“Oh, no. Just gave me a sedative on the very first night and bandaged my arm.”
“It’s not broken, is it?”
“No. It’s just a bad bruise.”
Zippy nodded in apparent relief and, after throwing another look over her shoulder at the Hungarian pathologist (to his credit, after the initial greeting, Dr. Ránki had retired to the furthest corner and pretended to be preoccupied with checking the labels on the vials in the medicine cabinet), extracted a folded note from inside her dress. “I have something for you. From Auschwitz.”
Mystified, Alma stood for some time staring at the paper in her hand blankly. At last, she approached the window and opened it. It wasn’t a note; a letter, if anything, written in an elegant cursive. As soon as Alma began reading it, the lump in her throat returned at once and the charcoal lines soon began blurring in front of her eyes.
Dear Frau Rosé,
I hope you shall forgive me for introducing myself in such an unorthodox manner; my only excuse is that I don’t presently possess an Ausweis and therefore can’t move freely between the camps.
My name is Miklós Steinberg. I’m afraid, it is my music that you had the misfortune to hear today. I should like to apologize to you for being so rude and not paying any attention to my surroundings; else, I would never have played that atrocious march, if I only knew that you stood there the entire time. I can see how it upset you…
If it’s of any consolation to you, Frau Gerda, the Block’s Kapo—I believe you two have already made your acquaintance—has already let her sentiments on my account known to me and has thoroughly chastised me for my inexcusable behavior and unfortunate choice of a repertoire.
Please allow me to assure you once again that it was unintentional. Sometimes it all overcomes me, and I start playing things that oughtn’t to be played. I hope you will find it in yourself to forgive me.
Sincerely,
Miklós Steinberg.
“When a runner brought it from the main camp, you were already gone. I carried it on myself the entire time.” It was obvious that Zippy was itching to see what was inside. “What is it? A love letter from a secret admirer?”
Alma tried to smile but couldn’t for some reason. “No. I don’t even know him personally.”
“Who is he?”
“A pianist.” Alma pondered something and added in a very soft voice, “One of the best pianists I’ve ever heard.”
After Zippy was long gone, Alma still sat, re-reading the letter countless times, on top of the pathologist’s bed in his private quarters. For the first time, she didn’t mind being alone.
Miklós Steinberg. Of course, he would write a letter of this sort. Mirthless laughter escaped Alma’s throat and died almost instantly. Inadvertently, he would go and make it all even worse by reminding her of her past life where chivalry wasn’t dead and buried somewhere in the field behind the Little Red House, where human decency was still worth more than a slice of bread, where Jewish musicians didn’t have to apologize for mourning their kin with a funeral march.
Alma folded the letter, then her arms on top of the pillow and let her head drop on top of them. It suddenly felt as though it weighed a ton.
He was right. She didn’t know him, but all at once he had become someone much more familiar than anyone here. Alma felt an inexplicable closeness to him that she didn’t feel even toward Zippy or Sofia or any other of her girls. He came from the same place as she did, without coming from the same country. He played music which she felt reverberating inside of her still, touching every nerve, bringing back memories she so thoroughly tried to bury. He was a piece of her past and her future, the only living reminder of something intangible, but so impossibly important.
Desire to live, it suddenly hit Alma with such force, she had to sit down once again. He was the first person who gave her the desire to live.
Up until now, her own fate mattered little. She was pondering taking her life back in Drancy, long before all this detestable Auschwitz business. It was her upbringing that inspired such dark, anguished thoughts—it was better to be dead rather than live in this German-imposed slavery. Ridiculous as it sounded, she envied the Eastern-European Jews who shared the crammed quarters with her in the French transit camp; they had each other and their religion and, to them, it appeared to be enough. They’d been chased through Europe for years, from the revolution-ravaged Russia to Germany to Poland, Austria, and France. Passports? They had laughed heartily at that. They hadn’t had those since 1917. Temporary papers from police headquarters was all they could show to their names. They’d grown used to such a sad state of affairs.
Alma had envied them, and they had pitied her in return. Pitied her elegant clothes growing gradually dirtier and her high-heeled shoes (what torture those had turned out to be in the box car! Alma ended up removing them altogether and standing barefoot throughout the entire journey). Pitied the very fact that she came from a household with a governess and a small army of servants and now, all of a sudden, she had to cook raw potatoes for herself on the communal stove. “When you have nothing to begin with, there’s little they can take away from you,” one of them, black-clad and Orthodox, had wisely noted. As long as their family members were alive, they were perfectly content with the little that they had.
They bore their sufferings nobly and with pride. “Our ancestors suffered for two thousand years and so must we.” Earning the heaven on earth or something else to that extent—Alma knew very little of their traditions or religion and understood them even less. With the best will in the world, she couldn’t find comfort in their ideals. A cosmopolitan Viennese, she was too much of a cynic and an aesthete to reconcile herself with the idea of suffering and surviving just because it was their—Jews’—lot in life, to suffer and survive. The entire trouble was, ever since she was a child, she was taught how to live—lavishly and with great taste. Surviving wasn’t something that was taught in the Rosé household. The only reason she hadn’t taken that poison she had managed to secure from one of the Drancy black-market dealers was the thought of her father. He was an old man. The news of his only daughter’s death would kill him.
In Auschwitz, where death was quite literally in the air, twirling softly in great, ashen flakes, it was all for the girls’ sake. If it weren’t for them, fat chance Alma would be so deferential with Mandl and so purposely feminine with Hössler. It was for them, her little sparrows, for Violette-from-Paris, for camp-savvy Zippy, and for blunt but kind-hearted Sofia, that Alma dug through the heaps of dead people’s papers to fish a music score from under a pile of smiling children’s photographs. It was for them that she exchanged pleasantries with the SS men she despised and praised the music taste of SS women who understood virtually nothing about it. If it weren’t for the girls, she would have long sent the entire show to the devil.
But now, there was this pianist and his letter in her hand. Alma hadn’t the faintest idea about his existence just a few days ago, but now he had stirred something in her with his music and his words and she sat and dreamt of playing alongside him on stage—the composer, the creator, the man who could play what she only felt inside and couldn’t put into words.
Her eyes were staring ahead, bright and shining. A radiant smile was slowly growing, blossoming on her face, erasing the years of suffering, smoothing the harsh, bitter lines around her mouth. For the first time since her arrest in France, Alma was glad to be alive.
Chapter 16
Alma was released back to her girls by the end of the week. Prior to escorting her out of the pathologist’s quarters, Dr. Mengele handed Alma an official form of some sort, filled with his tangled handwriting.
“This is for Drexler or Grese, if they ask for it during the roll call. You were officially in my care this entire time. Tell them it is imperative that you rest your arm as much as possible. If you’re not up to performing for their cultural evenings and whatever songs they demand from you whenever they grow bored during their shift, then you aren’t, and tha
t’s final. If anyone needs further explanation on that matter, send them straight to my quarters.”
It was Alma’s profound conviction that no one in the camp lacked common sense to question the sadist-in-chief’s orders. Still, she was grateful for the precaution; both wardens shared a reputation of cruelty for the sake of cruelty and although Mandl personally forbade them to inflict any sort of physical harm on the orchestra inmates, they had long made their sentiments on the Music Block’s account known.
“If it were up to me, all of you, useless tramps, would have been put to work in the Aussenkommando instead of wasting the Reich’s resources for nothing,” Drexler had snarled at Alma just a couple of weeks ago, after the latter handed her the extended roll call list.
“All new additions to the orchestra are here on Dr. Mengele’s authority,” Alma had replied evenly, her eyes trained on the ground as Sofia had taught her.
Sometimes, Alma wondered if Drexler would indeed shoot her if she raised her gaze at her—a capital offense in the SS warden’s eyes. Grese, her lieutenant, only aspired to her mentor’s level of viciousness. She was still very young and unexperienced in the SS business and mostly satisfied herself with lashing the inmate women with her whip across their breasts until the skin would split under her blows, but she wasn’t known for shooting inmates indiscriminately solely for daring to look at her, not just yet.
With those two “fine” representatives of the Aryan race, it was never too prudent to be able to present a written protection from one of their male superiors, Alma considered on her way to the block, studying the form with its gothic script and Dr. Mengele’s signature on the bottom.
You interest me. Scientifically, he had said. That was the only reason she was still alive, Alma realized with disgust. That scientific interest of his and his fondness for classics. It was truly a travesty, the extent to which the value of a human being’s life had been reduced in this new Thousand Year Reich. “Usefulness” and someone’s personal interest.
The form clutched firmly in her hand, Alma trooped through the muddy parade ground fantasizing, with unexpected sadistic cruelty she had never expected from herself, about the day when their liberators would come and when the SS wardens’ bodies would be swinging from the gallows of the women’s camp instead of Jewish “useless eaters’.”
Overcome with shame, she had to stop for a few moments. No, this was not who she was. Alma slowly passed her hand over her forehead where the beads of sweat had gathered despite the cold. She was better than this. She wouldn’t let this place’s poison work its way under her skin and turn her into one of them—cruel, heartless, openly enjoying the sufferings of the others. It would be both a moral and professional death at any rate—an artist ought to feel to create anything worthy of attention. Any music was produced out of love, never out of hatred or cruelty. That’s why there was no new culture born out of Hitler’s new Germany. They slapped dusted-off Wagner atop outdated Nietzsche, peppered it with bastardized Darwin, stamped it with the seal of approval by the Ministry of Propaganda and passed it off as Great Germanic Culture and New Racial Science and the public was no wiser.
It was good that she could still feel it all—fear, desperation, guilt, shame. Sympathy. Hope. Love?
Alma’s fingers brushed the pocket of her coat where another note, much more important than anything that Mengele could possibly write, was tucked away discreetly. She stopped contemplating the mud under her feet, raised her head higher and resumed her walk. As long as she could feel, all was not lost.
Warden Drexler openly cringed at Dr. Mengele’s form but said nothing this time; Grese only demanded if Alma would play for their cultural evening on Sunday.
“Dr. Mengele ordered me to rest my arm until it heals completely,” Alma replied, not without inward pleasure.
She could play her violin just fine, if not for prolonged periods of time; after all, she had played it for Herr Doktor himself. He had sat with his eyes closed at Dr. Ránki’s desk, the chair turned away from it and toward Alma, his head inclined slightly and his right hand caressing the air in front of him in soft, languid strokes in time with her music, a blissful, serene smile fleetingly touching his lips whenever she played his favorite parts. His requests, Alma couldn’t reject. But the wardens, with their little dance parties featuring Alma as the main entertainment, could all go and hang themselves. She would much rather spend her time and effort rehearsing with her girls.
Grese, a pout already forming on her porcelain, doll-like face, was just about to interject something to that, but Lagerführerin Mandl herself made an appearance at that moment, stared at Alma’s still-bandaged forearm in terror and declared, in a no-nonsense tone, that Alma was to rest her arm for as long as needed so it would heal properly.
“As for the drunken SS men looking for a good time,” she made a disgusted face, “the orchestra needn’t worry about them anymore. The new Kommandant has already sent a few offenders on their way East.”
With that, the matter appeared to be dismissed.
“The new Kommandant?” Alma asked Zippy as soon as Mandl left, along with the wardens, wondering just how much she had missed while she was away.
Zippy made big eyes at her. “Kommandant Liebehenschel. He was here the very next morning after you had disappeared and interrogated us all for a good hour. From what I heard from the wardens in the Schreibstube, he assembled all SS men later and told them explicitly that such behavior would not be tolerated any longer. He also told them that all beatings are to stop from now on, both coming from the SS and the Kapos. He said it’s counterproductive for the camp’s purpose. Announced some new reward system for the prisoners. The harder you work, the more privileges you get or something of that sort. An odd fellow, I must tell you. How he made it into a camp administration is beyond me!” She lowered her voice confidentially, “There’s gossip that his mistress, or fiancée, or whoever she is, has been accused by the Gestapo for her associations with the Jews and that’s the reason why he was transferred here, to Auschwitz-Birkenau, from his previous position. Supposedly in punishment for standing up for her and her views,” she finished in a grave whisper, obviously impressed by such an unorthodox—for an SS officer—achievement. “She followed him here. They live just outside the camp.”
Alma regarded her in genuine amazement. A sympathetic camp Kommandant? That was something new entirely. “What happened to Kommandant Höss?”
After a fleeting glance over her shoulder, Zippy resumed her whispering: “They say, he was stealing too much even for the SS’s liking. Some Berlin higher-ups came here with the inspection last week. Some SS bigwig, Dr. Morgen I think his name was, turned the whole of the camp office upside down and subjected SS wardens and us, inmate secretaries, to such interrogations, I almost told him everything I didn’t even know just so he would leave off. Something to do with corruption in the camp among the SS. Well, it appeared that Morgen fellow, and whatever inspectorate he’s working for, didn’t appreciate the fact that Höss was appropriating Kanada goods for personal use and employing inmates for personal pleasure. Auschwitz orchestra, in particular. They spent more time playing for his guests in his villa than doing work they were supposed to be doing. They’re employed elsewhere, unlike us. Potato peeling detail, truck driving… Instead, he made them into his personal band of sorts. It looks like it rubbed even his own superiors the wrong way and they shipped him off someplace before replacing him with Kommandant Liebehenschel.”
Alma met the new Kommandant soon enough. He simply walked in one afternoon, accompanied by Mandl and two of his adjutants, took off his uniform cap and found a chair in the back of the music room, waving for the orchestra to be seated as they leapt up to greet him.
“Kommandant Liebehenschel,” Zippy whispered helpfully at Alma from her front row and made expressive eyes at the conductor. Play something nice for him!
“I had no wish to disturb you,” he spoke in a soft voice and smiled pleasantly. “Please, continue your
rehearsals and don’t mind me.”
From her conductor’s stand, Alma could only discern that he had a pale handsome face, dark hair and the large brown eyes of a sad deer. Partly out of politeness and partly prompted by Zippy, she inquired if Herr Kommandant wished to hear something particular.
He only shook his head again and offered her another embarrassed smile, as though in apology for inconveniencing her with his presence. “Please, don’t bother on my account and pretend that I’m not even here.”
Zippy didn’t lie. He was an odd fellow, for an SS man.
Alma was astounded even more when, after the rehearsal was over, Kommandant Liebehenschel approached her and very politely inquired if her orchestra needed anything.
“A piano would be nice, Herr Kommandant,” Alma ventured, encouraged by his amicable disposition. “If that’s at all possible, of course.”
“Naturally, it’s possible! There are three of them at the villa,” he announced. Alma guessed that he most likely meant Höss’ former quarters. “I’ll arrange for the special Kommando to deliver one of them to you at once. What sort of orchestra is it without a piano anyway?” He laughed, looking round for support from his entourage.
The adjutants and Mandl began nodding enthusiastically at once.
“Anything else?” He turned to Alma again.
And why not? Alma considered. One must take the good as it comes, and in this place especially.
“An iron stove, Herr Kommandant, to warm the quarters.” When he appeared to hesitate—it was an unheard-of privilege among the inmates—Alma quickly signed toward the instruments, “In cold months, they require a constant temperature to stay in tune, and particularly the stringed ones. The wood on most of these instruments is very sensitive and the strings may simply snap from negligence, if one doesn’t treat them accordingly—”
The Violinist of Auschwitz: Based on a true story, an absolutely heartbreaking and gripping World War 2 novel Page 17