Anna Quangel and Trudel Hergesell

Berta dies in Anna Quangel's arms, the cellmate whose slip about a hidden sister-in-law first drew Inspector Laub's fury onto Anna, and Anna is left tormented by guilt, convinced she also destroyed Trudel Hergesell by naming her under torture. She insists in interrogation that the postcards were her own idea, hoping to shield Otto. Three days later, with Berta's corpse still on the pallet, Trudel is pushed into Anna's cell. She recoils, then forgives 'Mother' and weeps for Karli, hurt and unaccounted for. The two women speak of God, Anna's secret faith kept even from Otto, until Trudel, sickened by the smell, hammers on the door. A young SS man arrives, helps them carry Berta to the morgue past rows of the dead, and lets Trudel search in vain for Karli. He leaves their door ajar and brings clean sheets, a rare mercy; he is never seen on their corridor again.

Fallada pairs Anna's guilt with Trudel's grief and lets a stranger's small decency interrupt the machine, as he often does in this stretch of the novel. The morgue search doubles as foreshadowing for Trudel's later search for Karli's body. Even Laub is denied his usual satisfaction that day.