The Librarian of Auschwitz

by Antonio Iturbe

  Viktor Pestek is taken to the central quarters of the SS. They will torture him for days. They want to know why he came back to Auschwitz; they want information about the Resistance, but he knows nothing about them, and he says nothing about his relationship with Renée Neumann. He will remain in jail until he is executed on October 8, 1944.

  26.

  Margit and Dita are sitting at the back of the hut. The afternoons have grown longer, and it’s even starting to get a bit hot. It’s a sticky heat in Auschwitz, stained with swirls of ash. The girls’ conversation has tapered off. Their friendship has reached a point where moments of silence don’t bother them. An old friend suddenly appears.

  “Renée! It’s been a long time!”

  The blond girl gives a faint smile at the reception. She tugs down a curl and chews it. Hardly anyone has treated her kindly in recent times.

  “Did you hear about Lederer’s escape with a first officer of the SS who didn’t want to be a Nazi anymore?”

  “Yes. It was that Nazi you used to tell us about, the one who used to look at you.…”

  Renée nods her head very slowly.

  “It turns out he wasn’t a bad person,” she tells them. “He really didn’t like what was going on in here. That’s why he deserted.”

  Dita and Margit don’t say a word. To a Jew, a Nazi SS officer who acts as an executioner in an extermination camp … can it really be that he’s not a bad person? It’s hard to accept. And yet, every one of them has stood watching one of those immature young men dressed in his black uniform and high boots. And when they look into his eyes, they don’t see an executioner or a guard; they see a young man.

  “Two patrol guards approached me this afternoon. They pointed at me and laughed. They told me that two days ago they arrested—well, those two pigs said he was my lover, but that’s a dirty lie. Anyway, they arrested him at Oświęcim station.”

  “Three kilometers from here! But he escaped almost two months ago! Why didn’t he hide farther away?”

  Renée looks thoughtful for a moment. “I know why he was so close.”

  “Was he hiding in the town all this time?”

  “No, I’m sure he was coming from Prague. He came back to get me out of here—and my mother, of course, I’d never have gone without her. But they caught him.…”

  The other two girls remain silent. Renée looks down. She regrets having been so honest with them. She turns and starts to walk back to her hut.

  “Renée,” Dita calls after her. “That Viktor, maybe he wasn’t a bad person, after all.”

  Renée takes her time in agreeing. In any event, she’ll no longer be able to find out.

  Margit heads off to spend some time with her family, and Dita is left on her own. Today, there aren’t any inmates in the quarantine camp, and the neighboring camp on the other side, camp BIIc, is also temporarily empty, its occupants evacuated to where no one knows. It’s unusual for these two neighboring camps to be empty. And because of the unusually hot afternoon, people in the family camp are inside their huts. Dita pauses to take in the rare moment of silence.

  Then she notices that someone is looking at her. A solitary figure in camp BIIc waves and gestures at her. It’s a prisoner, a teenager who must be carrying out some repairs. As she walks toward the fence on her side, taking a proper look, she sees that he’s wearing a newer striped suit than usually worn by the prisoners in the camps, and his beret is a sign that he belongs to the maintenance crew, a privileged group. She recalls Arkadiusz, the Pole who takes advantage of his assigned task of covering the barrack roofs with asphalt sheets to do deals in the latrines. His talent for carrying out all sorts of repairs gives him access to all the camps and, what’s even better, to improved food rations. That’s why the maintenance people are instantly recognizable, just like this one, by their healthy look.

  Dita makes as if she’s leaving, but he gesticulates wildly, waving her closer. He seems pleasant enough and, between laughs, says a few words in Polish that Dita doesn’t understand. She only manages to decipher the word jabko, which means “apple” in Czech—a magic word. Anything that suggests food is magic.

  “Jabko?”

  He smiles and signals no with his finger.

  “Not jabko … jajko!”

  Dita feels a little disillusioned. It’s been so long since she tasted an apple that she’s almost forgotten what it’s like. She thinks they are sweet but a little tart, but what she remembers best is the crunch of their flesh. Her mouth waters. She has no idea what the boy is trying to saying to her. Maybe it’s nothing in particular and he just wants to flirt with her, but she’s determined to find out. It makes her a bit uncomfortable, but she’s not really bothered that older boys now notice her.

  She’s frightened of the electric fence. She’s already seen several inmates walking with feverish resolve until they hit the fence and receive a lethal electric shock. After the first time, whenever Dita has seen someone heading toward the fence with that mad look in their eyes, she’s walked away as quickly as she can, away from the horrific cries. She’s never been able to forget that first spark, the frizzy hair of that sickly woman, her body suddenly turning black, the disagreeable smell of singed flesh, the wisps of smoke rising from the charred body.

  She really dislikes approaching the fence, but hunger is like a worm that never stops gnawing your innards. It can barely be soothed at night with a piece of bread and a hint of margarine and, if she’s not lucky enough to catch something floating in her soup, it has to wait another twenty-four hours before something solid hits her stomach. Dita isn’t prepared to miss any chance of putting something in her belly, even if she doesn’t understand what the Polish boy is saying.

  To avoid attracting the attention of the soldiers in the towers, Dita gestures for the boy to wait and goes into the latrine barrack. She races through the revolting hut and comes out the back door. She’s now at the back of the building, close to the fence. She’s scared she’ll find bodies on the ground, because that’s where they usually bring the people who have died during the night, but the area is clear. The Polish boy has a hooked nose, and his ears stick out like fans. He’s not very handsome, but he has such a cheerful smile that Dita finds him cute. He, in turn, signals to her to wait a moment and goes back inside the rear of his hut as if he were in search of something.

  The only person visible in that back part of BIIb is a gaunt prisoner who has lit a fire a few huts away and is burning bundles of ragged clothes. Dita doesn’t know if he has been ordered to burn them because they are infested with lice or because they belonged to someone who died of a contagious disease. Either way, handling infected rags isn’t a great job, but it’s better than many others. From a distance he looks like an old man, but he’s probably not even forty yet.

  While she waits for the carpenter boy to return, she keeps herself entertained by watching the ragged clothes burn, shrinking and twisting in the flames before they disintegrate in a puff of smoke. And at that very moment, she senses a presence behind her. When she turns around, the tall black figure of Dr. Mengele is standing two paces away from her. He’s not whistling; he’s not making any sound or movement. He’s just looking at her. Maybe he followed her here. Maybe he thinks the Polish boy is a contact from the Resistance. The man burning the clothes rises and scurries off. At last, she’s on her own with Mengele.

  She wonders how she’ll explain the pockets on the inside of her dress when they do a body search. Or if it’s really worth justifying anything. Mengele doesn’t interrogate his prisoners; he’s interested only in their internal organs.

  The medical captain says nothing. Dita feels compelled to apologize for her presence at the fence:

  “Ich wollte mit dem Mann dort sprechen—” I wanted to speak with the man who’s over there.

  She speaks without much conviction. The man is no longer by the fire.

  Mengele stares at her intently, and Dita realizes that his eyes are half closed, and he has the expres
sion of someone who’s trying to recall something he’s on the verge of remembering. She recalls what the seamstress said to her: You’re a bad liar. Right then she is absolutely convinced that Dr. Mengele hasn’t believed her, and she feels her body suddenly grow cold, as if it’s already on that chilly marble slab on which he’ll slit her open.

  Mengele gives a brief nod. It’s true, he was trying to remember something—it had slipped his mind—but now he’s got it. He almost smiles, reaching for his belt, his hand just a few centimeters from his gun. Dita tries not to shake. At this very moment Dita asks for something very small, a tiny concession—she begs that she won’t shake in her last moment, or wet herself. A last shred of dignity. That’s all.

  Mengele continues to nod, then starts to whistle. And Dita realizes that he’s not exactly looking at her; his gaze is passing through her. She is so insignificant to him that he hasn’t even noticed her. He turns on his heel and marches off whistling contentedly.

  Bach occasionally eludes him.

  Dita watches his tall, black, horrible figure move away. And then it comes to her: He doesn’t remember me at all. He has no idea who I am. He was never pursuing me.…

  He never waited for her at the door of the hut, or took note of her in his little book; the way he looked at her was no different from the way he looked at everyone else. It was all just the routine, macabre joke of someone who told the children to call him Uncle Pepi, who smiled as he stroked their hair and then plunged an injection of hydrochloric acid into them to study its deadly impact.

  Dita gives a sigh of relief, unburdened. Although she’s still in danger, of course. That’s Auschwitz.…

  It would be wise to go quickly to her hut; Mengele might return. But she’s curious to find out why the Polish carpenter boy was calling her so urgently.

  Would it simply be some promise of love? Dita’s not interested in romance, especially not with some Pole she can’t understand, whose ears look like bowls. She doesn’t want anyone to tell her what to do.

  But despite all this, she stands obstinately rooted to the spot.

  The Polish boy saw Mengele coming and stayed hidden in the empty hut. When he sees that Mengele has gone, he reappears on the other side of the fence. Dita doesn’t see anything in his hands and feels tricked. The boy looks to one side and the other and then takes a few hurried steps to the fence. He’s still smiling. Dita doesn’t find his ears so big anymore; his smile wipes out everything else.

  Her heart stops beating when the young carpenter puts his closed fist through a gap in the barbed wire fence. When he opens his fist, something white drops out and rolls to Dita’s feet. At first sight, it looks to her like a huge pearl. It is a pearl: a boiled egg. She hasn’t eaten an egg in two years. She can hardly even remember what they taste like. She takes it in both hands as if it were delicate, and looks up at the boy who has pulled his hand back through the thousands of volts that snake through the wires.

  They can’t understand each other; he speaks only Polish. But the way in which Dita leans over, the way her eyes sparkle with happiness, he understands better than any speech. He lowers his head in a ceremonial bow as if they had met at a reception in a palace.

  Dita thanks him in all the languages she knows. He winks at her and slowly enunciates “jajko.” She blows him a kiss with one hand before starting to run back to her hut. Still smiling, the Pole pretends to jump and catch the kiss in the air.

  As she runs back with her white treasure to find her mother and have a feast, she thinks this language lesson will accompany her for the rest of her life; in Polish, an egg is a jajko. Words are important.

  This will become especially clear the next day. During morning roll call, the prisoners are informed that after the evening’s roll call, each adult will be given a postcard so they can write to their loved ones. The camp Kapo, a German with the triangle of a regular convict on his jacket, goes up and down the rows repeating that no defeatist or defamatory messages about the Third Reich are allowed; in such cases, the postcards will be destroyed and their authors severely punished. And he stresses the word severely with an ill will that foreshadows the punishment.

  The block Kapos are given even more concrete instructions: Words like hunger, death, execution are forbidden. Also out are any words that cast doubt on the great truth: They are privileged to work for the glorious Führer and his Reich. During the meal break, Lichtenstern explains that the camp Kapo has insisted that each block chief order their respective huts to write cheerful messages. The director of Block 31, his face ever skinnier on his diet of cigarettes and turnip soup, tells them to write whatever they please.

  All sorts of comments are heard throughout the day. Some people are surprised by this humanitarian gesture on the part of the Nazis, allowing them to contact their families and ask them to send food packages. But the veterans quickly explain to them that the Nazis are, first and foremost, pragmatic. It suits them to have packages sent to the camp; they’ll help themselves to the best items. And Jews outside the camps will receive comforting messages from family members, generating doubt about what’s happening in Auschwitz.

  There is reason for concern: The members of the September transport were given postcards to write just before they were sent to the gas chambers. The December transport is now about to complete its six-month stay in the camp.

  But postcards are also distributed to the recent May arrivals. A contagious uncertainty is added to the habitual hunger and fear in Block 31. No one can focus on the afternoon games and songs.

  The postcards are finally handed out—to adults only—after the evening roll call. Many of the inhabitants of other huts have gone to line up in front of Arkadiusz, the black marketeer, who has delivered the packets of postcards and discreetly made it known that he has several pencils for loan in return for a piece of bread. Others have gone to find Lichtenstern, who has a few pencils for the school and has reluctantly allowed them to be used.

  Dita sits down outside the door of her hut with her mother and watches people nervously pacing, holding their postcards. Her mother wants Dita to write to her aunt; it’s been almost two years with no news. Dita wonders what will have happened to her cousins, what will have happened in the world out there.

  By her estimation, there’s room for thirty words. If the gas chamber awaits them after they’ve written their postcards, then those thirty words will be the last ones she’ll leave behind, her only legacy. And she can’t even put down what she really feels, because if the letter is gloomy, they won’t send it and they’ll punish her mother. Are the Germans really going to read more than four thousand postcards? she thinks to herself.

  The Nazis are disgustingly methodical.

  And she keeps turning over those thirty words. She overhears one of the women teachers say that she will mention in her card that she was reading a book by Knut Hamsun, to signal to her relatives Hunger, the title of his most famous novel. Dita finds that somewhat obscure. Others try subterfuges, too—some ingenious, others so metaphorical that no one will understand them—to hide their forbidden messages of genocide. Some want to ask for the maximum allowable amount of food; others want news of the outside world, but many simply want to say that they were alive. In the afternoon, the teachers organize a competition to see who was best able to disguise the secret messages.

  Dita tells her mother they should write the truth.

  “The truth…”

  Her mother, somewhat scandalized, mutters the word truth as if it were blasphemy. Telling the truth implies talking about terrible sins and writing about aberrations. How could you consider telling even a small part of something so abominable?

  Liesl Adler feels ashamed of her own fate, as if anyone who receives such luck has to be guilty of something. She regrets the fact that her daughter is so impulsive and so flighty, that she isn’t more discreet in weighing up the significance of things. In the end, she takes the card and decides that she herself will write a note in which she’ll say tha
t the two of them are fine, thanks be to God; that her beloved Hans, may he be with God, didn’t overcome an infectious disease; and that they are really looking forward to seeing all of them again. Dita looks at her mother defiantly for a moment, and Liesl tells her that they know this postcard will reach its destination and keep them in touch with their family.

  “This way, they’ll have some news about us.”

  Despite her caution, Dita’s mother won’t achieve her objective: When her postcard reaches its destination, nobody is there to receive it.

  The Allied aerial bombings are becoming more frequent and rumor has it that the Germans are losing ground at the front, that the war has changed direction, and the end of the Third Reich could be close. If they pass the six-month mark and are still alive, then maybe they will see the end of the war and be able to return home. But nobody is very optimistic: There’s been talk of the end for years.

  The next morning, Dita displays her library on the wooden bench yet again, and while the groups are getting settled on their stools, Miriam Edelstein comes over and puts her mouth close to Dita’s ear.

  “They’re not going to come,” she whispers.

  Dita gestures that she doesn’t understand.

  “Schmulewski has found out. It seems that the international observers were in Terezín and the Nazis organized everything to perfection. So they didn’t ask to see anything else. The International Red Cross observers won’t be coming to Auschwitz.”

  “So … what about our moment?”

  “I don’t know, Edita. I want to believe that there’s always a moment for truth. We’ll have to be attentive and patient. If the Red Cross isn’t going to come, the family camp probably stops being useful to Himmler.”

  Dita feels cheated. And if their lives have been worth very little up to this point, now they are worth nothing.