Weary, they lay down on the dirty straw mattresses. But they couldn’t lie for long: fleas started biting them, painfully. They scratched uncontrollably. In the dark, they hunted for bugs, crushing them on their skin. The stench was suffocating. Eventually they lay down on the bare ground.
At midnight, a dozen women were placed into their cell. These were “tenured” prisoners, en route to Germany, just there for the night. Young and old, each had her own story. One German woman had been sentenced to five years in jail for having a French fiancé; three years in, she was being transferred to hard labor. Two young girls cried nonstop. They’d been in Germany working for peasants who overworked and starved them, so they’d escaped. They spent nine months in Warsaw until a neighbor turned them in; they too were going to hard labor. Two elderly women had been caught on a train transporting liquor and pork fat. They didn’t even know their sentence; they’d been jailed for a year and a half, and this was their sixth prison. Another frail, older woman had been jailed for months because her son had evaded the draft to the German army. Her gentle, pained gestures stirred Renia’s heart.
Despite their hardships, Renia envied these women. Hard labor was a dream compared with the torture she was about to face.
“What are you in for?” the women asked Renia and Ilza. “You’re so young.”
“We tried to steal across the border and were caught.”
“Oh, for that you’ll only get six months,” the women comforted them. “They’ll take you to work in Germany.”
They all lay on the ground like sardines, covered by blankets damp with strangers’ sweat. Some of the women were filthy from weeks of prison transfers. Renia scratched—she’d already caught lice. The women kept the light on to protect from the fleas, who felt freer in the dark. Still, they kept biting. Renia could not sleep.
By dawn, the women were gone. Renia and Ilza were covered in red dots left by the insects, which were now crawling all over their clothes. “At least we have something to occupy ourselves with,” Renia, darkly optimistic, later wrote, “hunting the fleas.”
Eight o’clock. Bread, coffee, bathroom. Renia met the young wife of a Polish officer who was suspected of anti-German activities. She resembled a skeleton, hardly able to drag her feet. She was to be hanged in a few weeks. Her only hope: that the war ended first. Her husband was dead. What would become of her three young children?
Another Polish woman in the bathroom told Renia that her sister had been decapitated a few days ago, in this very prison, for illegally slaughtering a pig. She left behind seven children. There had been another in her belly.
As they were talking, the evil key keeper approached, like the angel of death. She was known to smash prisoners on the head with her bundle of keys. They became quiet.
Through the meshed windows, the women could make out the men’s jail nearby and the gaunt male faces. They bent over when the supervisors passed to make it seem like they hadn’t been looking, curious, desperate. Near the prison, they knew, was the area where the hangmen carried out the death sentence—usually by decapitation. Not a day passed without several executions. Farewells from family and friends were not allowed; neither was a confession. The jail prided itself on its medieval techniques.
After lunch, Renia and her fellow captives washed and were clothed in prison uniforms. Ilza seemed happy, hoping that the Gestapo had forgotten about them. Perhaps they’d just stay in jail for a few months, wait it out until the war was over. The girls sat in their cell all day long, looking at one another with disbelief. They were actual prisoners, wearing long burlap dresses, underwear, and blouses made of patches upon patches. Every piece of clothing displayed the Katowice prison stamp.
Night arrived, and with it, the day’s tensions slackened. The Gestapo didn’t work after hours. But then there were the fleas. Renia dozed off. Suddenly she awoke and couldn’t believe her eyes. Ilza was trying to hang herself. She’d used the belt from her dress. But the belt tore under her weight. She fell.