After Forty-Eight Hours My Bible Was Returned to Me…

…it had been searched to see whether I had smuggled inside it a saw, razor blades, or the like.

For the next twelve days the cell door was opened only for bringing food in and putting bucket out.  No one said a word to me.  I was told nothing about the reason for my detention, or how long it would last.

I gathered from various remarks–and it was confirmed later–that I was lodged in in the section for the most serious cases, where the condemned prisoners lay shackled.

The first night in my cell I could not sleep much, because in the next cell a prisoner wept loudly for several hours on end; no one took any notice.

(Mary Bosanquet, The Life and Death of Dietrich Bonhoeffer, 247)

This was the beginning of Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s life in prison.