25.
On May 15, 1944, another transport arrived in the family camp from Terezín with 2,503 new deportees. The next day a second train arrived with another 2,500. And on the eighteenth, a third contingent arrived. All in all, there were an additional 7,500 people, of whom almost half were German Jews (3,125); the rest were 2,543 Czechs, 1,276 Austrians, and 559 Dutch.
It’s been chaotic this first morning—shouts, whistles, confusion. Dita and her mother have not only been forced to sleep together in the same bunk, but have had to share it with a third prisoner. She’s a very frightened Dutch woman who hasn’t even been capable of saying “good morning.” She spent the night trembling.
Dita hurries toward Block 31, where Seppl Lichtenstern and his team are overwhelmed trying to reorganize their barrack school. The situation is anarchic because, on top of everything else, there are now German and Dutch children in the hut along with the Czech speakers, and it’s difficult for them to understand each other. Three hundred additional children arrived in the May transport, and Dita has received orders from Lichtenstern and Miriam Edelstein to suspend the library service temporarily until new class groups have been organized and the situation becomes clearer.
The little ones are nervous, and there are quarrels, shoving, fights, arguments, tears, and an air of confusion that seems to keep growing. They can’t keep still; they’re upset by the bites from bedbugs, fleas, lice, and all manner of mites that live in the wet straw. Good weather encourages not only flowers but all sorts of bugs as well.
Miriam makes a drastic decision: She decides to use the last bit of coal that was being kept for an emergency to heat up buckets of water to wash the children’s underwear. There’s a huge kerfuffle, and there’s no time to dry them fully on the chimney, so the children have to put them on again still damp, but it looks as if most of the insects have been drowned and as the day progresses, calm is gradually restored.
When those who have been assigned to work in Block 31 reach the row of huts where it is located, they think they have arrived at a bog. But discovering a clandestine school has left them stunned—and hopeful.
Lichtenstern calls them all together at the end of the day, when groups have been more or less organized and a certain school routine has been put in place. He introduces them to a young teenage girl with the legs of a ballerina and woolen socks, who is nervously rocking back and forth on her wooden clogs. Anyone who doesn’t look at her carefully would think she’s slight, maybe even fragile, but if they study her, they’ll see the fire in her eyes. She seems to move about shyly, but at the same time she shamelessly observes everything around her. She tells them she’s the block librarian.
Some people ask her to repeat what she’s just said because they can’t believe what they’re hearing: “Is there a library as well? But books are forbidden!” They don’t understand how such a dangerous and delicate matter can be in the hands of a young girl. So Miriam asks her to climb onto a stool so that everyone will listen to her.
“Good afternoon. I’m Edita Adler. We have a library of eight paper books and six ‘living’ books.”
The look of puzzlement on the faces of some of the recent arrivals is so obvious that even Dita, who started speaking in a serious voice in order to convey her responsibility properly to so many adults, can’t keep back a small laugh.
“Don’t worry. We haven’t gone mad. Obviously, the books aren’t alive. It’s the people who tell the stories who are alive; you’ll be able to borrow them for your afternoon activities.”
Dita continues to explain how the library works in Czech and amazingly fluent German. The newly appointed teachers standing in front of her are still bewildered by the inherent contradiction that arises in the discussion of the normal operation of a school inside the most abnormal place in the world. When she is done, Dita bows her head in the slightly exaggerated manner of Professor Morgenstern and barely manages to stop herself from laughing at her own formality. She finds even funnier the openmouthed amazement with which some of them look at her as she makes her way back through them to her more secluded spot.
“She’s the librarian of Block Thirty-One,” they whisper.
There’s such a racket in the afternoon that it’s impossible for Dita to hide away and read. She goes to her usual hiding spot and finds half a dozen boys gathered there torturing ants.
Poor ants, she thinks. They must already have a tough enough time finding crumbs in Auschwitz.
So she puts A Short History of the World under her clothes, scurries off to the latrines, and hides down the back behind some containers. Clearly it’s hard to see, and the smell is awful—but it’s so bad that the SS guards rarely stick their heads inside. What Dita doesn’t know is that for precisely that reason, the latrines are the preferred spot for black market deals.
It’s almost soup time and hence the time to do business. Arkadiusz, a Polish man who does repair jobs around the camps, is one of the most active black marketeers: tobacco, a comb, a mirror, a pair of boots.…
He’s Santa Claus with a prisoner’s face, who can be asked for anything as long as you’re prepared to give him something in return. Dita hears voices in the hut and turns over the pages of her book even more quietly. The conversation filters into her ears. One of the people talking is a woman.
Dita can’t see her, but Bohumila Kleinová has a pointed nose that turns up, making her look somewhat haughty, but her soft, swollen bruised eyelids spoil that impression.
“I have a client. I’ll need a woman the day after tomorrow, in the afternoon, before the evening count.”
“Aunt Bohumila can arrange it, but the Kapo in charge of our hut is a bit nervous, and we’ll have to give her more.”
“Don’t overdo it, Bohumila.”
And then the tone of voice gets louder.
“I’m not asking for me, stupid! I’m telling you that it’s the Kapo. If she doesn’t turn a blind eye and doesn’t let us use her cubicle, you’ll be left without your tasty morsel.”
Arkadiusz lowers his voice but he still sounds angry and menacing:
“We agreed on a ration of bread and ten cigarettes. You won’t get a crumb more from me. Split it up among you however you want.”
Even Dita hears the woman’s grumble.
“Everything would be settled with fifteen cigarettes.”
“I said that’s not possible.”
“Damned Polish moneylender! Fine, I’ll give the Kapo two more cigarettes from my commission. But if I lose my income and I can’t buy food on the black market, I’ll get sick. And who’s going to get you pretty young Jewish women? Then you’ll come crying to Aunt Bohumila, yes, indeed, and you’ll be sorry you were so pigheaded with me.”
And then there’s silence. When the exchanges are being finalized, there’s always a moment’s silence, as if the two parties need to concentrate in their own particular way. Arkadiusz takes out five cigarettes; Bohumila always asks for half in advance. The other part of the payment, the ration of bread, will be paid to the woman at the time of the rendezvous.
“I want to see the goods.”
“Wait.”
There’s silence again for a few minutes and then Dita hears the woman’s nasal voice again.
“Here it is.”
Dita can’t resist craning her neck and leaning forward a little, taking advantage of the shadows. She can make out the taller figure of the Pole and the bulky one of Bohumila, who doesn’t look the slightest bit undernourished. There’s also another woman, thinner, her head lowered and her hands in her lap.
The Pole lifts her skirt and gropes her intimate parts. Then he separates her arms and fondles her breasts, slowly kneading them while she stands motionless.
“She’s not very young…”
“Better—that way she knows what she has to do.”
Many of the women Bohumila recruits are mothers. They want the extra ration of bread because they can’t bear the sight of their children going hungry.
&
nbsp; The Pole nods and leaves.
“Bohumila,” the woman whispers shyly, “this is a sin.”
The other woman looks at her with a fake look of seriousness.
“You shouldn’t worry about that, my dear. It’s God’s design—you have to earn your bread.”
And she bursts into obscene laughter. She leaves the latrines still laughing, with the woman trailing along behind her, head bowed.
Dita feels a bitter taste in her mouth. She can’t even escape back into the French Revolution and continue reading. She returns to her hut pale-faced, and as soon as her mother sees her come in, she abandons her conversation group while one of the women is midsentence and goes over to hug Dita. Just then, Dita is feeling small and vulnerable again. She’d like to spend the rest of her life in her mother’s arms.
The flood of trains into the Lager loaded with Hungarian Jews—147 freight trains in total, carrying 435,000 people—adds even more nervousness to the camp these days. There are always hordes of children close to the camp fence absorbed in the train arrival spectacle: disoriented people being yelled at, pushed around, stripped, beaten.
“Das ist Auschwitz–Birkenau!”
Their bewildered faces demonstrate that the name means nothing to them. Many won’t even learn where they are going to die.
Dita has no idea when the international observers will arrive and the window that Hirsch and Aunt Miriam talked about will open so that the truth can be shouted out. Nor does she know what hoops they’ll have to go through. If she closes her eyes, she sees Dr. Mengele and his blank expression waiting for her in his white lab coat next to a marble slab.
And yet despite this worry, Dita still can’t get Hirsch’s death out of her mind. They’ve told her he decided to give up, but despite the evidence, she refuses to believe it. No explanation has satisfied her, no doubt because none has been what she wants to hear. They tell her she’s stubborn—and they are right. The moment to give up may come, but she doesn’t want to, so she goes to Block 32, the medical block, prepared to play her last remaining card. They were the last people to see Fredy Hirsch still breathing; they heard his final words.
There’s a nurse folding sheets marked with repulsive-looking black rings at the entrance to the hospital.
“I wanted to see the doctors.”
“All of them, child?”
“One of them…”
“Are you ill? Have you informed your Kapo?”
“No, I don’t want them to treat me. I just want to consult them about something.”
“Tell me what’s wrong. I know by now how to treat everything that needs to be treated here.”
“It’s a question about something that happened with the September transport.”
The woman tenses and looks at her suspiciously.
“And what do you want to ask?”
“It’s about a person.”
“A member of your family?”
“Yes, my uncle. I think the September transport doctors who were in the quarantine camp attended to him before he died.”
The woman stares at her. Just then one of the doctors heads toward them; he’s wearing a white coat covered with yellow rings.
“Doctor, here’s a girl asking after someone from the September transport who she says was treated in the quarantine camp.”
The doctor has bags under his eyes and looks tired, but even so, he attempts a friendly smile.
“Who was it you say we treated in the quarantine camp?”
“His name was Hirsch. Fredy Hirsch.”
The smile disappears from his face as if a curtain had been closed. Suddenly, he becomes hostile.
“I’ve already repeated it a thousand times! There was nothing we could have done to save his life!”
“But what I wanted to—”
“We’re not gods! He turned blue; nobody could have done anything. We did what we had to do.”
Dita wants to ask him what Fredy said, but the doctor angrily turns and, clearly irritated, marches off without a good-bye.
“If you don’t mind, sweetheart, we have work to do.” And the nurse points to the door.
As she is leaving, Dita notices that someone is watching her. It’s a slim, long-legged boy she’s occasionally seen going in and out of the hospital block; he works as a messenger. She marches off angrily in search of Margit. She finds her delousing Helga at the back of the hut, so she sits down on a stone nearby.
“How are things, girls?”
“There are more lice since the May transports arrived.”
“It’s not their fault, Helga. There are more people, so there’s more of everything,” Margit replies in a conciliatory tone.
“More chaos, more racket…”
“Yes, but with God’s help, we’ll get through it,” says Margit in an attempt to cheer her up.
“I can’t take any more,” sobs Helga. “I want to leave. I want to go home.” Her sister begins to stroke her head rather than looking for lice.
“Soon, Helga, very soon.”
In Auschwitz, everyone is obsessed with leaving, getting out of there and leaving that place behind forever. The only dreams, the only demands of God are to go home.
There is someone, however, who is moving in the reverse direction, someone who is returning to Auschwitz. Against all logic, against all wisdom, against all good sense, Viktor Pestek is traveling in a train toward Oświęcim, at the edge of which the biggest extermination camp in history has been built.
On May 25, 1944, Viktor Pestek reverses his journey of six weeks earlier: After he and Lederer had walked out of the Lager gate, they had caught a train in Oświęcim, according to their plan. The Czech, dressed as a lieutenant, had pretended to fall asleep as soon as they took their seats, and none of the patrols that swept through the train had dared even think about bothering an SS officer who was peacefully sleeping on the way to Krakow.
Once they had reached their destination, and without even leaving the station, they immediately caught a train to Prague. Viktor remembers that moment of hesitation when it came time to get off at Prague’s huge main station. He particularly recalls the look he and Lederer exchanged. It was the moment to abandon the relative safety of the train compartment and launch themselves without any defenses into a place full of watchful eyes. Pestek’s instructions had been clear: head high, eyes front, a disagreeable expression, and no stopping.
The waiting room in the station had been overrun with Wehrmacht soldiers who looked at their black SS uniforms with a mixture of respect and distrust. The civilians hadn’t even dared raise their heads to give them a glance. No one had dared to address them. Lederer had suggested that they head for Plzen, where he had friends. Once there, they hid their SS clothes and found refuge in an abandoned cabin in the woods on the outskirts of the town. Lederer had cautiously started to reach out to his contacts so they could get false documents for the two of them and for Renée and her mother. That had taken several weeks. What they didn’t know was that the Gestapo was hot on their heels.
For this return to Auschwitz, Pestek is wearing civilian clothes and carries a duffel bag, his SS uniform perfectly folded inside so he can put it on for one last time.
From his window seat, Viktor goes over the plan he has executed thousands of times already in his head. He took a sheet of paper from the camp office with the Katowice Command Headquarters stamp on it and prepared an authorization to collect Renée and her mother. It was common for the Gestapo to order prisoners to the Katowice detention center for interrogation. A pickup was organized, the prisoners were taken to the guardhouse at the camp’s entrance, and a car from Katowice Headquarters collected them. Many never returned.
Viktor knows the procedure well. He knows which code words are used. He will make the call requesting that the two prisoners be made available for the Gestapo. And a member of the SS will go in a car to collect them up from Auschwitz–Birkenau. It will be Lederer, with the stamped authorization Viktor prepared before their esc
ape. His fellow fugitive speaks perfect German. He’ll pick up the women, collect Viktor in a spot nearby and then—freedom.
Lederer left one day earlier to meet with his Resistance contacts, who will provide them with a car. It must be dark and discreet. And German, of course.
Viktor’s only doubt occurs when he tries to imagine Renée’s reaction once they are free. He won’t be an SS officer, and she won’t be a prisoner. She’ll be free to love him or reject him because of his previous life. She has said so little during their meetings that he realizes he knows very little about her. But that’s not important to Viktor: They have their entire lives in front of them.
The train draws into the Oświęcim station very slowly. It’s a gloomy afternoon. He’d forgotten the dirty color of the sky above Auschwitz. There aren’t many people on the platform, but he spies Lederer sitting on a bench reading a newspaper. He was afraid the Czech would pull out at the last minute, but Lederer told him Viktor could count on him, and there he is. Nothing can go wrong now.
He gets out, happy to be so close to Renée. He pictures her smiling at him and tugging at one of those curls until it reaches her mouth. Lederer gets up from his bench to walk over to him. But two columns of SS guards beat him to it, almost bowling him over as they run onto the platform, machine guns at the ready.
Victor knows they’ve come for him.
The officer in charge blows stridently on his whistle and shouts. Pestek calmly sets his bag on the ground. SS soldiers yell at him to put his hands in the air; others shout at him to keep still or they’ll kill him right there. It seems chaotic, but it’s precisely executed. Contradictory orders are shouted out to confuse and paralyze the suspect. He smiles to himself sadly. He knows the procedure for an arrest by heart; he’s carried it out himself many times.
On the platform, Lederer slowly retreats. They haven’t noticed him, and he takes advantage of the commotion caused by the arrest to slip away. As he walks off, trying to stay calm, he curses the heavens: The Resistance is riddled with informers. Someone has betrayed them. He finds an unchained motorbike in town, gets on it, and doesn’t look back.
The Librarian of Auschwitz Page 30