Some 1,800 inscriptions and drawings done by prisoners have survived on the cell walls. They were written with pencil or chalk, sometimes even with lipstick; or scratched into the cell walls with iron nails, screws or even the prisoner's fingernails. The former Gestapo prison and the prisoners’ cell wall scribblings, are perhaps the most immediate and powerful reminders of the Nazi horrors linked to the EL-DE building.
Overcrowding and sleeping
»Sometimes we were 23, 24 people in the cell and then again six or seven. That came in waves. There we were in the cell with three, four or five – and suddenly the door opened – and a whole group came in. And on the following day the interroga - tions took place and the cell was empty again. Most of the people who were led away didn’t come back. They were gone. I didn’t see them again. We slept on the floor, sitting: I was the second or third. And then there was the next person sitting between my legs and then the next. That’s how we sat and that’s how we slept, too. Our heads leaning on the shoulder of the man in front of us.« (Hans Weinsheimer)
»I came into a room that already held about 30 people. The room was totally overcrowded. There was no way to sit or lie down. If I remember correctly, there was just a barrel into which we could relieve ourselves. There was no window, no light, it was pitch dark. Initially, I was in chains. We believed that they would just kill us there, leaving us to die there without food, drink or ventilation in the heat. We were groaning with pain. Five days and nights I spent like that, without getting any sleep.« (Ferdi Hülser)
»Meanwhile, the preoccupying question is, how we nine people are supposed to spend the night in this narrow cell? Of course there is no blanket. The Gestapo could not care less about accommodation for the ‘scum’ of humankind. So we have to make do as well as we can. The air is unbearable and I can hardly breathe. Finally, nine prisoners are lying on the bare ground, curled up into miserable lumps. Utmost effort has evidently been required to ‘arrange’ so many people on such a small space at all. I do not know how we did it, but somehow we managed. As I am the oldest, I am gallantly offered the one space on the pallet. Oh this pallet! It is as hard as a rock and just large enough for one. But what does it matter? Given the lack of space, two people have to share it. A solid, thick-set man is put next to me, as I am very lean.« (Leo Schwering)
»But we were lying like this: three on the floor, two on the pallet and one was sitting on a chair. The weakest were sleeping on the pallet. Nata [Tulasiewicz] was so poorly all the time, so lost, then she was sleeping on the pallet most of the time. Even during the day she lay down there. As long as we were six, mostly Nata was sleeping on the pallet, sometimes Janka, but rarely, and one of the younger girls next to Nata. The three of us slept underneath the window. We spread our coats and slept on them. Next to the pallet, there stood a rickety chair and Joanna Domagalska sat on that chair almost every night because she couldn’t sleep.« (Stefania Balcerzak)
Toilets
»A weird stench permeated the cells. Then I spotted the source. In the corner, right next to the door there is a bucket where prisoners could relieve themselves. During the day, no one was allowed to step out, not even if someone was sick. You can imagine that the inmates were suffering under such conditions. To be honest, it was very hard for me, initially, to step towards the bucket. But at the end of the day, I had no choice. It was a new, personal humiliation, which was to be followed by other, much worse ones. It has to be said that the fellow inmates stepped back a little, out of respect for the ‘new arrivals’, insofar this was possible at all in such a restricted space. I appreciated such tact, and nonetheless, I had reached a new level of humiliation – even though it was not to be the last.« (Leo Schwering)
»There was a bucket in the cell, in the corner, and there you could do your business. We emptied that bucket in the morning and in the evening, when we were allowed to use the facilities. As we were only allowed to go to the toilet in the morning and in the evening. We established a rota for emptying out the bucket. Her in the morning, the next in the evening. We had such duties.« (Stefania Balcerzak)
Hygiene
»In the morning, we were woken at six. Then we were marched to the toilet. That was just one room with one toilet and three sinks. We went there one after another, one cell at once. After supper, the cells were opened once more so that we could use the facilities and wash our faces.« (Stefania Balcerzak)
»During the four or six weeks I spent in the prison, I didn’t have a single shower. I did, however, wash myself. There were sinks in there, too. Four or five taps, like a trough, which caught the running water. There I washed in the morning. The only ones who were allowed to have a shower were those who were dirty as pigs, they had to take a shower and then they were doused in insecticide – or whatever that was – and then they came back in.« (Hans Weinsheimer)
Food
»And because I was a young boy, 15 at the time, I was taken outside and had the honour to distribute sandwiches and pour coffee. That went: cell 1, out, locked up, then cell 2. That went cell by cell. They always came outside. In the morning there was breakfast, for lunch they got a big pot of soup from a field kitchen – all watered down – and a slice of bread to go with that and in the evening there was a little something again. Either tea or ersatz coffee and two thin slices of bread, thinly spread with butter.« (Hans Weinsheimer)
»Then I also saw what was for breakfast. It consisted in an awful ersatz coffee and two large slices of dry black bread. It was set up right in front of the door of each cell, nine times! ... Meanwhile lunchtime had arrived. The keys were rattling, and we stepped out to receive the food. In front of the cells, white pails were lined up, filled with a litre of vegetable stew that, upon closer inspection, turned out to be cabbage and potatoes. Our jailer Sch., who had confiscated my belongings in the morning, shouted: ‘pick up!’ We all grabbed a pail and shrunk back into the cell.« (Leo Schwering)
»For breakfast we had black coffee and two slices of dry bread. For lunch there was a soup that was delivered from [the Klingelpütz], the central prison but nothing to drink. There were different soups, with different sorts of vegetables, sometimes a little pasta – that was the good soup. Sometimes there were also potatoes in it, but it was always watery. For lunch we usually got bread and jam and black coffee.« (Stefania Balcerzak)
Interrogation and torture
»Yes, that was all about resistance. I was kept as politically objectionable. And then I always got: ‘You communist pig, you Jewish pig’ from Manthey or Fink [Gestapo officers], I can’t remember precisely – but that was what they accused me of. Then they always wanted to know if my father was still active in the KPD and where they always met and such. I always told them: ‘I don’t know. I’m only 15 years old. He never took me with him.’ Of course I knew where they went to – but I didn’t say anything. Therefore I was always beaten. I got one right in the face, then, or they hit me in the eye. You know what it was like with the interrogation.« (Hans Weinsheimer)
»We were taken down to the basement, we were still laughing, then. We had no idea, yet, what was waiting for us, down there. We didn’t know that it was a prison. When we came down, somebody was already shouting: ‘Get in line, according to height!’ We still knew that from school. And then Hoegen arrived [Gestapo officer]. I will never forget that man. He was standing there in front of us, his hands behind his back and holding a dog whip. He looked at the first person and then asked why he was here. He said he didn’t know. Then he hit him with the whip. Regardless of whether one of us said he knew why he was here or not, we all got the whip. After this procedure was over, we were locked up in a cell. You are held in there, with sixteen to eighteen people. It’s so packed that you can’t sit or lie down. We all thought that they only wanted to intimidate us. None of us could imagine that it was going to be much worse.« (Fritz Theilen)
»Finally I was brought to the basement stairs. An SS officer greeted me with: ‘So, why are you here, I’m sure you are innocent, too.’ When I said: ‘I don’t know what I’m supposed to have done’, he kicked me and I rolled down the stairs. After I had gotten back to my feet downstairs, I saw that someone was washing next to me. The man was covered in blood, he’d just undergone their ‘treatment’.« (Jean Jülich)
»I hear a female voice. Apparently, this time the admission isn’t going altogether smoothly. There’s a fight. The voices are getting more and more constrained. The ‘new girl’ is resisting something. The scene is getting louder and louder. A female voice shouts: ‘I’m not letting you do this to me, what do you want?’ Then a male voice. I hear cussing, swearwords I can’t repeat. Someone is being pushed hard against the door. It’s the woman and she’s bickering: ‘That’s how you treat a German woman?’ There is a scuffle on the aisle of the female section of the prison. You can hear blows and screams. The man’s voice is getting rougher, more violent; you can feel that something horrible is going to be done to her. Indeed! Suddenly the sound of someone being hit with some object, blows being inflicted on a body. I want to cover my ears; that is how disgusting everything is. A deafening scream follows. I can’t help but visualise the scenes that I can’t see. Even more eerie and violent than what is probably happening... Almost all prisoners have woken up; we are disturbed despite everything we have already been through in this dark dungeon. Fresh blows, someone is being picked up ... more pounding, you can hear the impact ... finally everything fades out into forlorn whimpering. A door is slammed. One more victim doesn’t make a difference! Corporal punishment still rules, here!« (Leo Schwering)
»My fellow prisoners claimed that there was a separate room in the cellar [i.e. the lower basement] for ‘serious’ cases, and this has also been confirmed by external parties. Whether it is true or not, I believed it at the time. Why would the man be leaving, otherwise? Today I know that there was in fact a regular torture chamber. (...) After some time, the fellow came back, resumed his place and the interrogation continued. The same game; the same approach; the same procedure. But the victim had already weakened, his voice, even the constant moans sounded more tired. He was begging! It was heartwrenching. Only utter desperation could make a victim plead like that, beg without restraint. It could have softened a stone. (...) What crimes! Another two times, the interrogation was continued in the ‘chambre separée’, then – his work was done. This monster was satisfied. His victim complied; probably he admitted anything the villain wanted. He could write the report, more proof for his excellent track record in such cases! The poor fellow was broken. I experienced all steps of the mental destruction of a human being. But it got much worse, still. I had to witness the gradual yet utter destruction of the moral values, the innate, ethical sense of right and wrong and the natural distinction between good and evil of human beings. The victim would admit what he or she knew was wrong!« (Leo Schwering)
»Nata [Tulasiewicz] was interrogated three times in the lower basement. When Nata went downstairs, we could hear her scream. She came back bleeding.« (Stefania Balcerzak)
»Once, when I went down to the lower cellar, a door leading into one of the rooms of the lower cellar was open and I looked inside. There, standing at the wall to the left was a strange kind of trestle with four legs, up on top of it was a board and leather straps were hanging down the side. I was not able to see what it was used for, we normally were not allowed to leave the cells, the only times we came down was during the air raid alerts.« (Hans Weinsheimer)
»I was interrogated in the male section of this prison [in Brauweiler] and there I lost two teeth after I was hit in the face.« (Teofila Turska)
»On the same day, Hoegen [a Gestapo officer] ordered to tie me up and I was put in a cell. The next day, I was taken to the interrogation room. Hoegen tried to force me to confess. As I refused, I was tied up and they put me, upside down, on a chair, Hoegen lifted my skirt and beat me terribly with a thick, wooden club. The abuse lasted from nine in the morning until six in the evening, only interrupted for three quarters of an hour – at lunchtime. I was constantly beaten and when I lost consciousness they poured water over me. Occasionally, Hirschfeld [a Gestapo officer ] kicked me in the back of my neck with his boot. At the beginning of this ‘interrogation’, as I was screaming with pain, Hirschfeld gagged me with a towel. When I fell off the chair unconscious, Hoegen grabbed me by my feet and dragged me across the floor, face down, so that blood started running from my mouth and my nose. I was addressed exclusively as ‘sow’ and ‘whore’ by Hoegen. I find it inconceivable how a human being can abuse a defenceless woman like that and I have to add that Hoegen undoubtedly enjoyed it and got a sadistic thrill out of it.« (Käthe Brinker)
Bombings
»Then the Allied Forces started their air raids on Cologne. I wasn’t afraid of dying, but of being crippled. The bars shut us out from the world. We were left to our fate. That time was the worst. In the night, we were woken by the rending screeches of the sirens, destroying the piece of forgetfulness we found in sleep. We heard bombs falling and the noise of explosions. It was a nightmare. The only refuge for the prisoners was in prayer. You could hear it through the walls of the cells, in many languages – ‘pray for us, have mercy upon us’ – and the words of prayer held calm, oblivion and sacrifice.« (Teofila Turska)
Solidarity among prisoners
»Then the fellow inmates became more and more outgoing, the closer we got to nightfall. We had become used to one another. The difference between Germans and foreigners becomes more and more blurred. We only have one common enemy, who threatens us all, we are one more and more closely knit community.« (Leo Schwering)
»Given that we weren’t allowed to go anywhere, we tried to fill our days in the cells with meaning. In the morning we celebrated Mass along with with Nata [Tulasiewicz], then, each of us tried to remember a poem or a song and performed that, but only funny ones, so as not to lose courage. ... We made playing cards from a piece of cardboard and we told each other our fortunes – whose turn it is to be interrogated, what there’s going to be for lunch, where we’d have to go. Between meals we prayed, sang. And then we made drawings. Someone always gave us something, a pencil or something like that, and then we drew. Entire mornings went like that. We knelt in front of the pallet and drew. In the afternoon we played. We sang a lot, talked, joked around a bit, even a theatre play. We all contributed our little bits and pieces and collected them. And in between, when the door creaked, we shook with fear – which of us are they taking now? We lived through hell, met many different people, and despite the misery and horrible things we also have pleasant memories. Sometimes, when I talk about that time, some people don’t believe me that we were able to laugh on occasion, and yes, it was true.« (Stefania Balcerzak)
Executions
»The horrible days of the Gestapo detention began. During the first days of January 1945, they started to call out family names in the cells. We were 40 people. Initially I thought that they were to be sent to prison or penal camps, but we overheard that (you could hear what was said outside) things were taken from the prisoners and a girl cried out loud when a ring was ripped off her finger, then we understood that they weren’t supposed to go to camps but would be killed. We heard that the Gestapo was killing our fellow countrymen. One of the inmates, who’d been here for a while, told us that, twice a month, precisely at the same time, prisoners were executed. And that was true. They were executed for resistance against Nazism, because they had escaped from the camps; girls were killed for the same reasons and also because they had connections to the illegals, who lived in the ruins.« (Askold Kurow)
»I learned about the hangings by witnessing them myself and I was told about it in the air raid shelter. When executions took place, we were required to go to the bunker. I was on the state police premises at the time because I had to fetch drinking water for personal use from a tap in the court, close to the garage. For this reason I went to the inner court of the EL-DE House on several occasions. ... The square where the executions took place was not closed off by a wall. That means passers-by could see inside from the street. When executions took place, however, a row of state police officers blocked off the view. According to my estimation, all officers of the department had to be there for these chains. ... Once – I believe it was on the day of the first execution ever – I heard a terrible racket. You could tell from the screams that these were people facing their death. Except for unintelligible words I can only remember that I could make out the words: ‘Heil Stalino’. After that I climbed on a heap of rubble in Schwalbengasse and could see the gallows with three executed people. They were two men and one woman. They were clothed and were dangling by their ropes, lifeless. Their hands and feet were bound. The scaffold consisted in a cross beam of about ten metres length, resting on two perpendicular poles. ... The third time I was forced to witness a crime was when I wanted to fetch a cup of coffee from the basement kitchen of house 21. In the court of house 21, a large number of corpses were stored; they’d just been cut off the gallows. They were waiting to be collected by service vehicles from the municipal rubbish collection to be taken to the Westfriedhof (West Cemetery). Someone noticed that the body of one girl that had been executed was still moving. Then a uniformed Gestapo officer pulled his gun and shot the girl in the neck.« (Wilhelmine Hömens, 1967 as a witness in the trial)
»On 1st March 1945, a State Police command walked 70– 80 girls and about 30 men from the Klingelpütz, all bound to each other, via Burgmauer to the state police premises. They were mainly Germans and some workers from the East. These people were all hung on the state police premises, as I didn’t see them being taken back but noticed that about five pm, three lorries with corpses were driven to the cemetery.« (Wilhelmine Hömens, 1947 as a witness to British investigating judges)
»From the back window [of the flat in Schwalbengasse] I could see inside the court of the state police premises. Starting about December [1944] or beginning of January [1945], I often heard screams and shooting from the premises. I wanted to see what was going on there so I once looked from my window into the court. There I saw that three people were hanging from gallows. They were three men and judging by the clothes, they were civilians. The officers who performed the execution I didn’t know. There were a number of officers standing around the gallows, but most of them had their backs turned to me.« (Mathias Heurer, witness in the trial against former Gestapo officers)
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