The Violinist of Auschwitz: Based on a true story, an absolutely heartbreaking and gripping World War 2 novel

by Ellie Midwood

  Chapter 29

  Alma sat in Maria Mandl’s office, where Zippy had personally escorted her.

  Alma felt infinitely sorry for her poor messenger—her eyes rimmed with red, Zippy hadn’t stopped apologizing to her friend for not being able to warn her, for failing to find a way… “Mala and I, we overheard Schwarzhuber’s conversation with Berlin when he discussed the upcoming liquidation… Mala, she had already conjured up the plan—where to run first, whom to warn, how to turn the liquidation into an uprising. She knows women from satellite camps who smuggle gunpowder into Birkenau, for the Resistance. The Sonderkommando have weapons; they also store makeshift grenades right in the crematoriums. They would have helped; Mala was certain of it…” Zippy’s voice had trailed off, full of tears. She had stood before Alma, miserable, her shoulders stooped and quivering with sobs. “But Schwarzhuber realized that we heard it all when he exited the office. They locked us both there for the rest of the day and night, so we wouldn’t be able to warn anyone… Will you forgive me?”

  Alma had tried to smile at the girl and tell her that she had nothing to forgive her for, but the words wouldn’t come. The smile, that was something beyond her power entirely. Miklós’ death the night before had drained her entirely; the official confirmation of it came in the form of a dull pain at the place where her heart used to be. All that was left of it was a mere broken husk, unable to feel anything any longer.

  Mandl had met them, uncharacteristically soft-spoken and visibly uncomfortable. She had asked Alma to sit. Alma had done so, without a word, without looking at the camp leader.

  “Helen, you may go.” She even called Zippy by her first name instead of the usual, Spitzer. The other girl remained in the office, by the file cabinet. “Mala, you too. No, actually, wait. Bring us coffee.”

  Ordinarily, such an order would amaze Alma. Now, she just sat and stared apathetically at the potted geranium on the windowsill.

  Mandl seated herself opposite her, shifted a few times in the chair. There was a long pause.

  Mandl was visibly relieved to see Mala bearing a tray with coffee. “Ah, there you are! I had begun to think that you had lost your way.”

  Mala did not once look at Alma, her eyes fixed on the silver tray. She stood next to Alma’s shoulder perfectly silent, and yet, there was such profound sorrow in her entire posture, her head bowed as though in mourning, that even Mandl felt it, and averted her eyes swiftly in shame. The accusation in that silent stance of the inmate must have stung the camp leader like a red-hot branding iron and now, there was no ridding of the mark. Murderer.

  “Just put it down and go. Go! I can do everything myself. No need to loiter here.” Mandl busied herself with organizing the cups on the table fussily; picked up a creamer and searched Alma’s face. “Cream?”

  When Alma didn’t answer, she put it down as noiselessly as possible.

  “Wise choice. We both need something stronger today.” Mandl produced a flask, gave Alma a conspirator’s grin, and generously poured rich amber liquid into the cup. “Drink.”

  Alma didn’t budge. It wasn’t a deliberate statement with the intent to insult or anything of that sort; she simply didn’t have the strength to move her arms. The walk here had taken too much out of her. No, not the walk; Zippy’s words. They reminded—

  “I understand that you are upset. I’m upset myself, believe me. You know how much I liked him. We would never have done it intentionally. It was an honest mistake; you have my word of honor. He wasn’t on the list. Here, look for yourself.” Mandl pushed some useless paper with names and numbers on it toward Alma, which Alma also ignored. “It’s just they were liquidating the entire Family Camp, and he was the only one out of the entire orchestra who lived there, God only knows why.”

  “He knew people there. Fellow musicians. From before.” Alma barely recognized her own voice. It was hoarse, sounded strangled.

  “Both Obersturmführer Hössler and I offered to transfer him to Laks’ Music Block permanently, but he didn’t want to.”

  “I know. Thank you for allowing him to stay in the Family Camp. He was very happy there.”

  “I don’t understand why he didn’t identify himself when they were being transported… or led to… Obersturmführer Hössler wasn’t there yesterday, but Dr. Mengele was. He would have pulled him out of the line at once.”

  Would he? Alma finally gathered enough strength to take the cup and took a big gulp. As soon as she put it down, Mandl refilled it with coffee and more cognac.

  “Maybe he wanted to go with them. Patriotism and all,” Mandl mused out loud, meanwhile. “One of the Sonderkommando men also went into the gas chamber along with his compatriots, just to die with them, imagine that? Good thing the inmates had good conscience to pull him out from behind the column where he was hiding and put him before his SS supervisors. They gave him a couple of slaps for getting such an idea into his head and sent him upstairs, back to the ovens, but what I’m trying to say is, they do strange things sometimes, even privileged inmates. You know the Sonderkommando; they live better than anyone there, in their crematoriums. Separate bunks for all, mattresses and pillows, food and alcohol in abundance. You saw how hulky they all are?” She shook her head in amazement. “And that one fellow still went inside.”

  Did Mandl really think that feather pillows and food in abundance somehow made up for the fact that they had to burn humanity on the SS men’s orders day and night? Alma took another big gulp from her cup; remembered the Limoges one that was still standing on her table, back in her room, and felt her stomach contracting with almost physical pain.

  “He simply couldn’t take it anymore,” Mandl continued, oblivious to Alma’s anguished state. She didn’t clarify if she meant the Sonderkommando fellow or—

  Alma pressed her teeth so tightly together, she heard them grinding against each other. She still couldn’t say his name, even in her mind. Wouldn’t be able to, for a very long time. It flooded her chest with agony and her eyes with tears that washed out Mandl’s image at once.

  The camp leader’s swimming image reached across the table to pour more cognac into her cup, this time no coffee, pure liquor.

  “Do you need anything?” Mandl sounded almost sincerely compassionate.

  Alma forced herself to look at the SS woman. “May I get a black dress from the Kanada?”

  Mandl appeared relieved. “Of course! What a silly question to ask. Go straight from here if you like and tell them I allowed you to take five black dresses.”

  “Thank you, Lagerführerin.”

  “Anything else?”

  Alma considered. “Your word that nothing will happen to my girls.”

  “You have it. As long as I’m in charge of the women’s camp, nothing shall happen to them.”

  “Thank you,” Alma repeated, much calmer this time. Her affairs had been settled. There was only one thing left to see to.

  “It was an honest mistake,” Mandl said. “Truly.”

  Alma nodded. Mandl was saying something else, but her words didn’t register any longer. She was considering how many vials of morphine one potassium cyanide vial would cost on the Kanada market.

  Appell. The block, unpleasantly silent. Alma, lining up her girls for the roll call, as was their daily custom. Black dress, black eyes, expressionless and empty, black poison coursing through her thoughts. She hadn’t spoken to anyone since—neither did she cry. Only went through the necessary daily motions of camp life like an automaton, already winding down, ready to expire any moment now.

  “Bizarre, isn’t it?” Even her voice displayed a chilling lack of feeling. The girls started at the sound of it. “The entire camp has just been gassed, and yet, life goes on. All of those people perished, and we shall be playing music as though nothing had transpired.” She snorted softly with laughter that was cynical and much too cold and reached out for Zippy’s morning report.

  From the first row, Sofia was watching her in open alarm. It went against a
ll laws of nature, such frightening apathy, such a lethargic state. But what worried Sofia the most was the air of unnerving serenity that Alma carried about herself like a dark mantle, as though she had set her mind on something and only the promise of that something got her through the days. The violinist’s eyes were so utterly devoid of any remnants of life, not even tears could flow out of them to mourn her loss. To Sofia, it was the first warning sign, the most frightening one. Besides Alma, only the camp Muselmänner had the same haunted look about them right before they succumbed to their fate. The Muselmänner, emaciated shadows from the outside details, who chose death over their daily struggle, for death suddenly appeared to be a much better option. They too never cried. They simply possessed no strength to care about anything any longer.

  Rapportführerin Drexler walked in, accompanied by Grese. Alma greeted the wardens with the usual salute and handed Drexler the report, looking her square in the eyes. They turned out to be hazel, with specks of yellow and brown in them. With fascinating calmness, Alma continued to study the eyes of the warden who shot any inmate that dared to raise their gaze at her.

  Drexler’s hand reached for the holster and paused there. Alma followed its progress with disturbing indifference.

  At last, Drexler found her voice: “Have you forgotten your place, what?!”

  From Alma, the same blank look.

  “Answer when your Rapportführerin addresses you!”

  Alma kept staring silently.

  “Make no mistake, I’ll dispatch you where you stand, you insolent sow.”

  Not a muscle moved on Alma’s face, only a faint shadow of relief passed fleetingly through her eyes.

  Drexler’s hand flew up, preparing for a slap; her lieutenant, Grese, caught her wrist mid-air, against all regulations. She whispered something softly and urgently in Drexler’s ear, something about Mandl and Hössler and Mengele as well, and the entire block watched in amazement as one of the most feared wardens lowered her hand and took a step back.

  “You won’t last here long at any rate,” Drexler muttered spitefully and with great hatred and snatched the report from Alma’s lifeless hands.

  A dark grin twisted the violinist’s features. “From your lips to God’s ears, Rapportführerin.”

  For an instant, Drexler appeared unnerved by such a response. “Dumb Jewish bitch,” she grumbled under her breath and stalked off, forgetting to count the musicians.

  From the swamps, the fog was rolling in silver waves. Alma felt the dampness creep into the block through the door left open by Drexler, who had beat such a hasty retreat. Once again, she had looked death in the eyes, and once again, it was death that had averted its gaze first. Alma stood and stared after it, disappointed.

  In the evening, Alma called Zippy into her private quarters. Instead of the lamp, a single candle was burning on the table. All around the room, shadows loomed, silent and mournful. Surrounded by them, Alma’s face looked extinguished, entirely devoid of life.

  “Here. I want you to have it.” She handed Zippy a tight roll of sheet music she could no longer bear having near. The very presence of it was a painful reminder of the grim reality, of the fact that the man who had composed it, would never play it again. Having it by her side had turned into pure torture. Oblivion was the only solution to get through the days, until she could find a way to be reunited with the one without whom the world had gone completely silent. “I know that you’ll put it to good use once you get out of here.”

  As soon as Zippy saw the title—Für Alma by Miklós Steinberg—she began shaking her head, pushing the sonata back to Alma’s hands.

  Alma regarded her with sympathy but refused to take it back.

  “I know.” Alma’s colorless, dry lips pulled to a sad, pitying smile. In the dull light of the room, her skin had a ghostly pallor to it. Under her eyes, dark half-moons lay. “It’s a damned swinish thing to do, to hand someone your last will and testament in such a manner. I told him that much when he gave it to me, but I took it all the same, because rejecting a condemned person their last wish is also a damned swinish thing to do. When someone dies, it’s always much more difficult for their loved ones. The person who is about to die, they know that their suffering is about to end and they’re at peace. It’s the loved ones who have to live with that loss, with that unspeakable tragedy in their hearts for a long time after.” She paused, once again lost in her memories. Outside the window, just over the crematorium’s chimney, a pallid slice of a moon clung to a single cloud. “He knew that he would die soon.”

  Just like Alma knew that she would; Zippy saw it in the violinist’s eyes—dark and impenetrable, two bottomless wells—and choked with emotion. “Almschi…”

  “I hope you will find it in yourself to forgive me for burdening you with this responsibility, but I have little choice,” Alma continued.

  She pressed her temple against the wall and began to play with the candle’s flame, putting her fingers through it in an oddly hypnotic gesture—right to left, left to right. Zippy watched her fingers closely, wondered if the violinist felt any pain and suddenly discovered that she didn’t wish to know the answer. Perhaps, Alma no longer felt anything at all. Perhaps, she did, and was tormenting herself on purpose, for the physical pain provided at least some sort of distraction from the utter devastation she so carefully hid inside.

  “Else, when I’m gone, it will end in some undeserving hands and the world shall lose it forever. And it’s such a beautiful piece.” There was tenderness in Alma’s voice. Her face was very pale and very still.

  “It is a beautiful piece. But why don’t you put it to good use…” Zippy’s voice betrayed her; trailed off. Next, the tears came. Alma’s ghostly shape was swimming in them, slowly dissolving into nothing, along with the walls surrounding them, along with the table and Alma’s violin case and a small vial lying next to it. It is only morphine, Zippy repeated to herself with some desperate obstinacy. Only morphine. To help Alma sleep.

  In a surge of emotion, Zippy grasped Alma’s thin, blue-veined hand and pressed it against her cheek. It lay against her skin, lifeless and cold, as though already belonging to a corpse, only the fingers were warm and smelled faintly of fire. But that warmth was artificial, short-lived. It was gone before long and Alma’s hand had grown colder than ever.

  They killed Miklós, but left Alma mortally wounded, Zippy realized with sudden painful clarity. One would never recover from such a blow.

  With utmost gentleness, Zippy lowered the violinist’s hand back onto the rough surface of the table and left the room and, in it, Alma to her world of shadows.

  Epilogue

  April 1944

  The Music Block stood silent for the first time since its opening in the spring of 1943. The entire front wall of it was flooded with wreaths. In the center, a single chair stood, draped in black. On it, Alma’s violin and a conductor’s baton lay. Sofia asked Lagerführerin Mandl for Alma’s picture to place beside the instruments, but it turned out, the SS hadn’t taken any for their files starting with mid-42. As though in apology for that, the camp administration permitted the girls to pay their respects to Alma’s body in the sickbay where she had passed away. Dr. Mancy did everything possible to save her. Dr. Mengele was summoned; he came astonishingly fast, armed with his medical case, but Alma was already taking her last breath. She died with a smile on her face, looking somewhere past the faces crowding over her bed, as though finally recognizing someone familiar she hadn’t seen in a while.

  Dr. Mancy helped Zippy dress Alma’s body in her favorite black dress. Sofia helped brush Alma’s hair until it lay in soft waves around her pale, peaceful face.

  First, the musicians came to the sickbay where Alma’s body was laid out, both from Auschwitz and Birkenau. His cap crushed in his hands, Laks stood for a long time before the simple plywood coffin the Sonderkommando quickly made on Hössler’s orders—perhaps, the first one in the camp’s history.

  Hössler himself sat on a chai
r in the corner, bent over his folded hands with his head hanging so low, no one could see his face. He paid no heed to the inmates or the SS men who snapped to attention at the sight of the shoulder boards on his stooped shoulders. His Alsatian was whining sorrowfully at his feet.

  Von Volkmann wept openly on his knees before the coffin. The fingers of his good hand were clasping at the dead violinist’s palms, which appeared to be made out of marble, with the net of bluish veins under the white skin, and repeated in a broken voice only one word—murderers…

  Mandl brought flowers and lay them at Alma’s feet, before placing a hand on Alma’s forehead. The camp leader’s face was powdered deathly white, but even all those layers of make-up didn’t conceal the red tip of her nose or her puffy eyes.

  In the corner, almost entirely obscured from sight, Rabbi Dayen stood, his lips moving ever so slightly as he whispered the words of the mourner’s prayer. It mattered not that the woman he was praying for belonged to a different faith or that it was the deceased’s family’s duty to recite the Kaddish; he still prayed as he always did, for there was no one else around to mourn all of these people.

  When the Sonderkommando men came to retrieve the body the next morning, Hössler came very close to their leader, Voss.

  “You’ll cremate her as she is, dress, shoes and all, in this coffin. Under no circumstance are you to disturb the body in any way; do you understand?”

  “Jawohl, Herr Obersturmführer!”