had been boarded shut or plugged with rags. In the entire huge hall there was only one open window, perhaps half a square meter in size. Opening the remaining windows was forbidden. The warehouse was locked from dusk until dawn and no-one was permitted to leave. In the morning groups of ten men were let out into the factory yard for ten minutes. They had to line up in rows of two. From early in the morning the center aisle was full of people from end to end; since only sixty people were let out per hour, it theoretically took twelve hours for everyone to get out once. Four to five hours was the average wait time. But far too many couldn't wait that long. The straw had been piled a little higher in the corners, and anyone for whom the wait was too long had to answer the call of nature in a corner on the bare stone floor.

At first the Poles had locked men and women together in these warehouses; by the time I arrived, the women had been separated and moved to another building. It was an example of malicious torment with a particularly low motive.

The rest of us spent our nights outside, so why could the Poles not simply have left the doors to these two warehouses open so the prisoners could go in and out as needed? The entire grounds were fenced in with barbed wire, countless armed guards stood at the ready, a lieutenant had announced that machine guns were in position on the roofs of the factory buildings – so why did they need this special prison within the prison?

I must not forget to mention that the latrine that had been dug for us on the factory square was located right next to the wire fence that divided us from the women, and the women's corresponding facility was also right near the fence. Therefore we and our women had to exhibit to each other, as it were, those activities which everyone normally keeps private. Further, the wooden fence from which the Jews watched us was also right nearby.

I had been a half hour at my new place in the sugar warehouse and had tried to get used to the idea of staying until morning amongst this teeming mass of dully staring, sleeping, or tiredly wandering people when suddenly a horrible scream rang through the hall, a long-drawn-out cry in which fear and animal rage warred for predominance in dreadful tones. There was suddenly a dead silence in the huge hall, those sleeping or dozing on the straw sat up, pale-faced, but before anyone could even ask or say anything, the same piercing voice rang out again from the same spot. It cried in German:

"Kill him, beat him to death, the damned dog!"

Horror gripped my throat. But now we heard other voices, four or five people all spoke at once, and then a clear and very calm deep voice carried through the hall: "Stay where you are, comrades, go back to sleep. Someone was just dreaming here. We woke him up, there's nothing to worry about." From the tone of the voice I could tell that the comrade who had said this was deliberately speaking longer than necessary so that the explanation he gave so calmly could ease the fear that had seized everyone after that horrible scream. But I saw eyes around me shining feverishly, and sure enough it was only a few seconds before there was a hoarse, stunned cry: "My God, my God, how will all this end, what are they going to do to us, not one of us is going to get out of here alive!" The voice died down into soft sobbing, it sounded like a woman's weeping but there were only men in this hall. A harsh voice said, loud and firm: "Shut up, man, pull yourself together. All of us will get out alive, we've done nothing wrong, we are innocent and unarmed. Don't drive the others crazy."

Schneider took my arm, I looked over at him and followed a gesture of his hand with my eyes. Four men were walking through the rows of the resting prisoners to the corner where the screaming had come from. They were prison inmates from Wloclawek, Schneider told me, they were placed with the Germans here and had already made all sorts of nasty threats. "All of you need to have your throats cut," they had said. "Just wait until the march begins, you'll see." And then, Schneider said, they had followed up with those same epithets I had no doubt also heard: Hitler-swine, traitors, dog corpses...

"Now they're going to ensure order over there!" he whispered. "Be careful. There are more of their kind in here."

In the uncertain light of the lamp the four who had got up to "ensure order" pushed ruthlessly through the figures lying or huddling on the floor, they stepped on or kicked the occasional one, there were harsh words, they replied with threats. I could not see clearly what was happening, but ever since I had been deprived of my glasses it seemed as though another sort of sense had developed. Foggily, I saw a man jerking up from the floor, there was roaring and yelling as the inmates had run into other criminals whom they seemed to have mistaken for Germans, and suddenly a wild fight was raging. It was strange: voices of jeering agitation and incitement chimed in from all sides in Polish, as did angry shouts of "quiet!", but silence fell amongst the Germans. They let the Poles beat each other up, and watched as they made up again later, but everywhere, the Germans laid back down on their thin layer of dirty straw to sleep – even those who had wandered around restlessly until then.

That night, in a bout of despair, Karl Lehr from Kruschwitz tried to commit suicide by slitting his throat with a knife he had borrowed from a neighbor. He was prevented in his endeavor by Dr. Studzinski, a doctor from Graudenz, German through and through despite his Polish name; the doctor read Lehr the riot act and then carefully bandaged him up. The next morning, Lehr staggered around the hall as if delirious. We feared that he would die, but he recovered and lived to see his home again.

The unbreathable air in that room, the feeling of being mercilessly locked up and cut off from the outside world, hunger and thirst – all this gnawed at the powers of resistance of these eight hundred people who were stacked beside each other so many like pieces of driftwood, who never got to see a Polish officer or higher-ranking police official whom one could have asked anything or made a complaint to. The boorish guards at the door knew nothing and replied to all questions with curse words or even punches.

The night passed uneasily. Nightmares shuddered through the souls of the sleepers. Pain and confusion gave rise to ever more fearful specters. They felt abandoned, beyond all help, defenseless in the hands of a hateful mob. Even those who could draw on defiance and strength of soul during their waking hours were at the mercy of natural fears while they slept. Whispers, bare breath of words, floated shivering through the stuffy air, drowned out every now and again by a sudden shriek of terror or by an uncontrolled whimper that spoke of naked, trembling fear. The people tossed and turned on the straw; sleep was not a kind friend to them, it amplified their torment. And over it all, the hazy evaporate from this mass of people hung heavily like a malodorous fog.

I slept little that night. I was plagued by terrible imaginings and fears and yet not willing to surrender into a sleep that would give complete power to the vague terrors that beset me. For as long as I was awake, I was master of my words, and strove to remain master of my thoughts as well. But my eyes burned with exhaustion.

Eventually I must have fallen asleep after all, for I woke with a start from a deep unconsciousness. A wild noise had woken me. In waking I felt as though I was choking, floating in muddy water laced with slimy snares, and had to fight for air and light. I even almost went through the motions of swimming to free myself from the seething uproar swirling around me, from the terrible specters and the whirling of dust and stench.

Schneider called to me, he said it was beginning, we had to line up, we were to be marched off. And then he grabbed me by the shoulders: "We're running away again already! The Prussians are coming, man, the Prussians, what else could it be! Hurry, man, come on!"

I leaped to my feet. The huge hall was filled with yelling, noise, a seething hubbub of shouting, running people. From the few windows, narrow rays of the crack of dawn quietly traced their lightened patterns across the bedlam in the room. The guards screamed and roared. The alarm call must have only just been given, but the crowd had answered with a single united shout.

The agitation settled quickly. While the first few groups already left the hall through the large iron gate, we stood waiting and watching. It was important to find out what the Poles planned to do with us and how we had best act. I had only one desire, to find my way back to my group, and I resolved to do it as cleverly as I could.

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