The ward held sixty-five women. Each day, a few were sent out—for interrogations and beatings, to another prison, or to their deaths. Each day, new women arrived to replace them. A factory line of torture.
Renia’s jail supervisor was vicious, a true sadist, waiting for any excuse to use her bundle of keys or whip. At any moment, she could spontaneously attack a prisoner, beating her badly. Not a day went by without her provoking an incident for absolutely no reason. When the war ends, we’ll tear her to pieces and throw her to the dogs, the women fantasized, swallowing their anger, lumps in their throats. Everything was postponed until after the war. One prisoner told Renia that before the war, the cruel supervisor and her husband had owned a little shop for combs, mirrors and toys, selling their merchandise at markets and fairs. At the beginning of the occupation, the husband died of starvation, and the supervisor escaped her house, changed her identity, and became a folksdeutsche. Her status went from impoverished widow to “German lady” in charge of five hundred prisoners. “You are Polish pigs!” she would yell while hitting them. The Gestapo liked her style.
Renia’s daily routine was both tedious and horrifying. She was woken up at six in the morning. The women went to the bathroom in groups of ten, where they bathed in the sink, in cold water, and hastily, since others were waiting. At seven, the sadistic supervisor arrived, and nobody dared be in the hallway. They all stood in formation, three to a row. The hall monitor counted them and reported the number of prisoners to her two Gestapo supervisors. Afterward, a fifty-gram slice of bread, sometimes a little jam, and a cup of black, bitter coffee. The cell doors were locked, and the prisoners sat idle and starving, the food only teasing their appetites; they counted the minutes until eleven, when they were allowed a half-hour walk in the yard. Here, they heard whip lashes and bestial screams. They saw men being taken to or from interrogation, living corpses, their eyes bloody and gouged out, their heads bandaged, hands and teeth broken, limbs twisted out of sockets, faces yellow as wax, covered with scars and wrinkles, and torn clothes showing off rotting flesh. Sometimes Renia saw dead bodies being loaded onto the buses that were taking prisoners to Auschwitz. She would have preferred to stay inside.
In the cell, silence. No one dared utter a word. Guards patrolled the hallway. Renia’s stomach ached from hunger. Each woman held a bowl. When they heard the clattering of pots, they knew it was noon. Food was served by two prisoners accused of petty crimes, accompanied by an armed guard. The others waited in a straight line. The supervisor stood at the door. Despite a hunger that made them tremble, no one pushed. “Order is first and foremost,” was Renia’s dry description of the Nazi prison system.
Her bowl was filled with watery broth and some cooked cabbage and cauliflower leaves. Insects floated on top. The women got rid of any worms they could see and ate the rest, including the leaves. “Even dogs don’t eat this kind of soup,” she wrote later. No one had spoons, so anything thicker than liquid was eaten with fingers. If a prisoner got more leaves than usual, she considered herself lucky, able to relieve her hunger for a little while. Some women got only liquid. Unfortunately, there was no one to complain to about the service, Renia remarked sarcastically. For hours after eating, she wanted to vomit up the bugs and the spoiled vegetables. Her stomach felt like a stuffed sack. And yet she was grossly unsatiated. She could feel her insides contracting. She remembered how she initially had refused the soup. But now, if only she could get more . . .
Afterward, the prisoners sat idly on benches along the wall. Waiting for supper took a lifetime. Once they were freed, the women dreamed, the first thing they’d do is to eat until they were sick. They did not fantasize about cakes or delicacies, just a loaf of bread, sausage, soup without worms. “But who among us will get to leave here alive?” Renia wondered, the knowledge that she would not sinking in.
At seven o’clock they stood in formation for supper: a hundred-gram slice of bread with margarine and black coffee. They devoured the bread and sipped coffee to feel full. At nine, bedtime. The pangs of hunger that ripped through Renia’s insides made it hard to fall asleep.
Mys?owice was cleaner than Katowice. In 1942 a fatal typhoid epidemic had broken out there due to malnutrition and unsanitary conditions. Since then, the jail was strict and provided the prisoners with mattresses—but they didn’t have enough straw filling, so the bed boards stuck into their flesh. Renia covered herself with blankets that were clean, if torn. The prisoners slept in their dresses in case the partisans attacked and they’d need to flee immediately. All night, armed gendarmes patrolled the hallway, alert to any noise. Women could never leave their cells after bedtime; Renia relieved herself in a pot.