The Violin of Auschwitz

by Maria Angels Anglada

  It was almost certain—to the degree that one could be certain of anything in this Empire of Terror—that they would allow the luthier to live in Dreiflüsselager until the violin was finished. He wouldn’t be moved to the main Auschwitz camp or to Plaszow. His mornings would be spent plying his trade. This was no small privilege in a labor camp; most prisoners had far less. Bronislaw and Daniel agreed not to discuss the matter with anyone, not with the mechanic who had become such a close friend—he was too talkative—nor with the other two musicians. Bronislaw advised Daniel not to rush making the violin, even if he was tempted. It would be much worse if he injured his hands or damaged the instrument. Everything would be lost if the violin didn’t produce the proper sound. Bronislaw was convinced that if the violin turned out well—as they had every reason to expect—the Commander would not surrender Daniel to the doctor. There were many other camps, many other victims. After all, the Commander was the boss in his lager.

  “And he’s a rank higher than Rascher,” the musician continued.

  Bronslaw had discovered this when he heard them saluting each other, and he knew for a fact that the Commander didn’t like to have his authority disputed. One more factor weighed in Daniel’s favor: the doctor didn’t know a thing about violins, but Sauckel did, and he was astute enough to have set a time limit that wouldn’t cause suspicion and would procure him a case of Burgundy wine. Of that Bronislaw was sure!

  “So how do you find time to practice?” Daniel asked.

  “It’s a real problem, since I work in the kitchen all day. Look at my hands! At least they’re warm, but I’m worried about the summer.”

  Bronislaw managed to practice with the other two musicians in the short period after supper and before the barracks were locked. “It’s not much, but we make an effort ‘to keep our fingers,’” he explained. “Look, today we’ll barely have half an hour, so I have to leave you now.”

  Bronislaw departed reluctantly, walking slowly, unsteadily. Daniel’s eyes were full of gratitude as they followed him as far as the barracks. The musician had understood Daniel, comforted him. Fortunately, the two friends had been able to discuss the ghastly problem in all of its details because the days were longer now that it was spring and prisoners didn’t have to be back in the barracks until nine.

  The luthier left the conversation feeling calmer and fell asleep that night expecting to be able to finish the violin, and freshly determined to do so. For that reason Daniel wasn’t particularly alarmed when an unfamiliar kapo showed up at his shop two or three days later looking for him. He figured it was to take him to the Commander’s house. He had almost decided, as he was putting away his tools, that he’d ask how much time he had to make the violin. I’ll ask him, he thought, in a way that he’ll never suspect a thing, as if I believe the Commander needs the violin for a concert. But the kapo had come for a different reason.

  “To the clothing workshop, you and the cabinetmaker, and fast,” he ordered. But when Daniel didn’t budge, he gave him a shove and yelled, “Schnell, schnell!”

  Daniel was nervous as he followed the kapo. He needed all the time he had to craft the violin; if he was deprived of any of it, he’d never be able to finish. What could they want with him at the clothing workshop? He didn’t know how to iron or sew like a tailor. The only thing that occurred to him was that they might want him to wash the dead prisoners’ clothes; they were always reused.

  It had been months since Daniel had seen a robust, attractive woman up close, and he found himself fascinated by the body of the baton-wielding SS woman. She was guarding a group of pale, thin women and girls who were sorting and ironing a pile of clean clothes. With a quick glance, Daniel realized some were children’s clothes, from the few children who had been living in the camp before the selection. The clothes that were too ragged and couldn’t be mended had been placed in a separate pile, probably to make paper pulp. Daniel was well aware that everything in the camp, even old teeth, was put to some use.

  The group of “healthy” prisoners hadn’t had their teeth examined, but he had spotted the line of sickly prisoners being examined by a dentist with a brush and a can of paint on his desk. After the Spring Cleaning the prisoners had learned that tongues of paint had marked the naked bodies of prisoners with gold teeth.

  Daniel had not been summoned to wash clothes. He, the cabinetmaker, and two other prisoners were escorted to a squat, skillful tailor who measured them and had them try on some reasonably new clothes. The guard was told to bring them back the following day for another fitting. Then the men were taken away. It wasn’t that he didn’t need new garments. The ones they wore—all the prisoners—were so threadbare that they hadn’t protected them from the cold that winter, and pneumonia had ravaged the prisoners. But why would their captors bother to give the men decent sets of clothes?

  The four of them talked it over as they left the tailor, but none could figure it out. One of the men had noticed that the jacket he tried on was thicker, well lined, and suggested that maybe they would be sent to a colder camp, farther north. But that was absurd; the Nazis never worried about their health! Daniel brushed the matter aside, having no desire to rack his brains for an explanation, and he and the cabinetmaker returned to the carpenters’ shop.

  On the following day, in the faltering light of early morning, new suits were distributed to Daniel and the others and a few alterations made. They were issued shoes, and as they were putting them on, one of the most feared, most cruel Untersturmführers stormed in, accompanied by an SS girl with a camera. The prisoners were warned to obey orders without asking any questions. One order, however, proved difficult to follow. Once they were dressed according to SS tastes and their faces made up, they were instructed to smile and pretend to be freely working!

  “Unless you wish to see the potatoes growing above you.”

  That was the standard phrase to refer to the dead. The SS obviously wanted photographs for propaganda. They had even made a false documentary: Camp Inmates Working Happily or Each Man with a Job He Enjoys. A wave of rage surged through Daniel’s body, turning his face scarlet beneath the makeup. The SS officer grinned and waved his baton: before it could strike, the prisoners smiled. If you could call it a smile: their lips separated, their fear-stricken eyes wide open. While the prisoners staved off the blows by means of the bitter simulacrum of a smile, the girl photographed them from various angles.

  “All right, clothes off,” the prisoners were told, as the photographer and man laughed and pointed to their starveling bodies. Silently, the prisoners put on their old clothes again. They had escaped punishment, but they hadn’t gained any warmer clothes. Wearing the same tattered garments, the same old clogs, Daniel returned to his shop. It was an effort. His hands shook from nerves and the humiliation of having to smile for the enemy. He was young and still possessed a certain will to live, but he wasn’t sure how long he would last under such conditions.

  As he was preparing to start work again, the guard on duty surprised him by walking over to his bench and offering him the rest of his beer. Daniel guessed that the guard considered the photographer and official his enemies too, and had found the whole bit with the pictures disgusting. Daniel drank eagerly, thanked the guard, and shook his hand two or three times.

  The trembling finally stopped, and his thoughts returned to the violin. On the previous days he had finished the ribs and the back; now with a tiny hammer he was beginning to strike, one by one, the minute clamping blocks affixed to the mold. Because he had been careful to use only two drops of luthier glue per block, it didn’t take him long to remove the clamps. That ease compensated a bit for the repulsive photographs. He took a deep breath and was filled with satisfaction as he cradled the perfectly shaped object in his hands. He had taken no chances with any of the pieces. The exterior measurements were exact, the same as always. He knew them by heart but checked them again: 355 millimeters long, the breasts (as he called them) 165, waist 115, thighs 205. He couldn’t refrain
from caressing the instrument he had come to love, the violin that might save his life if he managed to finish all the remaining work: the purfling, the scroll, the pegbox, the sound post … so many things. Most important, he had to find the proper varnish, all of this before he could assemble the violin.

  A tremendous amount of work had to be accomplished before that moment would arrive. He was almost sorry when the siren sounded, for this meant he couldn’t begin work on the C ribs. He couldn’t risk skipping the meal, however, or doing anything else that would attract attention. It could well be that a fellow worker envied him those two sips of beer! To cheer himself up, he thought about Freund. Then about Bronislaw, who had probably spent all morning cutting turnips and washing pots with hands so delicate they could make a violin sing, hands that one day would move across the fingerboard of the instrument Daniel had crafted at the lager. He should be thinking about the musician, not the Commander, who didn’t deserve the violin. With this thought in mind, Daniel discovered that his soup tasted better than usual, and he good-naturedly accepted the inmates’ jokes about his makeup. He’d completely forgotten about it! He’d have time to remove it that night; it was his turn for a shower. Right now he had to think about lunch.

  As often happened at that time of day, Daniel began to recall the meals his mother had cooked for him. The longer he stayed in the camp, the more his mother’s image was superimposed on the blurred vision of Eva. His mother and his niece Regina. He remembered walking up the stairs from his workshop, smelling the food, guessing by the aroma what he would be served for lunch: soup with noodles, thick soup, sometimes noodles with chopped walnuts. The table well set, the cheese platter placed to the side on the days that meat was served, following the ritual of separating meat from dairy products. All of that, of course, before the days and months in the ghetto. Now it was turnips and more turnips, turnip soup and more turnip soup.

  He felt a friendly hand on his shoulder. It was a fellow inmate, the former professor who was now a baker. The man secretly slipped Daniel a thick slice of bread that he had managed to steal from the bakery. It was dangerous to do so. He could have been killed or whipped, but he risked it sometimes and would offer the stolen morsels to his fellow inmates, following a strict order that was intended to keep others from being envious. Daniel had forgotten that it was his turn! These little conspiracies, in the midst of so much misery, were like flames that warmed the inmates. The professor was fortunate to work in the bakery, but he deserved it; he remembered his friends.

  Feeling more cheerful after the extra piece of rye bread, Daniel strode to the heavily guarded row of men who would be taken to the factory. Everyone realized that a truck had just arrived with a new “load of misfortune.” One of the inmates turned around to glance at it, but a heavy fist sent him staggering; the prisoner started walking faster, eager to avoid being struck again. Let’s hope he stays in line, Daniel thought, or they’ll kill him just like they did Dénes the other day.

  He felt as though he had been in the camp for an eternity, was rooted in it; yet his own arrival seemed like only yesterday. The stupor, the shouts of Raus!, the shoves, the humiliating rituals. The long hours of standing naked at attention in the freezing cold, waiting his turn for the miserable, perverse ceremonies: face and body shaved by common prisoners—criminals who wore the terrible green triangles—arms marked by indelible tattoos, hair sheared, bodies disinfected as if they were plants. The fear that the showers might be gas chambers rather than the freezing water that scarified their bodies but was finally inoffensive if the men weren’t under it too long. (Sometimes the guards amused themselves by forcing the prisoners to remain in the cold shower until they shook uncontrollably, their teeth chattering.) The thrashings if you didn’t immediately understand orders or walked too slowly. The screams and sobs from prisoners whose wives or children were wrenched from them, the defiant eyes of the gypsy who had switched lines and stood by his elderly father while his little boy headed for death.

  Daniel trudged along, never pausing in case he too would be struck, but his memory again unearthed the insults issued—at him and at all the newcomers—as he’d descended from the crowded truck, the gentlest being the oft-repeated bledehunde, “You stupid dog!” He thought, as he had that first day, that no response was possible for the terrible suffering, released with such fury against them all on what seemed like an interminable Yom Kippur—the day of abstinence and atonement.

  Daniel had thought about his violin for hours, wondered for days about the possibility of his survival. During the Spring Cleaning he had felt more concern for himself than pity for the condemned. But now suddenly, hearing in the distance the shouts directed at the newly arrived prisoners, he marveled that his heart had not completely died, that he could still feel for others, that compassion for other men could spring from him like a tiny blade of grass emerging not from some wasteland but from the rich earth. Despite the derision and his forced smile that morning, despite the months of cold, hunger, and threats, his body bruised by beatings, the tremendous effort to stifle the cries when he was whipped, learning not to long for anything, not to think of anything beyond the immediate, despite it all, his heart was alive. He recognized a similar feeling in the eyes of the boy standing in line next to him, a young political prisoner who had just been struck in the face. Daniel silently squeezed his hand, secretly sharing the modest pride of knowing that they had not become subhuman. That was what they were.

  The guard had moved in front of them now, out of their sight, and Daniel managed to find the energy to comfort the young man.

  “Did it hurt much?”

  “I can take it.”

  Thinking that he had been left too much alone, Daniel put his hand on the boy’s shoulder. The youngster—everyone knew everything in the lager—had been cut off from his people; he could receive no packages or letters, though he was neither Jew nor gypsy. He had been included in the group for “supplementary punishment,” what the Nazis referred to by the widely known secret name the Decree of Night and Fog. The name itself reflected the perversity of imagination, beautiful words for a terrible practice: leaving the prisoners completely uncertain of everything. Not even the boy’s parents knew where he was.

  Was it possible that a semblance of morality existed in this world of concentration camps? No, more probably it was simply that they wanted to make the most of the cheap labor that produced such huge earnings. The men in charge of the subsidiary plant of the powerful I.G. Farben had just announced over the loudspeakers that prisoners would be divided into groups for fifteen-minute rest periods. Almost immediately after the announcement, a bonus was distributed among the men, money that could be used to buy food at the canteen. An enormous din, a huge dull clamor like a surging sea, swept through the factory.

  “Schweigt! Still!” the guards yelled in their attempt to stifle the prisoners’ shouts.

  The machines finally muffled the sound of human mouths. Daniel’s companion was weeping. When it was their turn to go to the canteen, little remained to choose from, and the boy and the violin maker—forgetting all laws other than hunger—attacked a sausage and, like two babes grasping at a breast, quenched their thirst by loudly downing a large glass of milk. When Daniel had swallowed the last drop, he reminded himself that he would need every gram of food he could encounter if he wanted to have the stamina to finish the violin.

  VII

  Once, God, my dark night had yet to fall

  Nor had I suddenly entered upon a strange path.

  —JOSEP CARNER, Nabí

  The violinist began the slow, rhythmic theme of the melody. The bow moved with assurance; soon he would be joined by the simple accompaniment of the violoncello. He had devoted considerable thought to the choice before finally settling on Arcangelo Corelli’s variations on “La Folia,” in Hubert Léonard’s version, a piece he knew by heart. He had made one change: instead of piano or harpsichord, he had chosen the cello for the bass part. They fit together perfect
ly. He had been wise to select a piece that demonstrated the wide range of the violin’s tone quality, displaying string brilliance but no risky acrobatics. Soon the melody danced, bounded. The short fragment of paired notes and trills appeared as the sonata flowed easily, elegantly; then the theme imposed itself again with such beauty that the audience sat in absolute silence.

  The cello stopped, and the violin solo concluded the piece. Bronislaw played with great sensitivity and depth. The musician closed his eyes and kept them closed until after the strings had grown mute. Now, he thought in a flash, I’ll hear an explosion of applause. He was twenty-six years old, and every concert since his first, at age twelve, had ended in thunderous applause.

  He opened his eyes and abruptly returned to the present and his own situation. He was actually surprised to hear a few people—very few—applauding. The Commander himself clapped his hands twice, and the two musicians bowed.

  “You played well, it’s a good violin.”

  Bronislaw breathed a sigh of relief when he heard the words. He was especially relieved because he was conscious that the violin had not been allowed to dry as long as it needed. He noticed that the Commander glanced over at Rascher with an ironic half-smile, a look of satisfaction.

  “For the time being, the two of you and the luthier,” he said—no longer referring to him as “our little carpenter”—“won’t be sent to the quarry.”

  The Commander turned to the half dozen guests and said, “Ladies and gentlemen, they deserve a reward,” as he beckoned to his assistant, who handed him a coin.

  Now he’ll offer it to me, Bronislaw thought. But that didn’t happen. The cellist had left his case open, and the Commander threw the coin in it, as one would for a begging musician. The guests, including a girl in an SS uniform, followed his example. With an expression on his face that showed he was thinking of the food he would buy, the cellist quickly leaned down to retrieve the coins that bore the hated effigy. But no, Bronislaw thought, he would not bend over—unless he was forced to—not after playing with all his soul in defense of Daniel, playing as no doubt Corelli himself would have. His eyes clouded with rage. No, I will not stoop, he thought, and he grasped the precious instrument tightly. For one moment I am a prince.