On the very first few days, he saw her wipe her wet face in helpless anger. Gradually, she had learned to remain coolly detached from the grisly work she was doing—much like he did. A Rabbi, made to burn the memory of his people while the SS burned the people themselves in their industrial ovens. The camp was a ruthless teacher. There were only two choices—to adapt or to perish.
Without noticing, Rabbi Dayen began reciting the Kaddish for the ones who did.
“Could you postpone your prayers until I’m finished, please?” Alma threw over her shoulder. In irritation, she swiped aside another pile of photographs, pushing them closer to Dayen’s cart. The task of digging through dead people’s possessions was gruesome enough; less than anything she needed to hear the Rabbi’s mournful recitals in addition to that.
The Rabbi didn’t take offence; only smiled softly in understanding. He gathered the photographs as gently as possible and placed them into his cart. It was painful for him to look into each one of these faces daily; he could only imagine what it must have been like for her.
“You ought to try that new camp they have just installed,” he said at length. “I heard they have well-known musicians there. It is my profound conviction they will gladly share their sheet music with you.”
“What new camp?” Alma glanced up at him.
“The SS call it the Family Camp. Jews from the model ghetto in Theresienstadt.”
“Why the Family Camp?” Alma was back to digging.
“Because they live there all together, in families,” Dayen explained with a smile that was both full of hope and disbelief. “Wives, husbands, their elderly, children—everyone in the same barracks.”
Alma paused her search just to give him a look full of mistrust.
“I was amazed too, when I learned of it,” he admitted. “And they weren’t even subjected to a selection on the ramp. The SS sent them to the showers for disinfection, but that was the extent of it. The SS permitted them to keep their civilian clothes, didn’t shave their hair, and didn’t separate them from their children. Pregnant women are entitled to additional rations of milk and white bread.”
“Did the world turn upside down and the SS suddenly develop a sense of human decency?” Alma still wasn’t convinced. In a place like Birkenau, it sounded like a fairy tale.
“Don’t count on that.”
Alma turned to the sound of the derisive snort and discovered Kitty standing there with a pile of passports in her hands. After dumping them unceremoniously into the pile before Alma, the Kanada girl made a vague motion with her head toward the camp.
“They’re only treated with such distinction because the Nazis use them for their propaganda purposes. I have already gone there to make my inquiries. Don’t look at me like that, Rebbe; when something of that sort happens, one ought to investigate. To survive this place, an inmate must be well-informed and well-connected.”
Kitty shifted her attention back to Alma, who was kneeling next to the pile. “At any rate, I asked them what was so special about them that the SS don’t even use them for forced labor and have pretty much left them to their devices as though they’re on a vacation of some sort. Our local Kanada men have all decided they must have been under the protection of the Red Cross or some such. But what do you know? Those new arrivals’ local leader—he was some big shot in their ghetto—tells me very confidentially that there were people with cameras making certain films there, in Theresienstadt, several times. It was regular Hollywood, he told me; the SS had brought the entire film crew there, put bows in children’s hair, set up tables outside with food and drink like in an outdoor café, brought books into the hastily erected barracks and put signs, Library, Chess Club, Music Club, Theater, and what have you above several entrances and made them—Jews—stroll around arm in arm and smile into the cameras as they rolled. Naturally, as soon as they were done filming, they took the food and drink from the ghetto people, just like the books and the chess sets and the toys from the children. I’m thinking, the camp administration holds them here for the same very purpose—to shove them under some Swiss bigwigs’ noses if they come here to inspect the SS’s humanity.”
“Do you not think the Red Cross or Swiss politicians will notice those monstrosities?” Alma jerked a thumb in the direction of the crematoriums, arching a skeptical brow.
Kitty only laughed with great derision. “Do you not know the SS? They will tell them those are pork processing factories or some such and those Swiss big shots will eat it up and ask for a refill.” She compressed her lips and gave Alma a knowing look. “As soon as the SS have no more use in them, they’ll off them all like spring lambs; mark my words.”
Next to his cart, Rabbi Dayen shifted restlessly. “I sincerely hope you’re mistaken,” he whispered.
“Well, I sincerely hope the pigs shall start flying so I can hop on one and set off to real Canada,” Kitty countered, unimpressed. “Until that happens, there’s nothing else for it but to count on myself and try to stick it out for as long as possible, Rebbe.”
Kitty had just made a move to leave when Rabbi Dayen’s question, uttered in the mildest of tones, “You don’t believe in God, do you?” made her stop in her tracks.
“Do you?” Swinging round, Kitty regarded him wrathfully, as though insulted by such a suggestion. “In this place?!”
He made no reply. Who knew what she had to go through and whom she had to lose… He always thought it discourteous to preach God’s word to people who didn’t wish to hear it. In this place—that part she was right about—it wasn’t just in bad taste; it was an insult. Once, an inmate had spat in his face when Dayen had refused his ration in observance of the holy day of Yom Kippur. The Rabbi had offered the fellow his bread as an apology for upsetting him.
“God is dead,” Kitty declared darkly, looking him squarely in the eyes. There was an audible challenge in her voice. “The SS killed him.”
“Perhaps so,” the Rabbi conceded surprisingly easily.
Kitty looked as though she was about to say something, but the argument that was already coming, sharp and full of scorn, was met with such passive, all-forgiving love in Rabbi Dayen’s eyes, she swallowed it with difficulty and stormed off, hissing a “Sentimental old fool” under her breath.
Rabbi Dayen was already whispering one prayer or another as he rocked gently forward and backward, following Kitty with eyes full of the helpless sorrow of an adult who had somehow failed the entire generation.
Alma kept studying him with great interest. He had stood out from the immaculately turned-out Kanada detail Kommando like a sore thumb. Thin as a rail, for half of his rations went over the barbed wire and to the less fortunate inmates, he was the only person in the entire Birkenau whom the SS permitted to grow out a beard. Many inmates found such favoritism rather puzzling—unlike the Kanada old numbers well versed in local trade and infamous for their organizing abilities, Dayen never bribed a single guard, never as much as exchanged a single word with a Kapo, never displayed any talents that the SS could find useful or entertaining. Perhaps, that was precisely the reason for their interest in him. Out of the entire camp population, he never asked for anything and only gave and gave to the less fortunate ones and the SS found such a display of humanity to be a local curiosity of sorts. Perhaps, after growing bored of watching a young son tearing a piece of bread out of his frail and dying father’s hands, the SS hoped to decipher what Jewish magic kept Dayen so untouched by all that degradation and death around him.
“You know, you’re very different from the priests I had to deal with my entire life,” Alma noted. “They would call you a heretic just for saying such things about God.”
“Were you baptized as Catholic?”
“At birth, as Protestant. Later, as Catholic, because someone speculated that it would protect me from the persecution. Fat lot of good it did, too.” With a cynical smirk, she tugged at her inmate’s blue dress. “We were your typical assimilated Jews, Herr Dayen. We celebrated Christ
mas and helped ourselves to pork chops on Fridays. We never considered ourselves any different from the regular Viennese population until the Nazis came in 1938 and explained it to us how we were all worthless vermin and a drain on the German society.”
“Everything happens for a reason.”
There was a pause.
“Aren’t you going to say something to the extent of my being sent here by the hand of God or something of that sort?” Alma inquired, half in jest.
The Rabbi only shook his head. “I’m going to say, I ought to take these papers you have already sorted outside to burn them, if I don’t want to get lashed by the SS.”
“Do they ever beat you at all?” Alma asked, curious.
“No. Not since I began working here.”
“How long has it been?”
“About a year and a half now.” His beard concealed another gentle smile. He wasn’t an old man by any measure, but there were thick streaks of gray in its black mass. “They think me to be some sort of a saint.”
For some time, Alma gazed at him without moving. “Maybe, you are.”
“Maybe, we all are here,” he conceded and picked up his heavy load.
“Again.”
Inside the Music Block, it was impossible to breathe, even with all the windows standing open. Oppressive heat continued to suffocate the camp population confined to their airless barracks. Water had become a luxury once again; Zippy reported that, mad with thirst, inmates traded their pitiful bread rations for a cup of it right in the open.
Wiping the droplets of sweat off her brow, Alma struck the music stand with her baton a few times. She had purposely chosen Emmerich Kálmán’s Countess Maritza as the first official musical piece of a higher level. Anyone who could read sheet music could master that simple operetta fast enough. Yet, Lota, a German flutist, had just missed her entry—again; Maria, a Polish mandolinist, managed to hit so many false notes during the first two minutes, Alma began cringing openly. The look of utter concentration creasing her brow, Sofia applied her best to follow the score but ended up entering in the wrong place and botching the entire part.
Tense silence hung over the room, interrupted only by the buzzing of the flies and occasional sniffle coming from one of the girls. They all knew what was at stake. It appeared that, not only through Alma’s mind but through theirs as well, the recent exchange with Dr. Mengele passed:
“You seem to be very sure of yourself, Frau Rosé.”
“I have already trained a female orchestra under my charge and it had great success in Europe. Yes, I believe I can train these young ladies as well.”
Exasperated, Alma replaced her baton back onto the stand and walked over to Sofia. “Give me your guitar. Watch my fingers closely.”
In the two hours that followed, she physically repositioned the girls’ inexperienced fingers into correct positions; demonstrated how to keep the right tempo; made them repeat the parts they had trouble with until they burst into tears and pleaded with her for a break.
“Frau Alma, I’ll never get it right!” Maria was the first one to openly protest in her accented German. “I only played music at school. I’m not a professional like you. No one here is. Kálmán is too difficult for us. We know how to play songs and marches; not classical pieces.”
“It’s not a classical piece; it’s a simple operetta,” Alma grumbled under her breath to no one in particular. She was suddenly aware of a vague sense of panic that was just beginning to mount somewhere deep inside.
A simple, lighthearted operetta and even that they couldn’t grasp. She had promised Dr. Mengele a Christmas concert with Bach and Wagner; she would be fortunate if they learned the first three pages of the blasted Kálmán by that time. Crude cursing was very much frowned upon in her aristocratic household, but at that moment, a big fat Scheiße was ready to fly off her tongue. Their lives depended on that concert. The invisible clock was ticking louder and louder in Alma’s head, turning into outright panicked pounding, and the orchestra’s progress remained virtually nonexistent.
Alma collected herself with great effort. She marched resolutely to Maria once again and made her pick up her mandolin. Placing her fingers on top of the girl’s, she slowly, note by note, began going through Maria’s part. But she soon discovered that the Polish girl’s shoulders were shaking with silent sobs. She wasn’t even paying attention to Alma’s ministrations with the instrument.
“Alma, quit it,” Zippy said, setting her own mandolin aside. “All this useless tormenting won’t do anyone any good. You won’t teach someone with superficial knowledge of music how to play a complicated musical piece of the Countess Maritza sort.”
“Yes, I will.” Alma refused to surrender.
“No, you won’t. And neither can you play for the entire orchestra like you’re doing now.”
Defeated, Alma let go of Maria at last and walked out of the barrack. Inside her dress pocket, a half-empty pack of imported cigarettes still sat, generously thrown at her by the Kanada SS Rottenführer. They had a barter going on—she played sentimental songs for him that reminded him of his fiancée and he permitted her to dig through the riches of his detail. Musical instruments and sheet music in exchange for the memories. Both sides had somehow silently agreed that it was a fair exchange.
Alma lit one up and inhaled deeply, scowling at the horizon. An offense punishable by death, smoking during work hours, but that day, it suddenly made no difference to her if she lived or died. She was in one of those moods of black desperation and reckless bravery that led to her arrest in the first place, but it appeared life hadn’t taught her how not to test it, after all. Let them shoot her, for all she cared.
“Alma.”
Zippy. Alma didn’t turn around, just took another long pull on her cigarette.
“Alma, look at me.”
“What?” Alma cringed when it came out harsher than she had intended.
Zippy pretended not to notice. “Let’s just get back to playing what we can. That march from Rosamunde—the girls know it quite well—”
“No.”
“Just because you don’t want to admit your professional defeat to Mengele?” Zippy purposely stood in front of Alma, blocking her view. A soft smile was playing on her lips.
Forced to look her in the eyes, Alma gave her a hard glare. It was idiotic taking it out on anyone; she did it to herself. But the infamous Rosé temper reared its ugly head, as it always did in situations like this one.
In an attempt at an apology, Alma offered Zippy her pack. Her friend took it, not offended in the slightest. For some time, they smoked in silence; only, unlike Alma, Zippy actually watched for the SS patrols.
“Even if you fail to present him with the music that is up to his high Nazi standards, he’s not going to send us all to the gas,” Zippy continued after some time. “I’ve been here longer than you. I know him. He’ll cut people open without anesthesia, but he won’t kill off the entire orchestra just because its conductor didn’t deliver him Bach on time. He’s like Mandl, a sentimentalist when you least expect it.”
Alma rolled her eyes expressively.
“Oh, I know what you think.” Zippy cleared her throat—or stifled a chuckle. “She’s a vicious she-devil to be sure, but sometimes her maternal instincts resurface.”
“Maternal instincts? In Mandl?” Alma regarded her with great disbelief.
“Yes. Mandl.” Zippy exhaled the smoke away from Alma’s face. “One time, during one of those surprise inspections of hers that she is so fond of, Mandl discovered me in bed in my room in the Schreibstube. Needless to say, I was petrified out of my wits and all but expected for her to drag me out of there into the street and shoot me in front of the others, just to teach them a lesson on what happens to such saboteurs who decide to take a nap in the middle of the afternoon. But instead of doing that, she only asked me—very calmly, too—what was the matter. I told her honestly that I had bad menstrual cramps. Not that it was ever considered to be any sort of
excuse in the camp. Women who work in the Aussenkommandos have to hurl gravel for twelve hours straight, time of the month or not, and they’d better trade their single piece of bread for a few sheets of newspaper to keep themselves somewhat clean during their shift. Heavens forbid if an SS warden or a Kapo notice blood streaming down an inmate’s legs or if their delicate Aryan noses smell it—they’d beat that woman for being a filthy sow who can’t take care of her own personal hygiene. It doesn’t seem to occur to anyone that it’s next to impossible for those inmates to do so when they have no running water in their barracks, let alone a piece of soap or underwear… At any rate, I was so startled, I blurted it out before I could invent a better excuse. And what do you know? Instead of beating me, Mandl smiled at me tenderly, put her hand on my forehead, just like my mother used to do, and told me to stay in bed until I felt better. Long after she had left, I kept staring at the door in great wonder, thinking that now I’d definitely seen everything in this life.”
Alma appeared to consider something, taking deep pulls on her cigarette.
“Those two new girls from France are very good,” she finally said.
Zippy looked at her in surprise. “Did you hear a word of what I just said?”
“Yes. I heard everything. It’s just, I don’t agree with it. I don’t agree with half-hearted repertoire just because it’s the easy way out. I don’t agree with anything less than excellence.” She gave Zippy a pointed look. “I’ll make a professional orchestra out of this band, whatever it takes. Mengele has permitted me to take on more professional musicians. We already got two out of the last transport. Now, I’ll go through barracks and try to scout more. Perhaps, more shall arrive with the new transport…” She was gazing ahead, smiling faintly to herself.
Zippy only stared at her in horror. “That’s all fine and well, that ‘excellence’ idea of yours, but consider the Music Block veterans’ position! What do you suggest they do, after you replace them with professionals? To the gas with them? Dismiss them and reassign them to the outside Kommandos so they can die within a week?”
The Violinist of Auschwitz: Based on a true story, an absolutely heartbreaking and gripping World War 2 novel Page 9