Vera and Helena leave, and Rudi and Alice find themselves alone. For the first time, no barbed wire comes between them, no guards in towers with guns at their shoulders watch them, and no chimneys remind them of the degradation that surrounds them. They look at each other for a moment, shyly and with some awkwardness at first, and then more and more intensely. They’re young and they’re beautiful, full of life and plans and desires and an urgency to drink their fill of the present moment. And as they gaze again at each other, with the spark of desire well alight in their eyes, they feel that their happiness insulates them, that it takes them to another place and that nothing can snatch this moment from them.
For the time this dream lasts, as he hugs Alice’s body, Rudi believes that his happiness is so complete nothing can destroy it. He falls asleep thinking that when he wakes up, all evil will have been erased and that life will flow again as it did before the war—roosters will crow at dawn, and there’ll be a smell of freshly baked bread and the sound of the milkman’s cheerful bicycle bell. But the next day dawns, and nothing has been erased; Birkenau’s menacing landscape remains intact. He’s still too young to know that happiness cannot conquer anything—it’s too fragile.
Rudi is woken abruptly by an agitated voice, and it feels as if a window inside his head has exploded into a million pieces. It’s Helena, and she’s extremely worried. She tells him Schmulewski is looking for him urgently; the whole camp is overrun with SS soldiers, and something really serious is about to happen. Rudi tries to put on his boots as Helena, almost hysterical, tugs at his arm and practically drags him from his bed, while Alice dozes on between the sheets, desperately clinging a little longer to her dreams.
“For God’s sake, Rudi, hurry up! There’s no time, there’s no time!”
As soon as Rudi steps outside, he too senses that something’s not right. There are lots of SS guards—he’s never seen so many before—which suggests they’ve asked for special reinforcements from other detachments. It doesn’t look like the routine procedure for escorting a contingent of prisoners to a train for a regular transfer. He’s got to see Schmulewski right away. There’s no question that he’d prefer not to see him, not to listen to what he has to say, but he must go and meet him in camp BIId. Given his rank, he has no difficulty in exiting the quarantine camp on the pretext that he has to pick up some bread rations that are missing.
The Resistance leader’s face isn’t a face anymore—it’s a confusion of wrinkles and bags under his eyes. He doesn’t beat around the bush anymore. His words aren’t discreet or cautious anymore: They’re razor-sharp.
“The people transferred from the family camp die today,” he says with no hesitation.
“You mean there’ll be a selection? You mean they want to get rid of the old people, the sick, and the children?”
“No, Rudi. Everybody! The young Jewish male prisoners forced to help with the disposal of gas chamber victims have received orders to prepare the ovens tonight for four thousand people.”
And almost without pausing, he adds, “There’s no time for regret, Rudi. It’s time to rebel.”
Schmulewski is under a great deal of strain, but his words are absolutely precise, perhaps because he’s rehearsed and repeated them dozens of times throughout his long night of insomnia.
“If the Czechs organize an uprising, if they force a confrontation and fight, they won’t be on their own. Hundreds, or maybe thousands of us will be beside them and, with a bit of luck, this could work out well. Go and talk to them. Tell them they have nothing to lose: They fight or they die—there’s no other option. But they haven’t got a chance in hell without someone to lead them.”
And in response to Rudi’s look of incomprehension, Schmulewski points out that there are at least half a dozen distinct political organizations in the camp: Communists, Socialists, Zionists, anti-Zionists, social democrats, Czech nationalists.… “If one of these groups takes the initiative, it’s likely to create discussions, differences of opinion, and confrontations with the others, which would make it impossible to achieve a united uprising. That’s why we need someone whom the majority respects. Someone with a great deal of courage, who won’t hesitate, who’ll speak out, and whom the rest of them are prepared to follow.”
“But who could that be?” Rudi asks incredulously.
“Hirsch.”
The registrar slowly nods in agreement, conscious that events have assumed an enormous significance.
“You have to speak to him, inform him of the situation and convince him to lead the uprising. Time is running out, Rudi. There’s a lot at stake. Hirsch has to rebel and take everyone with him.”
Uprising … an exciting, magnificent word, worthy of history books. A word that nevertheless falters when Rudi raises his eyes and looks around: men, women, and children dressed in rags, unarmed and starving, confronting machine guns mounted in towers, trained dogs, armored vehicles. Schmulewski knows that. He knows that many, if not all of them, will die … but a breach might be opened and a few of them—dozens, maybe, or hundreds—might escape into the forest and get away.
Maybe the rebellion will take off, and they’ll blow up vital camp installations. In that way, they might be able to disable the machine of death, even if only momentarily, and save many lives. Or it might achieve nothing more than people being mowed down by rounds of machine-gun fire. There are many unknowns lined up against the certainty of the overwhelming power of the SS, but Schmulewski keeps repeating the same thing again and again:
“Tell him, Rudi. Tell him he’s got nothing to lose.”
Rudi Rosenberg entertains no doubts as he returns to the quarantine camp—their death sentence is sealed, but they can fight for their destiny. Fredy Hirsch holds the key around his neck, that silver whistle. One blast to announce the unanimous, violent uprising of almost four thousand souls.
As he’s walking, he thinks of Alice. So far, he’s acted as if Alice weren’t part of the September contingent condemned to death, as if none of this had anything to do with her. She is one of the condemned, but Rudi keeps telling himself that she isn’t, that it’s not possible that Alice’s youth and beauty, her body full of delights, and her doelike eyes could turn into inert flesh in a few hours’ time. It isn’t possible, he tells himself. It’s against all the laws of nature. How could someone want to see a young woman like Alice die? Rudi quickens his pace and clenches his fists, overcome by a rage that is turning his despondency into fury.
He arrives back at the camp, his cheeks burning with anger. Helena is nervously waiting for him at the camp entrance.
“Tell Fredy Hirsch to come to my room for an urgent meeting,” he says to her. “Tell him it’s a matter of the utmost importance.”
It’s all or nothing.
Helena is back in a flash, accompanied by Hirsch, the idol of the young people, the apostle of Zionism, the man who’s capable of speaking as an equal with Josef Mengele. Rudi looks him over quickly: sinewy, his wet hair impeccably combed back, a serene, slightly severe gaze, as if he is irritated at being roused from his thoughts.
When Rudi explains that the leader of the Resistance in Birkenau has gathered definitive proof that the September transport from Terezín is going to be exterminated in its entirety in the gas ovens that very night, Hirsch’s expression doesn’t change. There’s no surprise, no response. He remains silent, almost standing at attention like a soldier. Rudi fixes his eyes on the whistle hanging from Fredy’s neck like an amulet.
“You are our only chance, Fredy. Only you can speak to the leaders in the camp and convince them to stir up their followers. To launch themselves as one against the guards and start an uprising. You have to talk to all the leaders, and that whistle around your neck has to give the signal that the uprising has begun.”
Still no response from the German. His expression is impenetrable, and his eyes are fixed on the Slovak registrar. Rudi has already said all he has to say and falls silent, too, as he waits for Hirsch’s reaction t
o this desperate proposal in the midst of a totally hopeless situation.
And Hirsch finally speaks. But the person who is speaking isn’t the social leader or the intransigent Zionist or the proud athlete. Rather, it’s the children’s educator. And he speaks in a murmur.
“And what about the children, Rudi?”
Rosenberg would have preferred to leave this discussion until later. The children are the weakest link in the chain. In a violent uprising, they’re the ones with the least chance of surviving. But Rudi has an answer to this, too.
“Fredy, the children are going to die no matter what—no question. We have a possibility, maybe just a small one, but a possibility nevertheless, of getting thousands of prisoners to rise up and destroy the camp, thereby saving the lives of many deportees who will no longer be sent here.”
Fredy’s lips remain tightly sealed, but his eyes speak for him. In an uprising involving hand-to-hand combat, the children will be the first ones they slaughter. If a breach is opened in the fence and there’s a stampede to escape, they’ll be the last ones to fight their way through. If the prisoners have to run hundreds of meters cross-country under a hail of bullets to reach the forest, the children will be the last to get there and the first to be cut down. And, if any of them reach the forest, what will they do, alone and disoriented?
“They trust me, Rudi. How can I abandon them now? How can I fight to save myself and leave them to be killed? And what if you are mistaken and there is a transfer to another camp?”
“There won’t be. You’re doomed. You can’t save the children, Fredy. Think about the others. Think about the thousands of children all over Europe, and all the children who’ll come to Auschwitz to die if we don’t rebel now.”
Fredy Hirsch closes his eyes and lifts one of his hands to his forehead as if he had a fever.
“Give me an hour. I need an hour to think about it.”
Fredy leaves the room with his customary upright posture. No one who sees him walking across the camp could know that he’s carrying the unbearable weight of four thousand lives on his shoulders. As he walks, he strokes his whistle obsessively.
Several members of the Resistance, who are already aware of the situation, come into Rudi’s room to find out what’s happened, and Rosenberg tells them the outcome of his conversation with the head of Block 31.
“He’s asked for a while to think it over.”
One of them, a Czech with a steely look, says Hirsch is buying time. They all look at him, asking him to explain what he means.
“They’re not going to destroy him. He’s useful to the Nazis. He’s prepared valuable reports for them and anyway, he’s German. Hirsch is waiting for Mengele to claim him, to remove him from here any moment; that’s what he’s waiting for.”
A tense silence hangs briefly in the air.
“That’s a low comment typical of Communists like you! Fredy has taken risks for the sake of the children hundreds of times more often than you!” Renata Bubeník yells at him.
The Czech starts to shout, too, calling her a stupid Zionist and saying that they’ve heard Hirsch asking the Kapo in his current hut if there’s been any message for him.
Rudi stands up and tries to make peace. He now realizes why it’s so important to find a leader, a single voice, someone capable of bringing such a mixed group of people together and convincing them to rise up as one.
When everyone else leaves, Alice comes to sit beside Rudi and share the wait, because that’s all they can do now, wait for Hirsch’s reply. Alice’s presence is a relief in the midst of chaos and uncertainty. She finds it hard to believe that the Nazis will kill all of them, even the children. Death is something terrible but foreign to her, as though it could happen to others but not to her. Rudi tells her it’s horrible, but Schmulewski can’t be wrong about something like this. Then he asks her to change the topic. They talk about life after Auschwitz, about how much she likes country houses, about her favorite foods, the names she’d like to give her children one day … about real life, and not this nightmare in which they are trapped. For a short while, a future seems possible.
The minutes pass. And the weight of tension is almost unbearable. Rudi thinks about Hirsch’s burden. Alice is talking to him, but he’s no longer listening. There’s a stifling heaviness in the air. There’s a clock inside his head with an infernal tick-tock that’s driving him mad.
An hour goes by, and there’s no news from Hirsch.
Minutes pass; another hour. No sign of Hirsch.
Alice fell silent some time ago, and her head is resting in Rudi’s lap. Rudi starts to become aware that death is very near.
* * *
Meanwhile, in the family camp next door, classes have been suspended in Block 31. The teachers from the December transport, who are now in charge of the school, are too concerned. Some try to organize games for the children, but the children themselves are restless. They want to know where their classmates are going, and they aren’t at all interested in guessing games or songs. It’s an afternoon of lethargy and tense calmness. There’s no fuel for the fire, and it’s colder than ever. One of the assistants arrives and tells everyone that new Kapos have been named to replace the Jewish barrack heads of the September transport.
Dita sticks her head outside every now and again to see what’s happening in camp BIIa, where half her former companions are now located. She can see people walking along the main street in the quarantine camp; some even walk up to the fence, but security is tight and the soldiers immediately move them on.
The atmosphere is so charged that Dita thinks it would be foolish to move the books, which remain carefully hidden in what was, until yesterday, Hirsch’s den, and is now occupied by Lichtenstern. The new head has exchanged his meal ration for half a dozen cigarettes. He’s smoked them one after another, and continues to pace up and down the hut like a caged lion.
Everyone is concerned about what’s going to happen to the September transport people. Out of solidarity and compassion, no doubt, but also because whatever happens to those people might be a preview of what lies in wait for them three months from now, when their six months in the camp are over.
19.
In BIIa, Rudi can’t wait a moment longer.
He springs up energetically and looks at Alice without saying a word. He cracks his knuckles and decides to go over to Hirsch’s hut and force him to make a decision. And he won’t accept any answer but yes. The uprising has to explode without further delay.
He leaves the hut feeling very anxious, but the farther along the busy main street of the camp he gets, the bolder he becomes, and the more decisive his stride. He’s prepared to resolve Hirsch’s doubts and objections forcefully. He walks purposefully, inhaling deeply so he’ll be able to confront any obstacle the leader of the family camp might offer him: He’s ready to overcome them all so that the whistle sounds and the rebellion breaks out. While he was waiting, he went through an exhaustive replay of any objections Hirsch might put in front of him, and he’s prepared a definitive answer for each one. Rudi has a lofty view of himself—he is convinced he’s anticipated every possibility and can overcome them all.
It’s true that Rudi has answers to all the questions. He hasn’t left anything out, and there’s no way they can be rebutted. But what he hasn’t prepared for is that there won’t be an objection. There’s no way he could have anticipated the scene that awaits him when he reaches the hut in which Hirsch has a tiny room of his own.
The determined registrar walks energetically into the hut, knocks on Hirsch’s door, and when there’s no answer, resolutely walks in. He sees Fredy stretched out on his bunk. When he approaches the bunk to wake him, he notices with alarm that Fredy is breathing with great difficulty, his face blue. Hirsch is dying.
Rudi races from the hut, shouting for help like a madman. He returns with two doctors who were already gathering their few instruments in preparation for their return to the family camp before nightfall, as Mengele had o
rdered. Their examination of Rudi is short. They repeat it two more times and consult each other in whispers with grave expressions on their faces.
“It’s a serious case of poisoning; an overdose of sedatives. There’s nothing we can do for him.”
Alfred Hirsch’s life is expiring.
Rudi Rosenberg feels his heart skip a beat and almost faints. He has to lean against the wooden wall to remain upright. He looks over, undoubtedly for the last time, at the great athlete. The metal whistle on Hirsch’s chest is still. He realizes with horror that, in the end, the great man has been unable to bear the thought of taking his young charges to certain death. He has decided to depart first.
Rosenberg, overwhelmed with anxiety, thinks there might just be time to find another leader, that Schmulewski will find some other way of starting the revolt. He rushes off, but when he tries to leave the camp to go and talk to the head of the Resistance, things have changed: He encounters a swarm of SS guards. The quarantine camp has been sealed. Nobody can enter or leave, under any circumstances.
Rudi walks up to the fence separating him from camp BIIb and signals to a member of the Resistance, who is permanently wandering up and down on his own side of the fence, that he wants to have a word. He tells the Resistance member that he has to get some crucial information to Schmulewski right away.
“Fredy Hirsch has committed suicide. For the love of God, tell Schmulewski!”
The man says it’s impossible; they’ve just been given orders that no one can leave the family camp. Rudi turns back and makes his way along the quarantine camp’s Lagerstrasse with difficulty. It has become a nervous anthill teeming with inmates and armed guards, all on edge.
Alice, Helena, and Vera come to meet him. He hurriedly explains the situation: Fredy Hirsch will never ever lead anything again, and Schmulewski is out of reach. The separation of the three camps has now become an abyss.
The Librarian of Auschwitz Page 22