The Violin

by Lindsay Pritchard

  After thinking for a while, and looking at the slight figure of Ruth, standing with her violin clasped in front of her, the superintendent said, “Let it not be said that we Germans are heartless. A girl of that age amongst so many men will be brutalised. We do have rules and standards. So,” he marked his papers, “she will be housed temporarily in the clergy block. If they are as holy and as celibate as they say they are then she will stand a better chance with them until we can agree what to do with her.”

  Ruth protested as she was manhandled away from her father and gave him a beseeching look as she was marched out of the door and down the corridor.

  “Now, you men,” said the officer. “You will be processed through Schubraum. Take them away!”

  Michael was taken along with the other detainees to another building where they were instructed to strip and hand over all of their clothes and possessions. Michael had little to hand over apart from his small valise, his watch and his wedding ring. Bizarrely, given the environment, he was asked to sign paperwork identifying his clothes and possessions ‘for administrative purposes’ and was given a striped uniform to put on completing his transformation from householder, businessman, lawyer, father, husband and Iron Cross holder into just one more dehumanised prisoner.

  He and the other men from various lorries were marched to a wooden accommodation block. Inside were only rows of bunk beds and a central stove. It was still a dark, early November morning and the inmates already in the block stirred momentarily to look at the newcomers. The newcomers also looked at them. Gaunt, dirty, thin, hollow-eyed, pale and wearing identical prison garb, they presented a sad and beaten group. After finding a bed Michael asked, “Anyone any idea why we are all here?”

  A tall, very thin man sitting on the edge of his bed replied.

  “Well, partly because we are free labour. They make armaments here and we work fourteen hours a day, every day, for nothing. That way,” he sneered, “we are helping to arm the troops of the Third Reich. Some say that war is coming and the politicians want to make sure there are plenty of bullets for every rifle and shells for all of the ordnance they’ll need.”

  “That’s true,” chimed in another, “but, look around: we are all here because we are classed as low life or subversives. Resistance fighters, religious types, some criminals, Jews, dissidents. You name it. If you’re not Nordic or Aryan, then the law says you are a stain on the community that is to be removed without charge or trial.”

  “And by the way,” added the first speaker, “I wouldn’t bother complaining about the rations. Some bread. Broth tastes like piss. So another piece of advice – don’t get ill. We’ve heard told that if you’re not productive, there’s a range of delights waiting for you that will either kill or cure. Mostly the former.”

  “But,” protested Michael, “I am, or was, a lawyer. Can’t we get justice? Surely there is some means of formal complaint.”

  The nearby inmates laughed grimly and shook their heads. The newcomer would soon learn.

  “I’m worried about my daughter,” said Michael after a pause.

  “Oh my God, what is she doing here? Dachau is for adult men, not girls and women.”

  “It’s a long story, but I had no alternative. At the processing they agreed to take her temporarily to the block with all the clergy. Do you think she will be safe?”

  “Well, if she is to have a chance, then she is in the best of a bad lot. You have to think that if they are really religious that she will be looked after and treated with respect. They’ll need to be careful about those guards though. I wouldn’t trust any of them with a female. Anything goes at the moment and no questions asked. Now how about a bit of shut-eye before the bastards get us up for work.”

  If separation from the family, displacement and imprisonment were to happen, as it had to Ruth, then at least she seemed to be in the safest possible place.

  *

  In the obsessively secular state of 1930s Germany, priests were frequently denounced or arrested and sent to camps on suspicion of activities hostile to the state. The German political leadership were antagonistic to any religious observance. The Vatican and senior German bishops had at least lobbied the regime successfully to allow the clergy to be kept in one place in one camp and to be allotted time for religious activities rather than forced labour.

  The guards who separated Ruth from her father followed instructions and took her to Block 28 housing Polish Catholic priests. Alone and afraid, she was thrust through the door and stood, uncomprehendingly with but a small bag of possessions and her violin case. A hundred pairs of eyes watched her silently until the guards had gone.

  Eventually a white-haired older man with kindly eyes walked haltingly over from his bunk.

  “Who are you, child?”

  “My name is Ruth Frankel. I am from Berlin. I was brought here with my father, Michael Frankel. I don’t know where he is and I don’t know why we’re here…” She broke down and wept softly. The old man put his hand on her shoulder and said, soothingly, “Be still, my child. I am Father Stefan Frelichowski, a Polish Roman Catholic priest. And in here,” he pointed around, “you see men of God. However long you are here you can be sure that you will be safe. Now rest, child. See here there is a bed for you and since you have journeyed all the way from Berlin you will be exhausted.”

  The priests made space for Ruth and donated blankets. In the morning, when the paltry rations were delivered with a clatter through the door of the block, many made a small contribution from their meal to Ruth’s ration.

  “We will pray for you, child. And, although our representations here on Earth generally fall on deaf ears, I will try and talk to the camp commandant about your special situation. I’m afraid that rational discussion and human sympathy are in short supply with our captors but I will see what can be done.”

  In this dismal and oppressive environment in the grip of an iron-hard winter and with no conception of where they were, how long this misery would last and whether she would ever be reunited with her family, Michael and Ruth, separately, resolved to endure their tribulations steadfastly.

  Hope is a candle that flickers and gutters but is almost impossible to extinguish.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT

  Ruth was allocated a bunk in the centre of the block near the stove. After the exhaustion and trauma of the last few days, she fell asleep for almost twenty-four hours. She woke, momentarily not knowing where she was. Then black oppressive reality returned and she cried for herself, her father, her mother and sisters. A wall of rank odours permeated the air in the barracks. A stale, rancid smell of unwashed bodies hung thickly in the air and it took Ruth several minutes before she accustomed herself to breathe without retching. Some of the priests had once again surrendered part of their rations and one provided a mug of cold water. She ate and drank with many thanks but little enthusiasm for the indeterminate slop and hard crusts.

  Father Frelichowski spoke to her quietly.

  “Clearly some mistake has been made. When I have the opportunity I will see if anyone in authority can get you sent somewhere more appropriate or even released.”

  Just then the military detail flung open the door.

  “I am Brigadeführer Wolter. You will address me as ‘mein kommandant’. All you men, stand by your beds now! Roll call, now!”

  He walked purposefully through the serried ranks of bunks as his aide ticked a list. Wolter pointed his baton at the chest of each man in turn who said his name.

  “Norbert Capek, mein kommandant.”

  “August Froelich, mein kommandant.”

  “Pavel Januszewski, mein kommandant.”

  “Joseph Kenterich, mein kommandant.”

  He went through around a hundred names. He stopped in front of Ruth.

  “Ah yes. Our little Jewess from Berlin,” he said superciliously.

  “Please, sir,
is it possible to see my father?”

  “He is none of your business now. He will be dealt with appropriately as befits his activities no doubt.”

  Then Wolter adopted a different, lascivious tone while running his eyes up and down her body.

  “Turn around, slowly.”

  Ruth, a thirteen-year-old girl from a sheltered upbringing did not understand his tone but considered that obedience was the line of least resistance and did as she was told.

  “Now, hold your hands above your head.” She complied. Wolter reached out and roughly felt her small breasts through her clothing.

  “Very nice. For a Jewess.”

  Father Frelichowski stepped in between them. Wolter frowned and momentarily stepped back at this insubordination. Then angrily he swung his forearm full into the face of the priest, knocking him to the floor. Frelichowski took a short while to recover from the shock and to get his seventy-year-old body to his feet. Once again he stood between Wolter and Ruth. He looked the officer full in the face with a calm unblinking expression.

  “I am not afraid,” he said.

  Wolter pressed his face right against the priest who did not flinch. They stood like that for perhaps half a minute. Finally Wolter, possibly thinking of repercussions, said, “You should be careful, old man. You do not want to cross me because there will come a time when you will very much regret it.”

  And with a final glare he turned on his heel and left the building along with his acolytes.

  *

  The days turned into weeks and the weeks turned into months. Life in the priest’s block became almost tolerable for Ruth. In straitened circumstances and with expectations at almost zero, even small blessings were disproportionately welcome.

  The clergy had a dispensation from forced labour as part of an uneasy arrangement between the Church and the politicians. Much of their time was spent in prayer and more formal collective services. Ruth was able to register the tunes of some of the psalms and hymns and would accompany them on her violin. Occasionally, although shy at first, she was able to recall some classical pieces from memory and even picked up the melody of some Polish folk songs that the barracks sang together, for which she was generously applauded. Some written music had also been found and Ruth relished the opportunity to play her beloved violin, which responded with its haunting and plangent tones.

  “My child, I do believe that God sent you here to lighten our darkness. Music pleases the heart and is a balm to the soul,” said Father Frelichowski.

  Ruth could only guess at the passing of time. Winter turned into spring, through autumn and then back to winter. The days became shorter and the leaves fell from the few trees outside the barracks. Although time was passing, in a way it stood still. No past. No future. Only the present with its routines and privations. She had become almost indistinguishable from the rest of the lank, dirty inmates. A striped prison uniform was found for her from one of the old priests who had succumbed to cold, malnutrition and frailty. She was advised to wear it so as not to draw attention to herself and she took to answering roll call as ‘Jan Frankel’.

  One day in late December 1940, the barracks received a visit from the new camp commander SS Hauptsturmführer Piorkowski. This was part of a schedule of inspections so that he could assess and record the numbers of inmates in order to provide labour for some of the surrounding farms and factories. There was no point in wasting good money to keep them if they were not contributing and there must be ways, he considered, that more productivity could be obtained.

  Piorkowski came to Block 28 accompanied by Wolter. During his inspection he came across Ruth, by now emaciated and filthy with long, lank hair.

  “Who is this?” he demanded of Wolter.

  “She was placed here temporarily but we have, perhaps failed to deal with the problem, Kommandant.”

  “Irregular, most irregular. However, I do believe that I have a solution. Clearly she cannot stay here in Dachau. You know the rules. Men for labour or men in transit,” he looked around dismissively, “apart from this lot who we have to tolerate though God knows why. You,” he said, pointing to Ruth, “you will be relocated summarily this afternoon. I have just the place for you.”

  Father Frelichowski intervened gently.

  “May I have your assurance that she will be treated fairly and properly?”

  Piorkowski fixed him with a stare.

  “You, you cannot request anything of me, you old goat, so mind your manners. All I can say is that she will be going somewhere a little more congenial than this stinking den of God-bothering!”

  Within an hour Ruth, without an opportunity to say goodbye to her father, had been taken to the railway station at Dachau and was herded into a carriage along with a disorderly scramble of families, children, women and old folk.

  Eventually, after a twenty-four-hour journey, having been roughly decanted onto two connecting trains and left without food, water or sanitary facilities, they reached a town, unknown to them but called Theresienstadt in the northwest region of Bohemia.

  They were shuffled along to a convoy of lorries inside a walled town with forbidding elevations. They were taken to a building that looked like a fortress within the fortress. The Germans, following the invasion of Czechoslovakia, had established this town as a dual-purpose site. Part of it was a concentration camp and a transit camp to other sites at Treblinka and Auschwitz. The part that Ruth was taken to had been established as a Jewish ghetto. On being processed on arrival, a bespectacled official noted that she was clutching her violin case.

  “Ah yes, the violinist. We were told to expect you. You will be housed with the other musicians and you will be given your instructions in good time.”

  She was taken to the Magdeburg barracks – the fortress within the fortress. Although far from comfortable with straw sacks for beds, no heating and subsistence level food, the ghetto was a marginal improvement on Dachau. There were Jews of many nationalities – Czech, Swedish, Danish, French. There were also families and many children. They were also allowed, within the ghetto, to select a council of Elders who oversaw records of comings and goings, food, laundry, allocation of sleeping places and even some basic health care.

  There was also another dimension to Theresienstadt, which, although central to Ruth’s survival, presented itself as a propaganda tool to the Nazis. They had deported around 500 Danish Jews to Theresienstadt, which had established access rights for the Danish Red Cross, much as had been the case with Emil Hermann when he had been imprisoned in the Great War. It therefore served the Nazis to have a model camp that would appear to show that they were following war conventions and treating their prisoners humanely. Part of this normality was to establish cultural activities in the ghetto and Ruth was an unwitting player in this charade.

  Within a few days, Ruth had established contact with other musicians. Devorah Herz was from Prague. A talented pianist in her thirties, she had given concerts throughout Europe. Esther Kraus was a pianist and cellist from Vienna. From a musical family, she also shyly noted that she was a distant relative of Gustav Mahler. They were part of a small group of musicians who were allowed to practise and play. They were aware that they were tolerated as a means to an end by the Nazis but music, as a way of survival, was preferable to what they knew was happening to wretches outside the ghetto but inside the concentration camp. To Ruth, the freedom to play and practise with other musicians seemed like heaven and it began to make up for other privations.

  She had come to know the others almost by chance. She had heard the sound of a piano being played in the hall at the barracks. Esther and Devorah were playing a selection of Brahms, Chopin and Smetana from memory. She stood and admired their playing.

  “It’s been so long since I heard great music,” she said.

  “Well, this is not wearing well and it needs retuning after every piece,” said Esther, pointing to the
distressed piano they had balanced on crates. “But at least we can practise and play. Do you know, until now, I had to content myself with running my fingers along a table and imagining the sound.”

  They introduced themselves and swapped family and musical histories. Ruth, although somewhat overawed in the presence of these performers, was encouraged to fetch her violin. Esther found her old cello. And there, in a hall, within a fortress, inside a concentration camp, with the threat of death in the air, the three of them played some Beethoven, Mozart and Liszt.

  A small crowd began to assemble, hearing this unearthly sound. Esther then struck a few recognisable chords from Dvorak and Ruth, who had learnt the piece by heart, led them in ‘Song of the Moon’. As the ethereal melody resounded down the stone corridors, people were magnetically drawn in to listen.

  They stood there, the old, the broken, the dispossessed, the refugees, having almost forgotten the beauty of music and suddenly remembering their youth, their homes, their families.

  The Italianate played as though it almost recognised the sadness and suffering, misery and mournfulness in the gaunt faces turned towards the music like heliotropes to the sun.

  When the piece finished, the three musicians acknowledged each other. They looked at their audience and saw faces thanking them profusely but filled with tears.

  The Nazis tolerated the musicians. The Theresienstadt ghetto was part of a cynical plan to dupe the world into believing that they were a humane, law-following regime. Other musicians arrived – Pavel Haas, Gideon Klein, Viktor Ullmann, adding composing and conducting skills. The group even staged Verdi’s Requiem and a children’s opera Brundibar, written by another prisoner, Hans Krasa.

  Devorah, Esther and Ruth gave hundreds of performances and later realised that it was only this schedule that saved them from onward transmission to a death camp.

  *

  This small group survived as the years turned. In May 1944, there was another Nazi exercise to bolster their international credentials. In the market square in the barracks stood a large circus tent, primarily used for slave labour to assemble tank spares. The regime had been alerted to an approaching inspection visit by the Red Cross. The ghetto would provide an ideal show camp. Further, following the Berlin Olympics before the war, the regime thought that a propaganda film would successfully mask the horrors that were being perpetrated elsewhere. So the central square was turned into a floral park, houses were painted and even a café and a post office manufactured. To avoid the impression of overcrowding, thousands were sent on their way to their fate. The remaining prisoners were given the clothes of dead inmates to wear. The Elder of the ghetto was given a car with a chauffeur, to be filmed driving past what appeared to be a street of shops.