It didn’t surprise me: I knew what nerves of steel police officers can have, able to sleep through the night on standby on a hard bed while some drunk who’s just been brought in is raving deliriously in the cell next door, or some woman high on alcohol is bawling out obscenities. So I could well imagine that my blue-uniformed friend out there in his front office was taking a quiet afternoon nap while I was making all this racket, especially as this was the first really fine and warm afternoon of the spring. But I carried on hammering and shouting all the same; it was a way of passing the time.

I was right in the middle of one of these hammering and hollering sessions when suddenly the cell door opened without warning, and a man in a blue uniform was standing there in front of me. But it was not the same man I had seen earlier. ‘What’s all this noise about, then?’ he inquired mildly, and without any real interest. ‘First of all, I demand a decent cell and not a shit-hole like this!’ I shouted in fury. ‘And secondly I demand some lunch! I am here in protective custody, and I have a right to insist on that!’

‘Well then, just be happy that you’ve got such a right!’ he replied, slamming the door shut and sliding the bolt home. Through the sound of my renewed angry bellowing I could hear him quietly giggling in the corridor.

The hours crept past, spent partly in studying the pornographic scribblings on the wall, partly in kicking up more din. I had to do something with my time, after all. I’d have liked to take a look out of the window, and get a little fresh air after this noisome stench. But in order to pull myself up to the window I’d have had to come into contact with the wall, and the thought of that was just too revolting. Then again, I was quite sure that they planned to do something else with me before nightfall, and at the time I just couldn’t believe that they would dare to leave me sitting (or rather standing) in this hole for the entire night. After all, we were living in a country under the rule of law, and a dirty trick like that would cost them dear. Child that I was, I still didn’t get it: since January 1933 Germany had ceased to be a country under the rule of law, and was now a police state pure and simple, where those in charge decided what was lawful and what was not. But on this occasion my instinct was right, and as it was starting to get dark my cell door opened again. ‘Come with me!’ he said, and led me to the front office of the police station, where he handed me over to a man in a grey uniform with the words ‘This is the man.’ Then he turned on his heel and promptly dismissed me from his mind for good. ‘Come with me’, said the man in the grey uniform, and I thought: ‘I wonder where your fate is taking you now’, and followed him. But we didn’t go far, just across the street to a red building that bore the legend ‘Courthouse’. ‘Aha!’ I thought to myself, ‘the courthouse jail – at least it can’t be any worse!’ We entered the building and went into an office, where an elderly, decrepit-looking man with moth-eaten hair was sitting chewing on his pen. ‘This is the man’, said my escort; the lexicon of social intercourse around here seemed somewhat impoverished. The clerk gave me a sidelong look, searched at length through a great stack of files, but in the end decided to plump for a single sheet of paper lying on the desk in front of him. ‘There!’ he said.

I unfolded the letter. It was from the district council leader for the Lebus district, and informed me in a single sentence that he had ordered my arrest on the grounds that I was involved in a ‘conspiracy against the person of the Führer’.

‘I deny the charge!’ I protested. ‘That’s complete and utter nonsense! I have never been involved in any conspiracy, and certainly not against the person of the Führer. I’m not even interested in politics . . .’

‘That’s nothing to do with us’, said the clerk evenly, and scratched his ear. ‘We’re only here to process the arrest order. Is there anything else?’

‘Then I’d like to contact my lawyer immediately!’ I said. ‘You can write to him’, replied the clerk, and handed me a sheet of notepaper and an envelope. ‘Anything else?’

‘I can’t think of anything right now .