“For all the kids you’ve got! Maybe I could get you some real pencils—”
“Could you?” Alice’s eyes sparkled, to Rudi’s delight. “But it would be really hard to get them into our camp.”
Her words please Rudi even more. This gives him a chance to shine a little.
“All I need is someone I can trust on the other side of the fence.… Maybe that could be you.”
Alice nods vehemently, happy to be even more useful to Hirsch. She admires Fredy deeply, like all the young assistants.
As soon as he’s said it, the registrar feels a stab of doubt. Things have gone well for him so far in Auschwitz, and he’s landed a privileged position because he’s played his cards well. He’s learned how to win over influential inmates, and he’s acquired the knack of risking only what is absolutely necessary, dealing in goods and services that are low-risk but highly beneficial to his standing. Acquiring pencils to hand over to a children’s hut is neither beneficial nor wise. But he looks at the smile and the sparkle in the girl’s black eyes, and forgets everything else.
“Three days from now. At this very spot in the fence, and at the same time.”
Alice nods her agreement and runs off nervously, as if she were suddenly in a great hurry. He watches her go, her hair ruffled by the cold afternoon breeze. He’ll have to break the rule for survival that has worked so well for him so far: Don’t ask for favors for which you don’t get any return. He’s made a bad deal with that girl and yet, incomprehensibly, he’s happy. As he makes his way back to his hut in camp BIIa, he feels weak, as if his legs were giving way. He never figured falling in love would feel so much like the flu.
* * *
Dita Adler’s legs are shaking, too. The children and their teachers enter the hut, noting that the librarian is on the other side of the chimney with a stack of books in front of her. They haven’t seen so many books in one place for months—not since Terezín. The teachers come up and read the spines of the books that are still legible, and then ask with their eyes if they can pick up the books. Dita agrees, but she doesn’t take her eyes off them. When one of the women opens the psychology book too forcefully, Dita asks her to be more careful.
“They’re very fragile,” Dita tells her, forcing a smile.
The books have to come back to her at the end of each class so that they can be rotated, and so Dita knows exactly where they are. She spends the morning observing their movement throughout the hut. She watches a teacher right at the very back gesticulating, the geometry book in her hand. She sees the atlas propped up on a stool nearby; it’s a big book but it still fits snugly into her inside pocket. She can easily make out the green cover of the Russian grammar book, which the teachers sometimes use to astonish the children with its mysterious Cyrillic letters. There’s less of a call for the novels. Some of the teachers have asked if they can read them, but that can only happen inside Block 31.
She should ask Seppl Lichtenstern if he’ll allow her to lend the books to the teachers who are free in the afternoon when the children have games or when Avi Fischer’s very popular choir is rehearsing. When the choir sings “Alouette,” the whole hut is filled with happy voices.
At the end of the morning, all the books are returned, and Dita gathers them up with relief. She scowls at any teacher who returns a book in worse condition than when it was borrowed. She has come to know every wrinkle, every rip, every scar.
Fredy Hirsch, papers in hand and looking snowed under, walks past Dita’s display on top of the chimney. He pauses and looks at the small library. Fredy is one of those people who are always in a hurry but always have time.
“Well, well, young lady. This really is a library now.”
“I’m glad you like it.”
“This is very good. We Jews have always been a cultured people.” And he smiles as he says this. “If there’s anything I can do, just let me know.”
Hirsch turns around and starts to stride off energetically.
“Fredy!” Dita still feels embarrassed about addressing him so informally, but he insisted that she do so. “There is something you could do for me.”
He looks at her quizzically.
“Get me some tape, glue, and a pair of scissors. These poor books need attention.”
Hirsch nods. As he heads toward the door, he smiles. He never tires of repeating to anyone who’ll listen, The children are the best thing we have.
In the afternoon, the little kids take advantage of the fact that it’s stopped raining to go outside and play tag or hunt for invisible treasures in the wet mud. The older ones place their stools in a large semicircle. Dita has already gathered up her books, so she moves nearer to listen. Hirsch is in the middle of the group, and he’s talking to them about one of his favorite topics—the aliyah, or march to the lands of Palestine. The children listen, absorbed.
“Aliyah is much more than an emigration. No, that’s not what it’s about. It’s not a question of going to Palestine as you might move anywhere else to earn a living and nothing more. No, no, no.” There’s a long pause, filled by an expectant silence. “It’s a journey to connect with the strength of your ancestors. It’s picking up a thread that was broken. It’s occupying the land and making it yours. It’s something much more profound. It’s hagshama atzmit, or self-fulfillment. You may not have noticed, but you have a lightbulb inside you. Yes, you do—don’t give me those looks—it’s in there.… Even you, Markéta. But it’s switched off. You might say, Who cares? I’ve lived like this so far, and things have gone all right. Of course you can live like you have so far, but it will be a mediocre life. The difference between living with the lightbulb switched off or on is like lighting up a dark cave with a match or a spotlight. If you carry out aliyah and undertake the march to the land of our ancestors, that light will go on with incredible force and brighten you within as soon as you set foot in Palestine. It’s not something I can tell you about. You have to experience it for yourselves. Then you’ll understand it all. And that’s when you’ll know who you are.”
The look of concentration on the faces of the teenagers is absolute. Their eyes are wide open, and some of them unwittingly stroke their chests as if they were searching for the switch that could turn on those switched-off lights Hirsch says they carry inside them.
“We look at the Nazis with their modern weaponry and their shiny uniforms, and we think they are powerful, invincible even. Don’t be deceived: There is nothing inside those shiny uniforms. They’re just an outer shell. They’re nothing. We’re not interested in shining on the outside. We want to shine on the inside. That’s what will give us victory in the end. Our strength isn’t in uniforms—it’s in faith, pride, and determination.”
Fredy pauses and looks at his audience, who are watching him attentively.
“We’re stronger than them because our hearts are stronger. We’re better than them because our hearts are more powerful. That’s why they won’t defeat us. That’s why we’ll return to the land of Palestine; that’s where we’ll take a stand. And no one will ever humiliate us again. Because we’ll arm ourselves with pride, and with swords … very sharp swords. Those who say we are a nation of accountants lie: We are a nation of warriors, and we’ll repay all the blows and all the attacks on us a hundred times over.”
Dita listens in silence for a while and then slips away.
She waits to see Hirsch when everyone has gone. She doesn’t want anyone else to hear about the incident with Mengele. She notices some of the older girls laughing. And some boys, who strike her as silly idiots with pimples, like that Milan who thinks he’s so good-looking. Well, he is good-looking, but if an idiot like that tried to flirt with her, she’d tell him to get lost. But Milan would never look at a skinny girl like her anyway.
There are still too many teachers and assistants chatting in little groups, so in the meantime, she hides in the small nook behind a pile of wood that old Professor Morgenstern sometimes sneaks away to. There, Dita sits on a stool and
feels a piece of paper brush against her hand: It’s a crinkled, spiky little origami bird. She feels like looking through her mental photo album of Prague, perhaps because when you can’t dream about the future, you can always dream about the past.
She comes across a very clear image: her mother sewing a horrendous yellow star onto her beautiful deep-blue blouse. It’s her mother’s face in that snapshot that most upsets her. She’s concentrating on her needle, her face as impassive and neutral as if she were sewing the hem on a skirt. Dita remembers that when she angrily asked her mother what she was doing to her favorite blouse, her mother answered what difference did it make? She didn’t even look up from what she was doing. Dita recalls clenching her fists, and bursting with outrage. That yellow star made from thick fabric looked awful on top of the satin cloth of her blue blouse. It would look even worse on her green shirt. She couldn’t understand how her mother, who was so elegant, who spoke French, and who read those beautiful European fashion magazines she kept on the small coffee table in the living room, could sew such ugly cloth patches on their clothes. It’s the war, Edita … it’s the war, her mother whispered, without looking up from her sewing. And Dita didn’t say another word, just accepted it as inevitable, as her mother and the other adults had already done. It was the war; there was nothing you could do about it.
She curls up in her hidey-hole and searches for another image, from her twelfth birthday. She can see the apartment, her parents, her grandparents, her aunts and uncles, and some of her cousins. The whole family is around her, and she’s in the middle waiting for something. There’s a hint of that melancholy smile of hers, the one that appears when she removes her “brave girl” mask and the timid Dita emerges. What’s odd is that no one else in the family is smiling.
She remembers that particular party well. It was the last one she ever had, with a delicious cake made by her mother. There haven’t been any cakes since then. It’s true that that particular strudel, which makes her mouth water now as she remembers it, was much smaller than the ones her mother usually made, but she didn’t complain at the time because she had spent the entire week watching her mother going in and out of dozens of stores trying to get hold of more raisins and apples. Impossible! She’d be waiting at the entrance to Dita’s school each day with her empty shopping bag and not a hint of annoyance. That was her mother.
On that twelfth birthday, her mother appeared in the living room, smiling nervously and carrying her present. Dita’s eyes lit up because it was a shoe box, and she’d been hoping for a new pair of shoes for months. She preferred light-colored ones, with buckles and, if possible, with a small heel.
She hurriedly opened the box, and inside she found a pair of sad-looking, black, everyday shoes with closed toes like school shoes. When she looked at them more closely, she noticed they weren’t even new; there were scratches on the toes, which had been covered up with shoe polish. A thick silence suddenly filled the air: Her parents, grandparents, aunts, and uncles were looking at her expectantly, waiting for her reaction. She forced a big smile and said she really loved her present. She went over to kiss her mother, who gave her a big hug, and then her father who, in his typically dashing manner, told her she was a very lucky girl because this autumn, many Parisians would be wearing closed black shoes.
She smiles at the memory. But she had her own wish for her twelfth birthday. That evening, when her mother came to her room to say good night, Dita asked her for one more present. Before her mother could protest, she told her that it wouldn’t cost a cent. She had now turned twelve, and she’d like her mother to let her read some grown-up books. Her mother looked at her silently for a moment, finished tucking her in, and left without saying a word.
A little later, just as Dita was starting to fall asleep, she heard her door being opened carefully. Then she saw a hand leaving a copy of A. J. Cronin’s The Citadel on her bedside table. As soon as her mother had left the room, Dita rushed to block the crack under her door with her dressing gown so her parents wouldn’t notice that her light was on. She didn’t sleep a wink that night.
Late one October afternoon in the year 1921, a shabby young man gazed with fixed intensity through the window of a third-class compartment in the almost empty train laboring up the Penowell valley from Swansea.
Dita settled down in the compartment next to young Dr. Manson and traveled with him to Drineffy, a poor mining town in the mountains of Wales. She had boarded the reading train. That night, Dita felt the thrill of discovery, of knowing that it didn’t matter how many hurdles all the Reichs in the world put in her way, she’d be able to jump over all of them by opening a book.
When she now thinks back affectionately, even gratefully, to The Citadel, she smiles. Her mother didn’t know it, but she used to hide the book in her schoolbag so she could keep reading it during recess. It was the first book that made her angry.
It was also the first book that made her cry.
She smiles again at the thought of all those pages. Since then, she has discovered that her life can be made much more profound, because books multiply your experiences and enable you to meet people like Dr. Manson and, in particular, his wife, Christine. She was a woman who never allowed herself to be dazzled by high society or wealth, who never sacrificed her principles, who was strong and never gave in if she believed something was unjust.
Ever since then, Dita has wanted to be like Mrs. Manson. She wouldn’t let herself become discouraged by the war.
In her hiding place behind the woodpile, Dita’s head nods as she is overcome by sleep.
* * *
When Dita opens her eyes, it’s very dark, and there’s not a sound in the hut. She panics briefly that she has missed curfew. Not returning to her hut would be a very serious mistake, the sort of mistake Mengele is waiting for so he can turn her into a laboratory specimen. But she calms down when she hears people outside. She can hear voices inside now, too, and realizes that’s what has woken her up. They’re speaking in German.
She peeps around the woodpile and sees that the door to Hirsch’s cubicle is open and his light is on. Hirsch accompanies someone to the hut door, and then cautiously opens it.
“Wait a minute; there are people nearby.”
“You seem concerned, Fredy.”
“I think Lichtenstern suspects something. We have to do whatever it takes to make sure that neither Lichtenstern nor anyone in Block Thirty-One finds out. If they do, I’m finished.”
The other person laughs.
“Come on, stop worrying so much. What can they do to you? After all, they’re just Jewish prisoners.… They can’t shoot you!”
“If they find out how I’m deceiving them, someone would be keen to do that.”
The other person finally leaves the hut, and Dita catches a brief glimpse of him. He’s a well-built man, and he’s wearing a loose-fitting raincoat. She also sees him pulling up the hood even though it’s not raining, as if he doesn’t want to be recognized. But she can still see his feet, and he’s not wearing the clogs the prisoners usually wear, but a gleaming pair of boots.
What’s an incognito SS person doing here? Dita asks herself.
The light escaping from Hirsch’s cubicle allows her to see him returning to it looking utterly dejected. She’s never seen him looking shattered before. The normally proud man hangs his head.
Dita remains behind the woodpile paralyzed. She doesn’t understand what she’s just seen, but the thought of understanding it terrifies her. Hirsch said he is deceiving them.
But why?
Dita feels as if the ground is shifting under her feet, so she sits down again on the stool. She was feeling ashamed because she hasn’t told Hirsch the whole truth … but it turns out he’s the expert when it comes to hiding the fact that he’s secretly meeting with members of the SS, who take advantage of the dark to hide their movements around the camp.
Oh my God …
Dita sighs and covers her face with her hands.
How a
m I going to tell the truth to someone who hides the truth? If Hirsch can’t be trusted, who can?
She’s so confused that when she stands up, she feels dizzy. As soon as Hirsch shuts himself in his cubicle, Dita quietly leaves the barrack.
At that moment the siren sounds, announcing that curfew is about to start. The last stragglers, who have braved the cold of the night and the fury of the hut Kapos, run toward their rickety bunks, but Dita doesn’t have the will to run. Her questions are too heavy.
What if the person he was talking with isn’t a member of the SS but belongs to the Resistance? But then why would Fredy be worried about the people in Block 31 finding out, if the Resistance is on our side? And how many members of the Resistance speak with that pretentious Berlin accent?
She shakes her head as she walks. It’s impossible to deny the obvious. It was an SS man. It’s true that Hirsch is obliged to deal with them, but that wasn’t an official visit. The Nazi was there incognito and speaking to Fredy in a familiar way, as a friend even. And then there was that image of a Fredy overcome with remorse.…
Oh my God …
It’s rumored all the time in various groups that there are informers and Nazi spies among the prisoners. She can’t stop her legs from shaking.
No, no, definitely not.
Hirsch, an informer? If someone had suggested that to her two hours earlier, she would have scratched their eyes out! It wouldn’t make any sense for him to be an informer for the SS when he deceives them by running Block 31 as a school. Nothing makes sense. It suddenly occurs to her that maybe he’s pretending to be a Nazi informer, but that the information he’s passing over to them is irrelevant or inaccurate, and that’s how he keeps them mollified.
That would explain everything!
But then she remembers how Hirsch walked back to his cubicle utterly dejected once he was alone. He wasn’t a man proud of himself because he was fulfilling a mission. He was weighed down by the burden of guilt. She could see it in his posture.
The Librarian of Auschwitz Page 8