The wall of love and sorrow: What would you write to your loved ones if you only had hours to live? Read these haunting messages scratched in a Gestapo cell Some 1,800 graffiti scrawls have been preserved at the SS HQ in Cologne One was by Tola Turska, who wrote a poignant message to her Polish love He died, but she returned almost 50 years later to lay flowers in Cell 4 Born in Poland, Tola Turska was 19 when the Gestapo came because of her rebellious boyfriend The Gestapo came for Tola just a few days before her 20th birthday. She had already been snatched once by the Nazis, two years before in early 1942, when she was taken from the streets of Warsaw and forced to work in a factory not far from Cologne. But there had been some brightness in her life. His name was Lolek, a handsome young Polish soldier, who was also a forced labourer. However, Lolek was not the type of man to submit meekly to the Germans - he had joined a resistance group called the "Warrant Officers Organisation." Like so many other underground groups, the Nazis soon got wind of it, and in early 1944 Lolek was arrested. Going through his possessions, the Gestapo came across a photograph of a young, pretty brunette. Lolek's captors identified her as Tola. She was arrested on May 5, 1944, and taken to a special Gestapo compound on the outskirts of Cologne. There, she was tortured and interrogated about the resistance cell, before being transferred to the HQ of the Cologne Gestapo on Appellhofplatz. Tola was incarcerated in Cell Number 4, a small, grim room secured by a heavy wooden door, with just a chink of daylight coming from a tiny barred window at the top of one wall. As she looked around the cell, she noticed that the walls were covered with graffiti. Former prisoners had scratched or written inscriptions that conveyed a whole range of contrasting moods - defiance, despair, hope, anger. Tola decided to do the same. Taking perhaps a small nail or a screw, she scratched her full name - Teofila Turska - on the wall. It was proof that she still existed. And if she died, it would serve as her memorial. However, Tola wanted to leave more than her name. She wanted to reveal what she felt. Once again, she began to scratch. "Lolek," she wrote, "because of your love I am suffering here. Tola. Those ten words reveal so much. They certainly show her affection, but they also carry a hint of resentment towards her boyfriend. It would not be unnatural for Tola to have felt that way - after all, the Gestapo were masters at turning their captives against each other. After that, Tola awaited her fate. Poignant: Tola returned to Cell Number 4 almost 50 years after he scratched her lover's name into the wall Today, nearly 70 years later, her words can still be seen at the former Gestapo headquarters. Incredibly, her inscription is one of some 1,800 pieces of surviving Nazi-era graffiti scrawled or scratched on the walls of those terrible cells. And now, thanks to the diligent work of Werner Jung, director of Cologne's Nazi Documentation Centre, all those messages have been collected into a powerful new book called Walls That Talk. Written in Russian, French, German, Polish and even occasionally in English, the messages tell us much about the horrors of the time. Behind every scratch and daub is a story like that of Tola, repeated thousands of times over, not just in these cells, but in many similar places all over Hitler's Third Reich. Understandably, many of the messages concern loved ones. One of the most affecting was written by a Russian, who suspected that he would not survive the attentions of the Nazi secret police. Translated, it roughly reads: "Greetings, my wife, your husband writes from far away. Far behind the wall at the Gestapo he suffers agony, when looking to the window. But freedom and the dear little daughter are far away from him. In vain he scribbles on the walls, writing letters to his dear wife. His wife's photograph appears on the wall, and the dear little daughter is in his arms. You will grow up and be big, and support your mother in her old age. Steering the car with a steady hand, flying over the beloved country's expanses. Don't forget, remember, look at your father's photograph. Horror: The cells at the Gestapo headquarters in Cologne have been preserved, with 1,800 graffiti scrawls We do not know the fate of this prisoner, though it is likely he was killed for some supposed "crime" in the eyes of the Gestapo. As one of the largest Gestapo headquarters in Germany, the building on Appellhofplatz is the site of perhaps thousands of murders. From 1943 to 1944, the murder of prisoners was frenetic. The death toll was further fuelled in November 1944 when it was decreed that regional Gestapo centres could execute non-Germans without permission from Berlin. As a result, killings took place at random. In Cologne, a transportable scaffold of gallows was installed, which could hang seven people at a time. After they were murdered, the bodies of the prisoners were taken to the local rubbish dump. I am now 18 years old, pregnant and would love to see my first-born child. Well, this will not be possible, I have to die Among them may have been the corpse of a Russian girl called Vallya Baran, who left the following message on the wall of her cell: "Here was held in custody Vallya Baran, who was betrayed by her own Russian compatriots. My husband and I were both put away in one cell. Another three Russian civilians and one prisoner of war were in the same cell. They had pistols. We will be facing the gallows, my only regret is to be separated from the beloved husband and the whole wide world. Oh, girls, why is our youth such a botch-up? Well, this will not be possible, I have to die. Other messages written by those facing the scaffold are more succinct, but no less affecting. "Vulotshnik has lived 21 years and was hanged," reads one, simply. It is the youth of the prisoners that is particularly shocking. Some of the messages read like the love letters of teenagers. "We have been imprisoned here for six weeks," wrote an unnamed woman. We are four Frenchwomen and the time is getting quite long for us, but we live in the hope to see France again one day. Our beloved fatherland and our beloved family, and we also have a sweetheart like all young women and these sweethearts are in Germany prisoners of war or whatever else they are held as. Our most tender thoughts are with him. Legacy: A Gestapo prison in Cologne, Germany, in 1945. Thousands were arrested and killed by the SS At some point during the war, a woman called Danilova Tosya, from either Russia or the Ukraine, wrote: "How I would like to be free, see my beloved boyfriend. Meet all of my friends again, and above all my beloved boyfriend Peter and kiss [him] like I used to. Oh, [my] lover, I will probably never see you again and never again kiss your lips! I am so sorry about all of this, that I am unable to do anything at all, neither break apart the iron door nor the bars! Even in the face of certain death, the defiance shown by some of the prisoners is astonishing. "The court has convened and the trial is nearly over, the judge passes the sentence," wrote one female Russian prisoner to her mother. Commander: The head of the SS, Heinrich Himmler, was a leading orchestrator of Nazi atrocities There he sits with a malicious grin on his face, that fat, toad-eyed slave-driver. The prosecutor demanded we be condemned to death by firing squad. I have gone through 40 severe tortures. Mum, dearest mother, stop, don't cry, it's pointless to mourn for your daughter. What may have strengthened the will of some of the prisoners was the fact that the cells were shared. However, as the war dragged on, they became appallingly overcrowded. Designed just to hold one or two people, according to one French inscription, 33 prisoners were once held in a single cell. One former prisoner, Ferdi Hülser, recalled after the war that there was nowhere to sit or lie down in his cell, which held 30 people. "If I remember correctly, there was just a barrel into which we could relieve ourselves," he later said. There was no window, no light, it was pitch dark. Initially, I was in chains. We believed that they would just kill us there, leaving us to die there without food, drink or ventilation in the heat. We were groaning with pain. Five days and nights I spent like that, without any sleep. As the prisoners waited, they could hear the screams of those being tortured in the lower basement. The violence was unspeak-ably brutal. One female prisoner, Käthe Brinker, was tortured by a Gestapo officer called Hoegen. "I was tied up and they put me, upside down, on a chair, Hoegen lifted my skirt and beat me terribly with a thick, wooden club," Brinker said. The abuse lasted from nine in the morning until six in the evening, only interrupted for three-quarters of an hour. Another Gestapo man would kick her in the back of the neck, call her a "sow" and a "whore," and she would then be gagged with a towel and then beaten until she was unconscious. She was then dragged across the floor with her face down, so that her mouth and nose were terribly cut. While some were tortured, other prisoners were forced to remain in their cells for days and weeks on end without any questioning at all. The waiting could be another form of hell - and the Gestapo knew it. Brutal: Himmler inspects SS officers in Berlin in 1937, together with senior commanders of the secret police Predictably, the food - or what passed for food - was disgusting. In one cell, a prisoner wrote a song on the wall, filled with dark humour. We are born to eat two potatoes, a plate of soup with one long maggot. Hitler gave us the potato leftovers and instead of lard 25 whacks on the a**e. Chorus: Potatoes, potatoes, potatoes, oh you potatoes, putrid and full of maggots! For these rotting potatoes we have been working three years! Humour was its own form of defiance, although some of the messages are far more explicit. It seems extraordinary that the Gestapo allowed them to remain. "Girls, don't surrender to them!!" insisted Gasukina Lidija. These sons of bitches! Be courageous and brave, even if you'll be punished harshly. Finally, in March 1945, Cologne was liberated by the Americans. By then, the Gestapo had fled, leaving an empty building. One American soldier came across the messages on the walls and decided to add his own. "Earl Huge," it reads simply, "Cleveland, Ohio. Third Armoured Division. One of the final messages represents a fitting testament to all those who defied the Gestapo. Filthy: A cell and corridor in a Gestapo prison in Cologne in 1945, including a cot where prisoners slept, left In June 1945, one former prisoner revisited his cell and wrote: "Stayed alive." Another who came back was Tola, who miraculously survived the war. After Cologne, she was sent to the concentration camps in Ravensbrück and Mauthausen, from where she was liberated in May 1945. She returned to Poland, where she married and worked as a nurse for many years. In 1991, she visited Cologne for the first time since the war, and saw her message in Cell No 4. She laid down some flowers in memory of those who died, which included Lolek, whose love had caused her to suffer so much. Additional reporting: Allan Hall in Berlin