Judah was a rabbi in the Josefov district in the sixteenth century, when all the Jews had to live in the ghetto, as they do now. He studied the Kabbalah and found out how to bring a clay figurine to life.
“That’s impossible!” Erik burst in, laughing.
She still smiles now as she remembers how she then resorted to her father’s trick: She lowered her voice, put her head next to Erik’s, and in a deep voice, whispered,
“The Golem.”
Erik’s face turned a sickly white. Everyone in Prague had heard of the enormous Golem, a monster.
Dita repeated what her father had told her: The rabbi had succeeded in deciphering the sacred word used by Yahweh to instill the gift of life. He made a small clay figurine and placed a piece of paper with the secret word inside its mouth. And the little statue grew and grew until it became a living colossus. But Rabbi Loew didn’t know how to control it, and the colossus with no brain began to destroy the neighborhood and cause panic. He was an indestructible titan, and it looked like it would be impossible to defeat him. There was only one way to do it—wait until he was asleep and then screw up the courage to stick a hand in his mouth as he snored and remove the piece of paper with the magic word. Doing this would turn the monster back into an inanimate being. And that’s exactly what the rabbi did. He then shredded the piece of paper and buried the Golem.
“Where?” asked Erik anxiously.
“No one knows. In a secret place. And the rabbi left word that when the Jewish people found themselves in a difficult situation again, another rabbi enlightened by God would emerge to decipher the magic word, and the Golem would save us.”
Erik gazed at Dita, full of admiration because she knew mysterious stories like the one about the Golem. He gently stroked her face and, sheltered by the strong cemetery walls and their secrets, kissed her innocently on the cheek.
Dita smiles mischievously as she remembers that moment.
The first kiss, no matter how fleeting it might be, is never forgotten. She recalls with pleasure the joy she felt that afternoon, and is surprised at the capacity for happiness to blossom in the emptiness of war. Adults wear themselves out pointlessly searching for a joy they never find. But in children, it bursts out of every pore.
* * *
Dita won’t let them treat her like a child. She won’t quit. She’ll carry on; she must. That’s what Hirsch said to her: You chew on fear, and you swallow it. And you carry on. No, she won’t abandon the library.
Not a single step backward …
Dita opens her eyes in the darkness of the hut, and the intensity of her inner flame turns into the flicker of a candle. She hears coughs, snores, the moans of some woman who might be dying. Maybe she doesn’t want to admit to herself that it’s not so much what Mrs. Turnovská or any of the other inmates might say that worries her. No, what really concerns her is what Fredy Hirsch would think of her.
A few days ago, she heard him talking with a group of older children from the athletics team that runs around the outside of the hut every afternoon even if it’s snowing or raining, cold or freezing. Hirsch runs with them, always at the front, leading the way.
“The strongest athlete isn’t the one who finishes first. That athlete is the fastest. The strongest athlete is the one who gets up again every time he falls, the one who doesn’t stop when he feels a pain in his side, the one who doesn’t abandon the race, no matter how far away the finish line is. That runner is a winner whenever he reaches the finish line, even if he comes in last. Sometimes, no matter how much you want it, being the fastest isn’t an option, because your legs aren’t as long or your lungs as large. But you can always choose to be the strongest. It’s up to you—your willpower and your effort. I’m not going to ask you to be the fastest, but I am going to require you to be the strongest.”
Dita is certain that if she told him she had to give up the library, he’d offer her kind, extremely polite, even comforting words … but she’s not sure she could bear his look of disappointment. Dita sees him as an indestructible man, like the unstoppable Golem in the Jewish legend who, one day, would save them all.
Fredy Hirsch.… His name gives her courage.
Dita sifts again through the images stored in her head and finds one from a couple of years ago, of the gentle fields of Strašnice, on the outskirts of Prague. Jews could breathe fresh air there, away from all the restrictions of the city. The Hagibor sports grounds were located there.
In her memory, it was summer, and a hot day, so many of the boys were bare-chested. She could see three people surrounded by a bustling huddle of children and teenagers. The first person was a thin twelve- or thirteen-year-old boy with glasses who was wearing nothing more than a pair of white shorts. The one in the middle—a magician who had introduced himself theatrically as Borghini—was bowing. He was elegantly dressed in a shirt, sport coat, and striped tie. There was a young man on the other side of him who was wearing only sandals and a pair of shorts, which emphasized his slim but athletic body. That day, she learned that his name was Fredy Hirsch and that he was in charge of youth activities at the Hagibor sports grounds. The boy with the glasses was holding one end of a piece of string, the magician was holding it in the middle, and Hirsch was holding the other end. Dita remembers the coach’s posture: one hand placed somewhat vainly on his waist while the other hand held on to the string. Hirsch was looking at the magician with a slightly mischievous smile.
The show began, and the enterprising Borghini tried to take on the crushing might of the war with his small arsenal of magic tricks: multicolored handkerchiefs up his sleeve versus cannons, the ace of clubs versus fighter-bombers. And, incredible as it might seem, for just a few moments full of smiling, spellbound faces, magic won out.
A very determined young girl holding a bundle of papers approached Dita and held one out to her.
“You can join us. We organize summer camps in Bezpráví, by the Orlice River, where we play sport and strengthen our Jewish spirit. There’s more information about our activities on the flyer.”
Her father didn’t like those sorts of things. She had overheard him telling her uncle that he didn’t approve of mixing politics and sport. They said this Hirsch fellow organized guerrilla warfare games with the children, had them digging trenches from which they pretended to shoot weapons, and talked to them about combat techniques as if they were a small army under his command.
If Hirsch is the commander, Dita is now more than ready to get into any trench. Anyway, she’s already in it up to her neck. They are Jews, a stubborn people. The Nazis won’t be able to crack her, or Hirsch. She won’t quit the library … but she’ll have to be alert, all eyes and ears, keep an eye on the shadows in which Mengele operates so she doesn’t get trapped. She’s a fourteen-year-old girl, and they are the most powerful military weapon of destruction in history, but she’s not going to take part silently in the procession again. Not this time. She’s going to stand up to them.
No matter the cost.
Dita isn’t the only one suffering insomnia.
Fredy Hirsch, as the head of Block 31, has been granted the privilege of sleeping in his own cubicle, and in a barrack where he is the only resident. After working on one of his reports, he leaves his cubicle and stands by himself in the silence. The whispering has faded, the books have been closed, the songs are over.… When the kids race off, the school goes back to being a crude wooden shed.
They’re the best thing we’ve got, he tells himself.
One more day and one more inspection have passed. Each day is a battle won. His chest shrinks and his straight collarbones disappear into his shoulders. He collapses onto a stool and closes his eyes. He’s exhausted, but no one must know. He’s a leader. He can’t let them down.
If they only knew.…
He’s lying to them all. If they found out who he really is, they would hate him.
He feels drained. So he drops to the floor, beginning a round of push-ups. He’s constantly telli
ng the members of his teams that effort overcomes tiredness.
Up, down; up, down.
The whistle he always wears around his neck bangs rhythmically against the foot-flattened earth. His secret feels like an iron ball shackled to his ankle, but he knows he has no choice. He has to keep going. Up and down …
“Weakness is a sin,” he whispers, almost out of breath.
Growing up in Aachen, all the children walked to school. Fredy was the only one who ran, his schoolbooks tied to his shoulders with a rope. The store owners would jokingly ask him where he was going in such a hurry, and he greeted them politely, but never slowed down. He had no reason to hurry; he just enjoyed running. Whenever an adult asked him why he ran, he would answer that walking made him feel tired, but running never did.
He would race into the little square in front of the main entrance to the school and then, because there were no old people sitting on the bench at that hour, he would leap over it as if he were taking part in a steeplechase. Whenever the opportunity arose, he would tell his classmates that it was his ambition to be a professional athlete.
At the age of ten, his childhood was smashed into a million pieces when his father died. Sitting on the stool in the barrack, Fredy tries to picture his father, but he can’t. His strongest memory of him back then is of the hole left by his absence. That emptiness, which he felt so acutely, has never been filled. He continues to feel that uneasy sense of being alone, even when he’s surrounded by people.
After his father’s death, Fredy started to lose the strength to run. He stopped enjoying races and lost his bearings. His mother had to spend all day working, and so, to stop him from spending long stretches at home on his own or fighting with his older brother, she signed him up for a German-Jewish version of the Boy Scouts called the Jüdischer Pfadfinderbund Deutschland or JPD. They ran activities for young children and had a separate sports branch called Maccabi Hatzair.
The first time Fredy entered the large and somewhat shabby premises, with its list of rules tacked to the wall, it smelled of bleach. He remembers choking back his tears. Little by little, young Fredy Hirsch found the warmth that was lacking in his empty house. He found companionship, tabletop games on rainy days, excursions that always included a guitar and someone telling an inspiring story about Israel’s martyrs. Games of football and basketball, sack races, athletics—they all became a life raft he could cling to. When Saturday rolled around and all the others stayed at home with their families, he would go to the sports grounds by himself to throw balls at the rusty hoops on the basketball court or do endless rounds of sit-ups until his T-shirt was soaked with sweat.
He wiped out all his concerns and banished his insecurities by training to the point of exhaustion. He would set himself small challenges: race to the corner and back five times in under three minutes, do ten push-ups and clap his hands together on the last one, sink four baskets in four attempts from a particular spot on the basketball court.… His mind was a blank while he was concentrating on his challenges; he was almost happy.
His mother remarried, and throughout his adolescence, Fredy felt more at home in the JPD headquarters than at home. When school was over, he’d go straight there, staying late into the evening. He always had some reason to give his mother for not coming home: meetings of the youth board—of which he was a member; the need to organize excursions or sports tournaments; maintenance work around the premises.… As he got older, he became less and less capable of connecting with kids his own age. Few of them shared either his heightened Zionist mysticism, which encouraged him to see the return to Palestine as a mission, or his passion for endless sports training. His peers invited him to the odd party, where the first couples began to form, but Fredy kept making excuses. Eventually they stopped asking him.
He discovered that what he enjoyed most was coaching teams and organizing tournaments for the youngest children. And he was very good at it, inspiring the kids with his passion. His teams always fought to the bitter end.
“Let’s go! Keep going! Try harder, harder!” he’d shout at the children from the sideline. “If you don’t fight for victory, then don’t cry when you lose!”
Fredy Hirsch never cries.
Up, down. Up, down. Up, down
When he is finished with his push-ups, Fredy stands, satisfied. That is, as satisfied as the secret keeper can be.
5.
Rudi Rosenberg has been inside Birkenau for almost two years, and that’s quite an achievement. It’s turned him into an old camp hand at the ripe age of nineteen and earned him the position of registrar. The registrar keeps the books on prisoner numbers in a place where the ebb and flow of people is tragically constant. The Nazis, meticulous about everything, including killing, have a high regard for this position. That’s why Rudi doesn’t wear the regular prisoner’s uniform. He proudly sports a pair of riding pants, a luxury item. All the other prisoners wear filthy striped uniforms except for the Kapos, the cooks, and those in positions of trust like the barrack secretaries and registrars. And other exceptional cases, like in the family camp.
Rudi passes through the control post of the quarantine camp he’s been assigned to, on the other side of the fence from camp BIIb, the family camp. He displays the affable smile of a model prisoner for any guards he comes across. They let him through when he tells them he’s headed for camp BIIb to deliver some lists.
He walks along the wide perimeter dirt road connecting the camps of the Birkenau complex and gazes at the distant line of trees that marks the start of the forest. At this hour on a winter afternoon, it forms a dim outline. A gust of wind carries a faint scent of the wet undergrowth, moss and mushrooms. He closes his eyes for a moment to savor it. Freedom is the smell of a damp forest.
He’s been summoned to a secret meeting to talk about the mysterious family camp.
When Rudi Rosenberg arrives at the designated meeting point behind one of the barracks in camp BIIb, two men, leaders of the Resistance, are waiting for him. One wears a cook’s apron and is sickly pale; he introduces himself as Lem. David Schmulewski, the other man, started out as a roofer and is now assistant to the Blockältester of Block 27 in camp BIIb. He is dressed in civilian clothes: worn corduroy pants and a sweater that’s as wrinkled as his face.
They’ve already received basic information about the arrival of the December intake of prisoners to family camp BIIb, but they want Rosenberg to provide them with all the details he has. Rudi confirms the arrival of five thousand Jews from the Terezín ghetto. They arrived at the family camp in two separate trainloads three days apart. As with the September intake, they’ve been allowed to stay in civilian clothes, their heads haven’t been shaved, and children have been allowed entry.
The two Resistance leaders listen silently. It’s hard for them to comprehend why a death factory like Auschwitz, where inmates are valuable only for their labor, would convert one of its camps into something as unprofitable as a family compound.
“I still don’t get it,” mutters Schmulewski. “The Nazis are psychopaths and criminals, but they’re not stupid. Why would they want young children in a forced labor camp when they consume food, occupy space, and don’t produce anything useful?”
“Could it be some experiment on a grand scale by that lunatic Dr. Mengele?”
No one knows. Rosenberg turns to another mystery. The documentation that arrived with the September shipment of inmates came with a special annotation: “Sonderbehandlung (special treatment) after six months.” And SB6 was added to the number tattooed on each prisoner’s arm.
“Does anyone know anything more about that ‘special treatment’?”
The question hangs in the air, unanswered. The Polish cook continues to scratch away at a bit of dried food stuck to his apron, which hasn’t been clean in a long while. Schmulewski whispers what they’re all thinking: “In here, treatments are so special that they kill.”
“But what’s the point?” asks Rudi Rosenberg. “If they plan to get rid of
them, why spend money feeding them for six months? It’s not logical.”
“It has to be. If you learn anything when you’re working near the Germans, it’s that everything has its rationale, whatever it might be. It might be terrible or cruel … but there’s always a reason.”
“And even if the special treatment consisted in taking them off to the gas chambers, what could we do?”
“Not a lot right now. We’re not even sure that’s what it is.”
Just then, another man arrives. He’s young, tall and strong, and he’s nervous. He’s not wearing the prisoner’s uniform, either; instead, he has a turtleneck sweater—a rare privilege for an inmate. Rudi makes as if to leave so they won’t think he’s meddling, but the Pole gestures for him to stay.
“Thanks for coming, Shlomo. We get very little information about the special operations unit.”
“I won’t be able to stay long, Schmulewski.”
The young man waves his hands around a lot. Rudi deduces from this that he must be a Latin, and he’s not wrong. Shlomo comes from a Jewish-Italian community in Thessaloníki.
“We don’t know a great deal about what happens in the gas chambers.”
“Three hundred more this morning, just in the second crematorium. Most of them were women and children.” Shlomo pauses and looks at them. He wonders if you really can explain the inexplicable. He waves his hands in the air and looks up at the sky, but it’s overcast. “I had to help a little girl take off her shoes because her mother was holding a baby, and they have to go into the chamber naked. She kept poking her tongue out at me playfully as I was taking off her sandals. She would have been less than four.”
“And they don’t suspect anything?”
“May God forgive me.… They’ve just arrived after spending three days traveling in a freight car. They’re stunned, frightened. An SS guard with a machine gun tells them they’re going to have a shower, and they believe him. What else would they think? The guards get them to hang their clothes on hooks and even tell them to take note of the number of the hook so they can retrieve their clothes afterward. That’s how they make them believe they’ll be coming back. The guards even insist they tie their shoelaces together so they won’t lose their shoes. That way, it’s easier to gather up all the shoes later on and take them to the hut we call Canada, where they pick out the best articles of clothing to send to Germany. The Germans make use of everything.”
The Librarian of Auschwitz Page 5