Johann didn’t remember how he returned to his cell. He plummeted to the ground, curling up into a tight ball, oblivious to anything around him. The desperation about his sentence seeped into his bones, crowding out anything else.
With all hope vanished, he glimpsed one of the inscriptions on the walls, wondering if those who’d been here before had felt as utterly and completely hopeless as he did in that moment.
He would never survive twenty-five years in a camp. Not in his deteriorated physical condition. He barely weighed eighty pounds and there was no flesh or muscle anywhere to be found in his body.
An idea formed in his head, a last desperate attempt to take his fate into his own hands. For lack of a belt, he’d girded up his trousers with a rope. That rope would now serve its purpo
