The first half was finished, and his forehead was drenched in sweat from the exertion. He wiped it carefully so it wouldn’t affect his vision. He found the second part less tiring. As the silhouette of the violin began to acquire the shape of the template, drawing closer to his mind’s ideal, he was filled with a sense of well-being—something he hadn’t experienced for months—a physical well-being even. His hands possessed a memory of their own, he knew they did. The musicians who trusted him to repair their violins or cellos, or commissioned a new viola, had said the same. Daniel had always enjoyed talking to them, learning new things about their profession. His luthier fingers had guarded the memory of the delicate tasks demanded by his craft.
No, this time he didn’t wake up with a start, nor did anyone have to shake him out of his slumber. His mornings were spent crafting the violin. But the mealtime siren, the hurried departure of carpenters and cabinetmakers anxious to finish their shift, the sudden hunger pains reminded him that this was not his shop. He was in the lager, ordered by the Commander to make a violin.
All of the workshops within the camp, except for the ones that repaired vehicles, were now closed in the afternoons. All capable prisoners were employed in the plants that manufactured airplane and tank parts, weapons. The bombings were constant, and some of the prisoners had been put to work constructing underground galleries for a new arms factory. Daniel was sent to one of the I.G. Farben factories, one of many that exploited slave labor. Freund, however, remained in the camp working in the repair shop all day; the Führers and chauffeurs continued to value him because he was an exceptionally good mechanic.
At his carpenter’s bench, Daniel felt alive again, but when he and his co-workers left at the end of the shift, he had the impression that he was entering a nightmare where he was caught in a monster’s slimy tentacles. Rather than a nocturnal nightmare, this one commenced at midday; the semblance of calm acquired during the morning vanished, and in its place a knot gripped his chest. The whole idea of his violin seemed absurd, like a rose in a pigsty. A violin in the Three Rivers Camp. A violin as a survival tactic. Perhaps.
Unexpected events, unpleasant ones usually, surprised him but little; he had slowly become inured to them. Anything could happen. The crowded barracks could grow more crowded, additional bunks could be squeezed in for new prisoners—some of whom were always Russian. Inmates could be deprived of lunch with the excuse that they hadn’t worked hard enough at the factory. Or, on the contrary, they could discover that a raw carrot had been added to the turnip soup, following the new doctor’s advice (Rascher had been promoted). They could be ordered on a Tuesday or Friday morning to stand in formation in the Appellplatz—near the site where Daniel had been whipped—and, stiff and trembling from the cold, witness the hanging of a “subversive” prisoner accused of being a spy or a communist.
Although everything in the camp had come to seem equally illogical, equally quotidian, still Daniel had been astonished when he was suddenly ordered to make a violin: as well crafted “as if it were a Stradivarius,” the Untersturmführer had demanded. Even more astonishing were the tools, wood, and articles placed at his disposal. He thought at the time that the material must have been confiscated from the workshop of a Jewish luthier, German maybe, someone who might be dead, murdered. He didn’t recognize any of the material as coming from his own workshop in Krakow. It was a direct order from the Sturmbannführer, he was told, and he was forbidden to ask any questions, even if he meticulously adhered to formality.
“Number 389 respectfully requests permission to ask a question, sir,” he had stated after standing at attention and saluting.
“Permission denied.”
At least the words were not accompanied by a kick. The extended arm pointed toward the door to the carpenters’ shop. Daniel needed no urging; he entered immediately and was assigned a section of the room for him alone.
He labored in silence, closely scrutinized by a Ukrainian kapo, trying his best not to ponder the reasons that lay behind the violin, much less to comment on the work with his fellow inmates—he didn’t want to create any ill will. Daniel thought he might be able to glean some information from the Commander, but no opportunity presented itself.
Work advanced slowly the first days. Before he could even commence, he had to organize the confiscated material, select the wood he wanted, remove the chips adhered to it. Progress was also hindered because he was accustomed to his luthier knives, his gouge, plane, pliers. His own tools were wedded, so to speak, to the shape of his hands, all of them shiny and clean in his ground-floor workshop. Where had it all gone: the quiet, pleasant neatness of his workshop, the rows of violins hanging from the ceiling, the familiar warmth, his mother’s voice singing softly upstairs as she worked—his mother, who had died in the ghetto of tuberculosis or hunger.
He had not even been allowed to ask how long he had to finish the violin without being punished. He noticed, however, that after he had worked for several days, no one bothered him. The guard no longer beat him, he hadn’t been sent back to the confinement cell, Rascher hadn’t reappeared. He was whipped again one morning—everyone in the barracks was when officials discovered two hidden apples—but he was immediately sent back to work. As he labored over the violin, he began to grow more confident, despite the fact that morning was divorced from afternoon, as if the day were split in two by a sword. Daniel never found it difficult to become absorbed in his work or to store away in the attic of his brain all the fury and fog that surrounded him. That is, as long as no particular “incident” occurred during roll call, no dogs sank their teeth into a prisoner’s leg because of some innocent or suspicious movement, and only the usual insults were dispensed. Sometimes the fragment of a melody sprang to his lips, dying before it could find a voice, or snatches of old prayers hidden in the folds of his memory—Jevarehehà Adonài.
As he stood in line for his midday soup, Daniel was thinking that, despite the gnawing in his stomach, he felt almost happy while he labored over the belly of the violin. But—as was the case with most of the inmates—hunger evoked memories, fantasies of past meals. If he was forced to wait longer than usual, visions emerged of a well-laid table and the delicious kosher food his mother cooked. He would imagine the two holiday meals at Passover with all the relatives, uncles and cousins. The basket with the haroseth, the bitter herbs that would have tasted so good now, the hard-boiled eggs, the white silk cloth with blue stripes that covered them … What he would have given for a hard-boiled egg today! Or better still, a piece of lamb. He remembered the taste of the matzo—the unleavened bread—and the fun of searching for the hidden piece, the prize for the child who found it. He didn’t want to think about the songs or the three toasts. If he could just have a few spoonfuls of cholent—the terrine of rice, eggs, dried beans, and goose that had to be cooked all night in the community oven. As a young boy, he’d been sent more than once to fetch it.
His vision vanished cruelly when he was handed the soup, the same soup as every day, except Thursdays, when the potatoes were a bit more filling. He knew what awaited him. The five or six hours at the factory that afternoon with nothing in his stomach other than the watery soup would drive him, as it did every day, to the brink of exhaustion and desperation. He often thought that he wouldn’t be able to make the effort to rise the following morning. His day had come to resemble a face that has suffered an accident: beautiful on one side, burnt or scarred on the other.
He wasn’t always able to devote the entire morning to the violin; sometimes instruments were brought to him for repair. Strange as it may seem, the enemy had assembled a small orchestra in the camp, as they had in others. It had taken Daniel a long time to organize all the material he had been given. The day after it arrived he had been asked to choose the pieces he needed and set aside those he didn’t. He suspected that what he discarded would be sold. He was careful, in any case, to ensure that he would have extra wood and rough flitches in the event a plate cracked, or he nee
ded to repair an instrument. He discovered a few ready-cut pieces of beautiful spruce and maple and some ebony end buttons. He kept two of the violin bows—one needed repairing, but the other looked brand new—some braided strings, also some sycamore and ebony for the purfling. He set aside a number of strips of wood that had been cut for ribs and kept all of the tools—he would need every one of them. He was relieved to find three sound posts that had already been crafted (better to have too many). They would likely save him some work. The jars and boxes with different kinds of gum and glue—liquid and granulated—kept him occupied for some time, but now they stood in a neat row, the name clearly marked on each. In the end, he discarded very little, but fortunately no one rebuked him. Daniel determined that all of the material must have come from the workshop of an excellent craftsman.
In the afternoon, he found it difficult to concentrate on the boring factory work. That morning he had finally been able to finish the top plate of the violin, and it was ready to be planed. He was becoming obsessed with his instrument. But he couldn’t let his mind wander, in part to keep from being reprimanded, in part to maintain the proper pace, to neither interfere with nor accelerate the work in his sector. The kapo—also a Ukrainian prisoner—wasn’t one of the cruelest, but when it was in his interest, he demanded that the established quota be met.
From time to time Sauckel himself or another commander made an appearance, and their visits rarely ended well. One terminated with the death of a prisoner accused of sabotage. Daniel always suspected that one of the men in his sector had pointed his finger at the disagreeable fitter—otherwise, why would they have gone straight to him? The officials didn’t want the commotion of a public execution, perhaps to avoid betraying the informer. The Commander rebuked the fitter and shouted an order at two of his aides, who then dragged the prisoner outside. No one ever saw him again.
In some cases when the prisoners hadn’t accomplished the assigned task, they were forced to begin half an hour earlier the following day and weren’t given any lunch. For all of these reasons, Daniel made an effort to work hard, always careful not to scrape his hands, so as not to affect his ability to craft the violin. He forced himself to wait until nighttime to think about his precious instrument.
Having been absorbed in his violin for so many weeks, he had only now realized that the days were less short, less cold; it was no longer dark when the prisoners assembled for the morning roll call. The dawn light now revealed the scandalous marks of their long slavery: Daniel could see the gaunt faces of the rows of men dressed in shabby clothes that bore the sinister colored rectangles—yellow ones, primarily—dark circles under their eyes, the signs of beatings and scars on some faces. Had he lost count of the time? The days were like years, the months like days, all of it muddled indistinguishably together.
Nothing existed other than the camp, other than this island, this monstrous archipelago of subcamps. He felt a gust of wind, and the air was less icy, more gentle. It was the first benevolent gesture in this land of hatred. The swallows would be nesting soon on the street where he had lived in Krakow. Spring, he told himself, would bloom brighter than ever. It would bloom over the bodies of the thousands of dead. It wasn’t a comforting thought, but it was true.
He found the coffee more bitter, the slice of bread punier, almost as if his thoughts had weighed it down, kept it from rising. A few moments later, as the inmates were heading to their work areas, he paused to glance at the sky—something he rarely did because he found it always shrouded in clouds or fog—and discovered large patches of blue. A harsh slap on his back forced him to march again. Yes, he thought again as he stifled a sob, spring is drawing near. Our dead will fertilize the earth and spring will return.
With this in mind, his shoulder still aching, Daniel trudged through the door of the carpenters’ shop. He shrugged the thought off and began to polish the edges of the top plate for the last time. He sniffed the wood as he picked up the mold that would cradle the belly and, using the tiny gouge, began to remove the extra wood from inside the plate. This required an art as subtle as that of the poets. The slap, the reminder of death, the expectation of long hours at the factory all vanished, as if the smell of the wood were a breeze that swept away the dark, threatening clouds. The guard who was watching him was distracted as he ate his lunch, and Daniel was able to rest a moment without endangering himself. He placed the minute finger planes—three different sizes—within arm’s reach so they would be ready for gouging the wood down to the appropriate delicate thickness.
After considerable thought, he had decided to leave the central part of the belly four and a half millimeters thick. He usually left it at five, but he had been ordered to craft an instrument “like the Stradivarius”; the edges he would plane down to three millimeters. Working under less than ideal conditions, he didn’t want to risk making the plates any thinner, but the sound would be full if he crafted the instrument in this manner, following the dictates of the school founded by Mateusz Dobrucki, who had been, like himself, a Krakow man. Daniel despised violins and violas with walls too thick, their sound flat and lifeless. He moved the gouge confidently, going against the grain of the wood, as his father—Peace be upon him—had taught him. Not a single long shaving appeared, as it should be. After all, he’d been in the profession since he was fourteen!
Daniel continued his work, surrounded by the smell of wood chips, the sounds of planing, the occasional hammer stroke. He stopped for a moment and checked the thickness again, clearly pleased with his skill. He had reached six millimeters. It was time to switch to the finger plane, which would help his task considerably; he had never had any problem planing the arches.
The days were growing brighter. Judging by the light and the amount of work he had accomplished, Daniel calculated that it was almost noon. As he was thinking this, he heard the door of the workshop abruptly swing open. He didn’t turn around. Whoever it was—inspectors or visitors—it was essential that they find the inmates absorbed in their tasks. Suddenly Daniel’s plane refused to budge. He didn’t look up, he didn’t have to. Please, God, keep me from being paralyzed, don’t let me ruin the violin, he implored. Above the usual din of the workshop—sounds he always enjoyed—he recognized two unmistakable voices, branded into his brain by fear. The louder, deeper voice belonged to Sauckel, the other to Rascher.
Daniel felt as if everyone could hear his heart pounding, but his mind worked fast. The two men were standing near the other prisoners, some distance from his section of the shop. He gently placed the belly of the violin on the table he used for the most delicate tasks, strolled over to his carpenter’s bench, and picked up the piece of maple that he had cut to size for the neck of the violin. Admiring the beautiful flames that ran the length of the wood, he began to plane one edge. It had occurred to him in a flash that he could do this job by instinct, even with Rascher’s cold eyes fixed on him. The rhythm of the plane calmed him. Then the two men stood before him.
“How is the violin coming along?”
To his surprise, the Commander’s voice showed no ridicule or insult. It seemed to express the natural curiosity of a client. Daniel managed to respond with a clear voice: “It’s going quite well, sir, without a problem.”
He continued to work as he spoke. He had learned always to question official reactions. He had been thrashed for not standing at attention when addressed; he had been thrashed when he stopped work to stand at attention. There was no thrashing this time. As he planed, he could see the men out of the corner of his eye. They watched with curiosity when Daniel picked up the carpenter’s square and ruler to measure the exact size of the neck. They seemed pleased with the beautiful grain of the wood. Aren’t these bastards ever going to leave? Daniel wondered.
Daniel was a skilled craftsman and worked fast. He was ready now to scribe the pattern for the neck, the rounded head, everything that had to be marked—including the holes to indicate the shape the spiral would take, the elegant curve of the scroll. He
could not do it calmly with those four eyes trained on his hands. Finally, he heard the visitors depart, and an almost violent sense of relief raced through his body, like a fever leaving a sick man. The excruciating tension began to subside, and he placed the neck of the violin on the workbench and wiped the sweat from his brow.
As he walked back to his worktable, Daniel’s knees buckled, and he realized how great his fear had been. He ran his tongue over his lips; they were dry, his throat too. He leaned briefly against the bench and took a deep breath. He needed air but didn’t want to ask permission to step outside; he might run across the two officers. Their visit had seemed so long that he calculated it was almost time for the midday siren. He needed to get back to work; it wouldn’t do to attract the guard’s attention by resting too long.
Daniel concluded that the visit hadn’t brought any particularly bad consequences; nobody in the workshop had been hit or punished. The thought helped calm him. He was less agitated when he picked up the compass and the tiny millimeter tape to measure the thickness of the arch. After that, he continued working with the smallest of the planes. Fortunately, Father—May his memory be for a blessing—taught me well! Daniel thought. He gazed with satisfaction at the morning’s work, the results of an eventful session. The following morning he would begin by reinforcing the joints of the two plates with tiny, paper-thin wedges; then he would burnish the inside with sandpaper so the edges would be rounded.
The Violin of Auschwitz Page 4