Alice's Piano

by Melissa Müller

Exhausted, they lay down on their temporary beds. Stephan fell asleep while Alice was telling him his bedtime story. During the day Alice had been utterly tense and her back hurt, so it made her feel better to stretch out on the straw sack. “Leopold,” she asked, “what is going to happen to us?” Instead of answering, he pressed her hand tenderly and looked at her in a pensive way that told her: “We have to survive; above all else we have to protect our Stephan.”

  Suddenly, Alice’s head and body started to itch. During the day she had seen cockroaches scurrying about the hall, but the nasty stinging and burning which was now tormenting her had to be down to fleas, bed bugs or lice. The only time Alice had seen such creatures was in natural history books. When she then saw rats scuttling between the straw sacks she began to understand why so many people were reluctant to lay down their heads, and why they preferred to sleep sprawled across them or sit bolt upright. She could see only too clearly the bitter inevitability of her position. She had been delivered into the jaws of the National Socialists.

  The next day the humiliation continued. By the early morning they had taken their place in the queue for the fourth table where they were to hand over their valuables: gold coins, jewelry and silver. They were questioned very closely, almost as if they were being cross-examined. Some of the SS squads descended on the straw sacks to check whether the Jews had indeed handed in all their jewelry, money and tobacco. Anyone who tried to hide anything of value was beaten. Some of the SS men seemed to derive real pleasure from hitting their defenseless fellow men. Alice could not distract Stephan who watched these brutal scenes in horror.

  Besides the wedding rings that they were allowed to wear, Alice and Leopold had wisely carried no jewelry with them. Even so it was late afternoon before they stood in front of the last table. Here the “certificate of their citizenship” was canceled: they had lost their status. Now they had “ghettoisiert” (committed to the Ghetto) written diagonally across their passports: the formal recognition of the long-premeditated withdrawal of Jews’ civil rights.

  In the early hours of the third morning the 603 prisoners on transport DE were lined up on parade. They had to stand up straight for hours in the courtyard of the exhibition complex, and several old and sick people collapsed and were carried away on stretchers. At last the order was given to move toward the nearby suburban railway station under the watchful eyes of Czech policemen and members of the SS. In the order of their code numbers, fifty to sixty people at a time were crammed into each of the railway trucks. It was almost three hours before the train was ready to depart.

  * * *

  AFTER DAYS of hanging around in the Prague assembly point the two and a half hour journey to Theresienstadt came as something of a relief. The closer the train got to its destination the prettier the landscape between the Elbe (Labe) and the Eger (Ohře) became. The garrison town lay where the rivers met, just sixty kilometers from Prague, surrounded by moats and two high walls. In 1780 Joseph II had built Theresienstadt in honor of his mother, Maria Theresa, and as a bastion against the Prussians. There were eleven great barracks along the mighty perimeter walls, originally built as accommodation for 3,500 soldiers. Inside the fortress walls three rows of houses were arranged around the central square. These had once been billets for the officers and homes for the civilians who provisioned the town. Its outward perimeter ran to 1,200 meters and it could only be entered through two closely guarded gates. For this reason the deputy Reichs Protector of Bohemia and Moravia, SS-Führer Reinhard Heydrich, believed it was the best place to create a ghetto conveniently close to Prague—and for as little money as possible.6 In November 1941 he gave orders to the soldiers to vacate the place. Shortly after that the civil population living there was also rehoused.

  * * *

  UNTIL JUNE 1943 all transports had stopped at the station in Bohušovice, three kilometers away from Theresienstadt, so that the heavily laden new arrivals had to struggle the rest of the way on foot. Since then a new railway line had been constructed, and Alice, Leopold and Stephan’s train brought them directly into the camp.

  From the train window Alice could see Czech policemen, who, with their mounted bayonets, inspired fear and horror. The next moment, however, it became clear to her that they were not in danger from them, but rather from the SS. When they were not being observed by the SS, many of the policemen sought to allay the fears of the prisoners and cheer them up. On the other hand an SS man kicked one of the deportees and another repeatedly slapped an old man so often that he collapsed. Most people managed to keep their insecurity and growing fear in check, but faced with the inhumanity of the situation some lost control and began to sob.

  On the platform Alice kept repeating to her son that he was not to run away and that he was to keep hold of the rucksack he was carrying on his shoulders. Exhausted by the days and nights at the assembly point, Stephan had slept for the whole journey. Now he sat on his father’s rucksack completely bewildered.

  “Why don’t we go back home?”

  Stephan persistently asked the question because he was not satisfied by any of the answers his parents gave him. Alice took him in her arms and whispered: “Stephan, it will certainly not last long. And then we’ll go back home. But until then you must never leave our sides. Do you hear that? Never! You must always hold my hand, always.”

  * * *

  THE PRISONERS were left standing by the train for two hours before they received the order to march across the tracks: “Form up in fours!” They went through the “lock” next, a sort of inspection and reception point which also served to place them in temporary quarantine. It generally took two days for a transport of over 1,000 people to be accommodated in the main camp.

  Alice was horrified to see that the contents of their rucksacks were being randomly checked. The Czech gendarmes were looking for medicine, food, torches, candles, matches, lighters, batteries, cosmetics, bedpans, thermos-flasks and chocolate: lifesavers great and small which might render the ghetto more bearable but were banned.7 Alice tried, but to no avail, to stop them taking not only her vacuum flask, which still contained a little bit of coffee, but also various tubes of toothpaste and pieces of soap. She was fortunately carrying her big water bottle in her handbag and by pure chance neither this nor Leopold’s rucksack were inspected.

  It was in the “lock” that questionnaires had to be filled in for the labor exchange. While he was still in Prague, Leopold had heard that being some sort of craftsman might make life in the camp easier, which was why he had trained as a locksmith. Alice gave her profession as “pianist.” The medical inspections, which came next, were long and drawn out and trying, as were the “hygienic measures”: this was because the ghetto was full to bursting and infections spread like wildfire. On the lock roof, newcomers had to strip to the waist. Without a word of explanation, they were all given injections. Those between the ages of three and sixty-five were inoculated against typhus and children and adolescents between six months and eighteen years also had to be inoculated for diphtheria.8 A worried Stephan hid in his mother’s skirts, but he was quickly grabbed by an orderly while another injected him directly in the chest. The boy screamed with pain and cried bitterly, but before he could recover from the shock he was jabbed again.

  The following night was their last together. Like hundreds of their fellow sufferers, Leopold and Alice spent it sitting on a mattress. Stephan slept peacefully, his head in his mother’s lap.

  * * *

  NEXT DAY, their last in the lock, the new arrivals were assigned to their quarters. Men and women were separated and children over the age of twelve were put in children’s homes. Stephan could stay with his mother. Leopold promised to visit as often as he could.

  The way from the lock through the streets of Theresienstadt opened Alice’s eyes to what she had to expect. Never in her life had she seen so many people in such a small space. With over 44,000 prisoners, people ran here, there and everywhere through the streets as if they had broken out of a
n ant-heap.9

  It struck Alice that the houses had been built to an identical design, just like the eleven barracks, solid, gloomy buildings with, as she was soon to learn, badly functioning and wholly overburdened sanitary arrangements. Most of the one-story buildings were dilapidated with stark, chilly backyards into which the sun never shone.

  For the prisoners who had already spent some time in the camp, the arrival of newcomers was an event. They often had prior information as to whom they might expect to see on the next transport from Prague. People lined the streets waiting for acquaintances, friends and relations. Suddenly someone cried out Alice’s name loudly. When she turned round she could hardly believe her eyes. It was an old friend whose voice sounded familiar enough, but who looked so thin and exhausted that she was hardly recognizable. The two women quickly exchanged a few words, but Alice did not dare stop. As she walked she spoke to various Prague acquaintances. They all appeared to have aged several years. A cart, borne by inmates and loaded with jute sacks, came toward them, giving off an unpleasant smell which made them feel queasy. Alice gripped her son’s hand harder and dragged him on. It was the first time that mother and child had seen men used as beasts of burden. Alice had immediately understood that the men were drawing a hearse.

  * * *

  THE ATTIC floor of the barracks was large, gloomy, filthy and airless, as there was not even the tiniest opening in the roof. The only thing that was an indication that people might be lodged here was the number of mattresses on the ground. The prisoner who brought the newcomers to this place comforted Alice. In a few weeks there would be a new space provided for mothers with children. The man knew that since July 1942 the barracks had been full to bursting. By August all the other houses had been overflowing too, and from September 1942 they had even used stables and corridors to house the prisoners, as well as the windowless attics which were perishingly cold at night and often intolerably hot during the day. In the end even the underground casemates of the fort were used to house prisoners. Being put in these was often tantamount to a death sentence, for the rooms were musty, cold and damp.

  When Alice and Stephan scaled the many stairs to the attic, the place was already so crammed that they could barely find any room at all. More than a hundred mothers and children had been herded together, with less than one and a half square meters each. The filth and the stench, the miserable whining of the inmates and the bawling of children gave the place a terrible atmosphere. When Stephan needed to relieve himself Alice discovered that the attic had neither latrine nor running water. After a prolonged search Alice eventually found two lavatories in the vast building from which emanated a foul stench. Dozens of people were standing outside, and no one allowed Stephan to skip the queue: they all had problems of their own.

  On the first night Alice could not close her eyes. Stephan was mercifully so tired that he nuzzled up against his mother and took in little of the chaos around him.

  The next morning many of the children who had newly arrived fell ill. One of them had arrived with scarlet fever. The boy on the next mattress but one, with whom Stephan had played that afternoon, was struck down with a high temperature. Alice grabbed her son and rushed down the many steps where she asked after Dr. Felix Weiss, who had looked after Stephan since he was a baby. She knew from Leopold that the pediatrician had been living in Theresienstadt for some time. After more than two hours she eventually found him and described the situation to him. The unexpected meeting seemed to give Stephan confidence, as he knew the doctor well and liked him. Alice was relieved when the doctor explained that Stephan had survived so many ailments in his first year of life that he was not only immune from many childhood diseases, but scarlet fever as well. If Alice was still worried about his condition, she should go to the doctor’s surgery immediately. The surgery, however, was just a dark room with a table, a chair and a shortage of medical instruments.

  The next problem came three days later. Alice went down with a fever and she was diagnosed with tonsillitis. The illness mercifully saved Alice from the “hundreds.” Every new prisoner had to do manual labor for a hundred days before being assigned to the sort of work for which they were qualified.

  Stephan felt responsible for his feverish mother and scarcely left her side. Always an observant child, he quickly found out how he could provide her with clean water and nourishment. He went to the kitchen to join the queue. When he reached the front, he told the person serving how ill his mother was. The man was sympathetic and gave him an extra ration.

  For six long days Stephan organized special portions. At dawn he fetched the brown broth they called morning coffee and at noon soup, potatoes or, occasionally, a simple pudding. The evening meal was made up of ersatz coffee, sometimes with a little biscuit or gruel. Alice quickly regained her strength. As soon as she could stand up and fetch her own food she went back to the standard ration, which was scarcely adequate.

  The prisoners were always hungry. Some of the older inmates told Alice what had happened the previous summer. On 18 September 1942, the overcrowded camp had contained 58,491 prisoners.10 The few kitchens in the ghetto were capable of dealing with 10,000. Bread was baked too quickly to try to meet demand, but it rapidly went moldy. Despite this, bread, together with rotten potatoes, was the prisoners’ principal form of nourishment. Those performing heavy labors received a double ration at midday and more food all round, at the expense of the old and the sick who had to beg for watery soup or sift through piles of spoiled scraps. The guards’ response was brutally practical. In just ten days between 19 and 29 September 1942, more than 10,000 prisoners were transferred to a Polish extermination camp. After that the conditions at Theresienstadt marginally improved.11 At the time, the remaining prisoners could hardly have imagined that their fellow sufferers had paid with their lives.

  * * *

  THE NEWS soon went round the camp that the well-known and well-loved Prague pianist Alice Herz-Sommer had been admitted. As early as the beginning of her second week, on around 15 July 1943, a member of the “Free Time Organization” brought her the news that she could give her first concert the following week. Once Alice knew that she would be able to play every day and give a concert once a week her confidence grew. Leopold also brought her some news. She heard that Leopold had finished his “hundreds.” Every morning he had had to march twelve kilometers from Theresienstadt to the construction site at Leitmeritz (Litoměřice), where the prisoners were building a shooting range for German soldiers. All day long, without a break, he had to shovel earth into a large wheelbarrow and then run and tip it onto an artificial wall before running back to fill the wheelbarrow again.

  During the morning march Leopold got to know Rudolf, the twenty-two-year-old son of Ota Freudenfeld, the legendary director of the Jewish Orphanage in Prague. Rudolf told Leopold of the plans to stage Hans Krása’s children’s opera Brundibár in Theresienstadt, which had first been performed at the Orphanage in December 1942, with rehearsals starting at the end of 1941.12 The conductor Rafael Schächter had originally been in charge of the project, supported by Hans Krása himself. When Krása and Schächter were deported to Theresienstadt in 1942, the set designer František Zelenka took over the staging and Rudolf Freudenfeld directed the small orchestra of piano, violins and percussion. That first performance of the work had, of course, been illegal as music by Jewish composers could no longer be publicly performed. The invited audience of some 150 people had to arrive at the Orphanage discreetly, so as not to excite suspicion from police patrols.

  Rudolf and his father Ota, together with some of “his orphans,” had arrived at Theresienstadt at the same time as Alice, Leopold and Stephan. The news that Ota Freudenfeld had arrived spread quickly among the children who had been deported before him. That very day Rafael Schächter (or Rafik, as his friends called him) organized a concert performance of Smetana’s Bartered Bride in an attic with a piano replacing the orchestra, in honor of the man the children called “the chief.” That night
, too, the idea of performing Brundibár was discussed. Rudolf Freudenfeld had managed to smuggle the score into the camp.13 He knew Alice from her Prague concerts and he had also heard of Stephan’s extraordinary musical talent. Would the six-year-old like to audition for a part?

  * * *

  WHEN LEOPOLD arrived for his evening visit Stephan was already waiting for him on the stairs.

  “Stepanku,” Leopold called out to him with a smile. “I have a big surprise for you.”

  “Where is it then?” Stephan wanted to know and tried to look for it in Leopold’s trouser pockets.

  “Wait until we have found Maminka.”

  In his excitement Stephan hopped like a kangaroo all the way to his mother’s sickbed. “Maminka,” he burst out, “Dadinka has brought a big surprise with him.”

  His father sat down next to Alice, sitting the boy on his lap and began to tell the story: “Just imagine, Stepanku, from tomorrow you can take part in the rehearsals for a children’s opera; a proper opera for children with principals, a choir and orchestral music.”

  It sounded fantastic but Stephan had a problem imagining what sort of role he could play in it. His father tried to explain: “The opera tells the story of two poor children who are foully abused by the hurdy-gurdy man Brundibár. But with the help of a dog, a cat and a sparrow the children win the fight against the evil man.” Stephan’s eyes lit up as he continued: “Now they are looking for children for the choir as well as for the principal roles. The first rehearsal is tomorrow, and then we shall certainly learn more about it.”

  That night as a bedtime story Alice told her son about the composer Hans Krása. She knew him from Prague, because she was a friend of his sister Fritzi. It was a long time before Stephan finally calmed down and went to sleep.

  Alice was still weak from her illness but at six the following evening she took her son up to the attic of the Dresden Barracks. There they were already waiting for the choirmaster Freudenfeld to return from his “hundreds” to begin the rehearsal.