by Max Ciampoli
A voice, amplified by a microphone, came from behind the light. “What is your last name?”
“Carbonell,” I answered.
“How do you spell it?” the voice asked.
“C-a-r-b-o-n-e-l-l.”
“What is your first name?”
“Michel.”
“Where were you born?”
“In Oran.”
Then the voice asked, “Where is Oran?”
I decided to provoke the man to test what he was made of. “Monsieur, you don’t know your geography.”
In a furious voice, the man blurted out, “Answer the question!”
“Since you don’t know, I’ll tell you. It is in Algeria, North Africa.”
“What is the closest city?”
I adopted a patronizing tone and replied, “Since you don’t know where Oran is, what difference does it make what city is closest to it?” Not giving him the time to respond, I said, “All right, I’ll continue your geography lesson—no charge. The closest city is Algiers. Algiers is just north of the Sahara desert. And all of this territory is a département of France.”
The man reacted to my answer and said sarcastically, “You think you’re funny, don’t you? What is your religion?”
“For me, your questions are not ‘catholic,’ but I am.”
He asked, “Where are your parents?”
“I have no idea.”
“Why don’t you know where your parents are?”
I was getting exasperated with these questions. “Because I left the house at the age of seven,” I responded.
“Did you return?”
Then I said in Italian, “You’re breaking my balls.”
He reprimanded me. “Speak clearly.”
I retorted, “You should ask for a translation from your friend Mussolini!”
The man was not rattled. “Answer the last question.”
I mimicked him. “Answer the last question. Oh, excuse me, for a moment I thought I was a parrot. No, I didn’t return.”
“How old are you?”
“I was born in 1922. How is your math?”
“Where were you born?”
I was trying to irritate him. “You have a short memory. I already told you, I was born in Oran.”
A man approached with a very thick bath towel in his hands. He dunked the towel in the basin of water, backed up, and with a lot of force, whipped me on both sides of the face, hard enough to dislocate my jaw, but it didn’t. What it actually did was to knock the cap off my tooth. The cyanide pill was loose in my mouth. I had to catch it with my tongue! I kept trying to get it as they were talking. I wasn’t concentrating on what they were saying. I just kept trying to get that pill back into the hole in my tooth with my tongue.
I could hear the words of the interrogator again. “Have a little respect. You know better than to talk to me like that! Where are your manners? You’re not in a position to be joking around because you are the prisoner here—not me. We can do whatever we want with you. We can kill you right away, or we can torture you slowly until you are ready to give us the information we want.” While he was lecturing, I was able to get the pill back into my tooth, and then the cap. Whew!
Another voice came from behind the light ordering two soldiers to get the battery. “We’re going to change tactics now,” the voice said. “We’ll see if he becomes more willing to talk. We’ll also see if he loses some of his insolence. I believe he will become a little less jovial when we put the electrodes on his testicles and turn on the battery!”
They wheeled over another table with a six-volt battery on it. It looked like the rheostat on the Lionel train set that the raja of Kapurthala gave me at the age of five while visiting my parents. He gave me a lot of presents and, more important, kind attention. I never forgot him for that.
“Cut off his pants!” jolted me from my reverie back to reality. Two men took out knives and cut my pants off. Another man took the two electric wires in his hands and held them in front of my face, his eyes gleaming with pleasure. He touched the two wires together, which created a lot of sparks. “This burns the eyes very effectively,” he said, fiendishly. “Should I try?” I said nothing. I decided to make no more jokes.
“Spread his legs apart and attach them with leather straps so I will have the pleasure of easy access to his testicles.”
I was thinking back to my training. I had been given a course on how to withstand electric shock. The instructor had us all join hands, himself included. Then he put his hand on the battery wire and told his assistant to turn the battery on. The current went through us all and we shook uncontrollably. Slowly, the assistant increased the intensity of the current until the instructor told him to stop. Then that would be it for the day. The next day, the intensity was increased so that we would become more accustomed to it.
“Now we are going to have a good time,” said the man with the wires. He clipped a wire to each testicle, turned, and walked toward the rheostat.
I was thinking, “I’d better exaggerate my response.” So, when he turned on the battery and gave me a small charge, I shook especially hard, and yelled, “Stop, stop, stop.” After a few seconds, the Gestapo increased the charge. I screamed louder and shook more. “Tell me when you’ve had enough,” he said.
I yelled, “Now! Now! Stop! Stop!”
The sadist continued anyway and said, “I will augment the charge every ten seconds just to increase our pleasure in watching you squirm.” He increased the intensity again and came and stood in front of me and grinned. At that moment, I truly lost control. I felt as if I were going to pass out. A stream came out from my penis with such force that the urine went all over the Gestapo man, covering him from head to toe as I shook. He stomped off, muttering to himself.
The battery was turned off, and another man took over the position. This one had a nicer demeanor. “Very good,” he said. “We are beginning to get good results. I’ll start from the beginning again so I’ll have the pleasure of watching your body jump around from close up.” He turned on the battery again. I decided that I would not yell this time. The man turned up the charge after a few seconds. I didn’t make a sound. Abruptly, he stopped the battery and asked, “Are you ready to answer some questions now and tell us who among you was going to take the plane for England? If it was none of your friends ...”
I interrupted and began the false confession that I had prepared. “I’m going to tell you everything that I know. If you don’t want to listen, I’ll spray you like I did the other guy. The reason I’m here is that one of my French friends in England had a mission to tell the partisans to begin sabotage tactics in the south of France because there was going to be an invasion soon on the southern coast. I had met this man and his sister in Paris in 1940 after we were defeated. The three of us became close friends. The way to escape back then was to take any boat we could to get over to Great Britain. On the trip, he and I got to know each other. When we arrived in London, we went our separate ways but stayed in touch. His sister stayed in France with their parents, who had a home near Vincennes. She needed to stay to take care of them because they were older and not in good health.”
I drew a deep breath, underscoring my discomfort and pain, then continued, “My friend, who is very wealthy, was able to hire a private plane and pilot to parachute him back into France to spread the word about the landing and to find his family. He said it would be easier to locate them if the two of us searched together. He was certain that they were no longer in their house because the Germans were taking over all the nice estates. He asked if I wanted to parachute near Neufchâteau with him. He probably sensed I would be interested because he knew that I was in love with his sister.”
The Gestapo man interrupted, “What is his name, this friend of yours?” I didn’t hesitate a moment. “His name is Paul Maas.” Then I thought quickly to myself, I haven’t created an address for him yet. I’ll make it in North Africa, if the Gestapo asks. The Germans have not yet occupied North Africa,
so they won’t be able to verify.
Sure enough, the question came. “Where exactly is he from?”
“I think he’s from North Africa.”
“Where does he live?”
“I have no idea because we never talked about it. We always met in the park for lawn bowling. All I know is that we both were wearing our parachutes and that the pilot told me to jump first. I suppose he jumped soon after I did. He must have landed quite a distance from me because I didn’t see him.”
“Did you ever find him?”
“No, I didn’t. In fact, I was taken prisoner when my parachute caught a tree and I was stuck among the branches. I am sure you know the rest. I was able to escape, and the partisans hid me and took care of me. The evening when we were caught, we were waiting for the plane that was going to take one of their men to England. The French Militia took us all prisoner. That’s what happened.”
A voice speaking in German from behind the light said, “Take him off the battery.”
I understood but, of course, didn’t let on. I thought to myself, They believed my story.
The voice continued, “We’ll take him to the prison at Compiègne for a nice long stay. If we can confirm his story, we’ll send him to Germany to work in a munitions factory. If his story is a lie, we have other methods available to encourage him to tell the truth. If he is lying to us, we’ll get the truth out of him and then let him rot in prison at Compiègne.”
It was helpful understanding German. I had begun learning the language at the age of three when my father hired the retired Austrian colonel to be my tutor. The colonel had formal instructions from my father to speak only German to me. I was to be given only onion soup to eat for the whole day if I answered or asked a question in French. (My father knew that I detested onion soup.) Since I knew nothing of the German language, it was actually an effective method to learn it. At the beginning when I knew no words at all, my tutor, the cooks, and other servants sneaked other food to me in secret and threw away the onion soup, which I refused to eat. I was very angry with my father, and I wanted to take revenge against him. Since he spoke French, English, and Italian but not German, I decided that if he spoke to me, I would respond only in German and say, “I do not understand.” I planned then to turn to my tutor and ask him to translate what my father had said into German, and then, and only then, would I respond accordingly. I learned quickly and spoke rather well within five months, and I was fluent by the age of four. But now, as a German prisoner, I thought it best to continue pretending not to understand their language.
THIRTY-TWO
Torture
Once back in my cell, I was able to verify that my cap was well in place. Early the next morning, two Gestapo came to get me. Accompanied by several soldiers, we left the building on avenue Foch. The blinding daylight hurt my eyes. Handcuffed to one Gestapo and accompanied by another, I was escorted by German soldiers from the building and put into a large vehicle. In the front seat was the driver with two soldiers beside him. The Gestapo climbed in behind me and sandwiched himself between two more soldiers. I was in the center seat squeezed between two other Gestapo.
They certainly are generous with their personnel to guard one person, I thought to myself, wryly. There was no chance of escape in this situation. I had a hard time even walking and sitting because of what I had just been through, but my morale was still intact.
As we pulled away, I assumed we were headed toward the infamous prison of Compiègne. It took a long time to get through Paris and then a couple of hours to get there. The fourgon finally pulled up in front of a huge stone fortress—Compiègne. At the entrance, the Gestapo that I was handcuffed to flashed his papers and commanded, “Open the gates, we have a prisoner for you.” We drove through a long alcove built of stone that led to a large central square, at the end of which was a large iron gate, guarded by two soldiers.
The Gestapo ordered me to get out as he yanked on me, pulling the handcuffs. That aggravated me. Getting out of the seat was not easy. I moved slowly. My testicles were so swollen that I had to walk with my legs spread apart, and I was in a tremendous amount of pain. We walked toward the iron gate and entered the prison building.
The Gestapo told one of the soldiers to put me in a cell. The stone walls and floors of the building were dripping with humidity. The cell was approximately a meter square and about a meter and a half in height. There was a bucket inside. That was all. I couldn’t lie down. I couldn’t stand up. If I pushed the sanitary bucket to one side, I could comfortably squat. There was very little light. I was two or three floors underground. The only lights were on the ceilings in the hallways, spaced about thirty meters apart. I hadn’t eaten for days. I was given a can of water and a thick, hard cracker.
After a few hours a guard came to my cell and informed me that I was being taken for a medical visit. We stopped at the communal showers, where I was told to undress and wash.
It was a good thing my pants had been cut open because my testicles were the size of grapefruits and they wouldn’t stop throbbing. The water was icy cold and there was no soap. I was given no towel to dry off but was told to get dressed again.
I told myself that I needed to find a way to escape, but right at that moment I didn’t see how. Perhaps during the medical visit, I could steal a military uniform or, for that matter, a doctor’s or male nurse’s uniform. There had to be a way to get out of here, there just had to be.
“Follow me,” the militia guard told me. There was a bunch of keys hanging from his belt. I was walking very quickly behind the guard, trying to make him feel uncomfortable. It worked. “Walk in front of me!” he ordered. The rats were running around in packs all over the place. I had to be careful to avoid them because they would bite if touched. They were almost tame and had the run of the place. They seemed to have nothing to fear here.
We arrived at another hallway, which crossed ours. “Turn left and go in the first door on the left. I’ll come back to get you after the visit.” This man seemed nicer than all the others I had met since I had been taken prisoner.
“Maybe I can overcome him and steal his uniform when he comes back to get me.” On second thought, I knew he was too small. I hoped the doctor or the male nurse would be my size.
I stepped into the large room. One of the walls consisted simply of iron bars. Behind the bars, in the adjacent room were work uniforms and overalls. The woman in the uniform room said, “Undress completely, including your underwear and socks, and hand me your clothes through the bars.” I took off my clothes and handed them to her. “Try on these overalls,” she said. I tried, but I couldn’t get into them.
“They’re too small. I can’t get into them,” I told her.
“Try these,” she said as she handed me a bigger size. “They’re too big,” she said, “but they’re the only ones I have that will fit you. Just roll up the pants and sleeves.” I had to roll the pants up three times so I wouldn’t trip over them. “Sit over there on the bench.”
I sat on the bench for around three hours, listening to screams. I wondered where they were coming from. People were surely being tortured. Or perhaps some were just going insane from wanting to get out of this nightmare. My imagination sought reasons and invented stories as I sat there. Finally, the doctor appeared from behind the closed curtain. He motioned to me to come in. He examined my lungs and heart with a stethoscope and gave me a shot of something.
After being in front of the extremely bright light while being interrogated, I could no longer see very clearly. My whole body was in pain after being in that damp cell for so long, where I could neither stand nor stretch out. My testicles and lower abdomen ached. I felt weak because in those few days all I had drunk were three ladles of water, and all I had eaten was that one cracker. Of course, there were also the effects of the electric shock, sleep deprivation, and the interrogation process. I asked myself to what extent they had affected my state of body and mind. And I speculated about what was in the injection
the doctor had given me. The last thing I wanted to do was to give them the satisfaction of knowing how terrible I felt. I didn’t want it known that I was weakened by their methods in the least.
It was difficult to pretend that the constant screams, the dampness, the odor of rotting rats, the lack of sleep and nourishment, and the physical torture had not affected me. Indeed, it had. I knew that this was all part of their methods to weaken the prisoner. Thanks to the training I had received at the compound in Great Britain, I was well prepared. Yet seeing the rats eat each other while still alive made me think that it was only a matter of time before they would start eating human flesh—mine!
As I was considering my circumstances, the examination came to its end. Not a word had been exchanged between the doctor and me. I supposed they would return me to my wretched cell. But the doctor drew open the curtain, and an unwelcome sight appeared. The tall, bald woman from that first interview entered the room and spoke to me. “I came to see how you’re doing. The doctor reassured me that you are in good health. I even asked if I could bring you back to my division. Since that’s not possible at this time, I am hoping that once they have verified your story, they will give me the opportunity to take you back with me.”
To my great joy and relief, the militia guard entered the room to take me to my cell. I could only imagine what this Amazon wanted to do with me. “I hope we’ll see each other very soon,” she said as I was escorted out of the room. “I’ll think of you every night till then,” she added.
As the man was leading me down the hall, he said, “I’m going to transfer you to a different cell so that she will not be able to find you.”
I knew he was a good man, I thought to myself, and this confirms it. He put me in a cell that faced a large room, obviously used for torture. In the room was the requisite equipment: a bathtub, a large wooden wheel on which to stretch the limbs of a person, two three-meter posts with over a meter between them with requisite chains and large metal cuffs attached.
When I arrived at my new cell, I felt that it was late at night, but really there was no way of knowing. I had lost my sense of time. This cell was a little bit bigger. I could almost lie down with my legs bent. I took off one of my shoes and used it for a pillow under my head. That was certainly more comfortable than the damp stone floor. After a while, I felt some gnawing on my big toenail. I looked down. A rat! I jerked my foot away and scared him off. I managed to put myself in a sitting position very quickly. I immediately decided to leave my shoe on. I chose to put my head on the humid stone floor rather than have the rats chew on my foot while I slept.
