When I went back to bed I saw this man lock the two doors leading from our dormitory to the outside toilet rooms, and for half an hour the men were obliged to use the basin at the drinking place for sanitary convenience!
When the doors were finally unlocked, supposing it to be the signal for us to get up, I went with hat and shoes in my hands and sat down in a chair by the door. When the attendant to whom I had spoken earlier, came up the stairs and saw me there, without a moment’s warning he seized me by the wrists, jerked me to my feet, and giving me a shove thrust me in a most brutal manner through the door, exclaiming:
“Now, will you stay in there until you are told to come out?”
I shuddered to think what would have happened if I had been a half-starved boy, and had resented that man’s insult. Doubtless I would have been beaten into insensibility.
Finally, after another half hour, he yelled from the doorway:
“Hey, there, you fellers, get up and get out of here!”
Quickly we obeyed and were driven down into the cellar. From there we were driven to the woodyard, where we were made to saw wood for two hours. The strong men sawed their stint in much less time than the weak ones. For the latter it must have meant two long hours indeed, weakened as many of them were by a chronic hunger and disease, and having gone supperless to bed and being as yet without breakfast.
When I had finished paying for my “entertainment,” I was again driven into a place to put my saw and saw-buck away, and then I was allowed to go to breakfast into a cheerless, overcrowded room; even at this stage of the game I was driven to three different places before I was allowed to be seated.
They brought me some bean soup with beans swimming in it, so bitter with salt I could not eat it; a water cracker so hard I could not bite it, and a dirty slice of bread, that one of the indigent, but willing workers, carried in his soiled hands and dropped by my plate.
A very hungry looking young man who sat beside me tasted his soup and exclaimed: