Heiderose Gläß

"In ’42, he was drafted to the Wehrmacht. To the basic military training in Antwerp, near Belgium. No pardon, in Belgium, near Antwerp. For his basic military training. But there, they were all political prisoners in the punishment battalion, or in training for the punishment battalion 999. There, they were mostly political prisoners, in this punishment battalion. It must have been a very harsh basic training. He himself wrote in stories that people, who tried to escape, were immediately executed. That they, as trainees, had to witness these executions, that they had to watch as deserters were shot. And that their commanding officer said, “Watch closely. If one of you tries to escape, I’ll be happy to put him down myself.” So it must have been very harsh, during the training. They had to complete long marches and on the parade ground, extremely harsh measures were taken frequently."

"This was in ’35, that he came to the “camp for protective custody” Lichtenburg near Prettin. It is, what you would call nowadays, one of the early concentration camps. It was in a castle and today it is a memorial. So he arrived in this prison. It must have been… pardon, not a prison… in this concentration camp. It must have been very primitive, in many aspects. It was a castle, there were big halls: thirty to forty people slept in such a hall, on straw mattresses. There were plank beds and straw mattresses. The entire hygienic situation was very primitive. There were big buckets standing around, where they had to relieve themselves at night. And in the morning, a prisoner had to carry the buckets downstairs to the latrine, that was in the courtyard. So basically, a large dung pile. There must have been, this is what he said as well, cases of abuse where the SS shoved a prisoner in the latrine. Or when they carried the buckets with its various contents downstairs, they shoved them down the staircases. Other than that, they were forced to work. There was a market garden and different workshops where the prisoners worked."

"He was then brought to the police station in Breslau [Wrocław], no first to Waldenburg and later to Breslau. In Waldenburg, he was interrogated. In later records, he describes the day of his arrest in a very detailed way. This interrogation… I sometimes read it for school groups and they always smirk when my father wrote, “In there sat four coppers. One copper had a pencil, the other stood next to him with a bull whip.” That they already used those words back then can be a bit bemusing. But well, all jokes aside. He continues to describe how he was interrogated, how he was questioned: where he got the newspapers, to whom he distributed the newspapers. And he always said, “Him, I gave one. No, I didn’t give him one. Oh, I don’t know anymore, to whom I gave what. This one gave the newspaper back to me and I burned it.” Then one of his comrades entered the room and the interrogator asked the one, who was entering, “Did you give him newspapers?” – “Yes, I gave him some.” – “Did he return these newspapers to you?” – “No.” And every time they noticed discrepancies between the testimonies of my father and this other comrade, they realised that my father was lying. And he was thrown over a stool, as he writes himself, and was beaten with the bull whip. So it was almost like torture. He was asked again and again. It must have been very brutal. There were later reports that I only heard in conversation with my sister, that my mother received the bloody underpants from prison, that she was supposed to wash and bring him a new pair of underpants, when he continued to be imprisoned. These interrogations lasted for two or three days. My father was quite distraught. After the first day of interrogations, he writes that he sat in his cell and cried because he did not remain steadfast, because he sometimes said, “Yes, I did that.”"