Uit het handboek over hoe de isoleercel te overleven. Hennacy mocht in 1918 nog wel een boek, en wel de bijbel, bij zich hebben.
1. Warden Zerbst offered to let Hennacy out of solitary if he
would snitch.
In about five minutes he returned, saying: "I forgot to ask you something, Hennacy. I’ll leave you out tomorrow just the same."
"What is on your mind?" I asked.
"Have you been sneaking letters out of this prison?" he asked in an angry tone.
"Sure," I replied, smiling.
"Who is doing it for you?" he demanded.
"A friend of mine," I answered.
"What is his name?" was the query.
"That is for you and your guards and stool pigeons to find out. I won’t tell you, for I want to get some more letters out concerning the evil things that go on," I replied good-naturedly.
He stormed around my cell, somewhat taken back by the fact that I had not lied or given in. "You’ll stay in here all your good time and get another year, you stubborn fool," he said as he left.
It was not for many years that I knew I had used the method of moral jiu jitsu as advised by Ghandi: If you don’t give your enemy a hold he can’t throw you.
Never be on the defensive; always answer quickly and keep the enemy on the run. He is used to trickery and is put off his guard by an honest and courageous opponent whom he cannot scare or bribe... (But) the world needs a Samson to pull down their whole structure of lies.
2. Hennacy hears the groans of the prisoner in the cell next to him. This man is being tortured to the point of madness. Hennacy thinks of suicide.
How soon would I be strung to the bars? How long could a fellow stand such treatment?
As soon as it was dark I sharpened my spoon again and tried it gently on my wrist. The skin seemed to be quite tough, but then I could press harder. If I cut my wrist at midnight I could be dead by morning. I thought I ought to write a note to Selma and to my mother and I couldn’t see to do it until morning. Well, I had waited that long, I could wait a day longer.
3. Hennacy survives. He sings, reads, and thinks about love and purpose.
The sun shone brightly in my cell the next morning for the first time in weeks. I crouched again by the door and saw Berkman’s bald head.
Tears came into my eyes and I felt ashamed of myself for my cowardly idea of suicide just because I had a few reverses. Here was Berkman who had passed through much more than I would ever have to endure if I stayed two more years in solitary. How was the world to know more about the continued torture of Popoff and others if I gave up?
The last two verses of the I.W.W. Prison Song now had
a real meaning to me as I sang them again. I was through with despair. I wanted to live to make the world better. Just because more prisoners, and for all that, most people on the outside, did not understand and know what solitary meant was all the more reason why I should be strong. I sang cheerfully:
By all the graves of Labors dead,
By Labor’s deathless/lag of red,
We make a solemn vow to you,
We’II keep the faith, we will be true.
For freedom laughs at prison bars,
Her voice reaches to the stars;
Proclaiming with the tempest’s breath
A cause beyond the reach of death.
I had now read [the Bible] through four times and read the New Testament many times and the Sermon on the Mount scores of times.
I had made up games with pages and chapters and names of characters in the Bible to pass away the time. I had memorized certain chapters that I liked. As I read of Isaiah, Ezekiel, Micah and others of the prophets and of Jesus, I could see that they had opposed tyranny. I had also spent many days reviewing all of the historical knowledge that I could remember and in trying to think through a philosophy of life. I had passed through the idea of killing myself. This was an escape, not any solution to life. The remainder of my two years in solitary must result in a clear-cut plan whereby I could go forth and be a force in the world. I could not take any halfway measures…
I had called loudly for the sword and mentally listed those whom I desired to kill when I was free. Was this really the universal method which should be used? I would read
the Sermon on the Mount again. When a child I had been frightened by hell fire into proclaiming a change of life.
Now I spent months making a decision; there was no sudden change. I had all the time in the world and no one could talk to me or influence me. I was deciding this idea for myself.
Gradually I came to gain a glimpse of what Jesus meant when He said, "The Kingdom of God is Within You." In my heart now after six months I could love everybody in the world but the warden, but if I did not love him then the Sermon on the Mount meant nothing at all. I really saw this and felt it in my heart, but I was too stubborn to admit it in my mind.
One day, I was walking back and forth in my cell when, in turning, my head hit the wall. Then the thought came to me:
"Here I am locked up in a cell. The warden was never locked up in any cell and he never had a chance to know what Jesus meant. Neither did I until yesterday. So I must not blame him. I must love him."
Now the whole thing was clear. The Kingdom of God must be in everyone: in the deputy, the warden, in the rat and the pervert. And now I came to know it—in myself.
I read and reread the Sermon on the Mount: the fifth, sixth and seventh chapter of Matthew thus became a living thing to me. I tried to take every sentence and apply it to my present problems. The warden had said that he did not understand political prisoners. He and the deputy, in plain words, did not know any better; they had put on the false face of sternness and tyranny because this was the only method which they knew. It was my job to teach them an other method: that of goodwill overcoming their evil intention, or rather habits.
The opposite of the Sermon on the Mount was what the whole world has been practicing in prisons and out of prison; and hate piled on hate has brought hate and revenge. It was plain that this system did not work.
Ammon Hennacy, Georgia 1918
