Alice's Piano

by Melissa Müller

  In Prague Krása used to get up at about midday, by which time Alice would have been practicing intensely for four hours. In the early afternoon he generally looked in on the Czech Theater for an hour or two, where he was engaged by the hour as a tutor. After that he would visit a friend who edited the literary section of the Prager Tagblatt for a chat and their daily game of chess. Later he would go out with his friends and the evening would end in a party of wine-induced gaiety. Nonetheless, Alice had a lot of time for Hans Krása. His jollity was as catching as his charm was winning.

  “Most esteemed Alice, might I ask a favor? Would you play me Chopin’s B minor Scherzo?” It was his favorite piece.

  Chopin’s atypical scherzo, thought Alice, was appropriate for Krása’s character in a quite particular way. It was brimming with humor, gaiety, energy and joy, while also having its dark and dramatic moments, which fascinated the composer.

  If there were any flowers in Theresienstadt, Hans Krása told Alice, he would have picked her the most beautiful bouquet to thank her. As he left he asked if he could pop in to her rehearsals from time to time. Of course he might, said Alice, but the next four mornings she really needed to be by herself as she had to prepare for the concert. Krása respected her wishes. He let Alice practice in peace for the next few days, but after that he came over and over again and listened quietly, lost in his own thoughts. He frequently asked her for a particular piece; more than a dozen times this turned out to be the Scherzo in B minor.

  Three days before her first concert Alice inspected the room in the former town hall that had been recently made available. For a week the ghetto guard, a body of around twenty-five men from the Autonomous Jewish Administration, led by Kurt Frey, had been restoring the place from top to bottom.13 There was a new stage and curtain, benches with backs to them, even electric light. In addition there was a luxury that was sought in vain elsewhere in Theresienstadt—lavatories and running water had been installed for the audience.

  * * *

  ON THE day of the concert Stephan was proud and excited when, his hand in his mother’s, the man at the door let the two of them into the concert hall ahead of everyone else. Alice wanted to show him everything, so they had got to the venue half an hour early. Before she disappeared behind the curtain, Alice promised him that she would give him a quick glance just after her bow, so that he could wink back: “Then I will play particularly well,” she told him.

  At the very last moment, Leopold arrived to take his place next to Stephan.

  There was no backstage in the town hall, so the performers had to come in through the public entrance and walk down the central aisle to the stage. As Alice made her way through the audience she felt a profound sensation of happiness, tension and nervousness, which she always experienced just before a concert. She could feel the expectations of her 300 listeners. As she bowed, she noticed Stephan trying to wink at her, a blissful smile on his face. Her boundless optimism infused the audience and she began to play the Partita in B flat major.

  Alice’s playing rang out crystal clear and her magisterial performance was rewarded with rapturous applause. Then came the Appassionata, whose three movements express in turn a tortured mind, its consolation and reflections on man’s strength. The conductor Rafael Schächter was sitting in one of the front rows. He was so inspired by Alice’s performance that a few days later he told his choir: “If you want to know what passion really is, go to Alice Herz and listen to the Appassionata.”

  After a short interval, the second half began with a selection of the Études. Chopin had conceived these pieces as exercises, but his genius had transformed them into masterpieces of unfathomable strength and beauty. At the end of the concert Alice played the “Revolutionary Study,” which begins with a powerful chord followed by a veritable storm of passages in the left hand, while the right plays the solemn theme.

  Alice played the lilting, undulating left-hand passages in a breathtaking tempo while her right hand allowed the central theme to ring out. The theme is almost a fanfare with its few rousing notes. When the tonal color alters, the chords become yet more powerful and more passionate. The melody starts out sounding threatening and violent but halfway through takes on a triumphal character. The victory of the hopeful mood does not last long, however, and yields to a feeling of great agony. Finally, this pain-filled motif reverts to the pathos of the introduction, only more passionately, until the tension that has been mounting throughout gives way to exhaustion. At the end, the Étude rang out like an explosion in the concert hall. Alice’s hands slid furiously over the keys; zig-zagging up and down from the heights to the lowest registers, with the four final chords ringing out, like so many shrieks of despair.

  The audience was so profoundly moved that they hardly dared breathe. When the applause finally came it seemed to go on forever. People Alice had never met embraced her with tears in their eyes. She couldn’t get to her two men, who had stood up in their seats and were clapping with the same enthusiasm as the others. It was only at her second attempt that she was able to reach Leopold and Stephan and take them in her arms.

  Standing a little to one side, one of the inmates who worked as a doctor in one of Theresienstadt’s sickbays was watching the excited audience. Choosing his moment he walked up to Alice: “I cannot express the feelings and reminiscences you have evoked in me. I thank you from the bottom of my heart.” He then offered her the chance to come to his sickbay once a week with her son to have a hot shower. This was an extraordinary privilege in the overcrowded ghetto, and Alice gratefully accepted.

  The day after the concert Alice lined up at noon as usual with her tin plate, waiting to receive her lunch with Stephan at her side. A young Czech had the task of dishing out the same-sized portions to everyone. When it was Alice’s turn he began to gush over Alice’s interpretation of the gigue in the Bach partita. He particularly loved that piece. To thank her he gave her not one, but two ladles full of soup.

  * * *

  A FEW days later, it must have been the beginning of August 1943, Alice and Stephan were on their way to receive their midday meal as usual. Stephan was babbling away cheerfully when he suddenly let go of his mother’s hand and stood glued to the spot. He began to stare at two men with bright red faces who were pulling what was obviously a tremendously heavy cart. The load was covered with a black cloth under which lifeless arms and legs spilled out. Alice tried to get her son to move on, but he was literally speechless with horror and would not budge. The minutes felt like an eternity before the cart moved off in the direction of the crematorium.

  “Maminko,” asked Stephan many times that day, “how did those dead people come to be on the cart?”

  “They are mostly old people who die here. They die of old age or malnutrition.”

  “And where do the diseases come from?”

  “There is too little water to wash with. There is filth everywhere. That makes people ill.”

  “Why can’t the old people have a shower?”

  “Because there are far too few showers.”

  “And why is it that we can have a shower and others not?”

  “Because the doctor was so happy with my piano concert that he wanted to do something nice for us.”

  “Was it because of us that the dead people on the cart could not have a shower?”

  “No, Stepanku, we have not taken anything away from the people. Certainly not. They did not get enough to eat.”

  “But why not?”

  “Because the camp authorities think that manual laborers and children should have more than old people who can’t work anymore.”

  “Do the old people have to die because the children eat their food?”

  The tone in Stephan’s voice began to drive her to despair, but Alice wanted to give her son an answer, however difficult she found it: “Stepanku, the children can’t do anything about it. There is not even enough to feed them properly.”

  By then the two of them were standing at the table
where the food was dished out and Stephan was clearly thinking about the fact that his mother had received a double portion in gratitude for her first concert: “Maminko, if the boy gives you more soup today, does some old person have to go hungry?”

  “No, quite clearly not. Everyone gets soup.”

  But that day a different prisoner was serving and Alice was pleased that she got the same amount as the others.

  Stephan would not give up. After the meal he asked where the dead were going; why little children died too; what a crematorium was; and what happened to the ashes. In the end he also wanted to know why people were locked up here; when they could finally go home; why the war hadn’t finished yet; and who was to blame.

  In the next few weeks and months Alice was on her guard to prevent such occurrences whenever possible, but she did not always succeed. Death was part of everyday life in Theresienstadt. Over and over again there were outbreaks of infection which quickly spread, killing the weaker inmates. In July 1942 an average of thirty-two prisoners died each day. The figure rose to 75 in August and to 131 in September. When Alice and her son arrived in the camp at the beginning of July 1943 hygiene had improved but still there were thousands dying of infectious diseases. Between August 1942 and the end of March 1943 there was a total of 20,582 deaths—more than 2,500 a month.14

  * * *

  IN THE middle of August 1943, after nearly six weeks in the attic, mothers with children were moved to one of the “blockhouses” in the Seestrasse. A room measuring just twelve square meters contained three two-story bunks for twelve people, a small iron stove, a window, and no place to set up a table or chair. Such luxuries had to be “organized” first, anyway. Alice had to make an instant decision: top or bottom? The bottom bunk was more airy, and it was easier to get out, especially at night when there was no electricity. She was lucky enough to get the bottom one by the window. Stephan inspected the bunks with interest, as up until then they had only slept on thin mattresses on the floor.

  Stephan disappeared on his first attempt to lie down. The bunks were constructed like deep, narrow boxes, about sixty-five centimeters wide. At one end there was a sort of storage area, but even this was too small to accommodate the few trifles they had been allowed to keep. The rest of their things stayed in the rucksacks which were shoved under the bed. Unlike the barracks, the single-story blockhouses had no washrooms, just one sink for everyone.

  * * *

  EVERY EVENING from six until quarter to eight the men were allowed to visit their wives and children. With every father who made his way into their narrow confines the noise became more deafening. Over Alice’s head children squealed with excitement at their fathers’ stories. The little boy in the next bunk kept climbing onto the side of the bed and jumping off again making an awful noise in the process. A few mothers tried to discipline their children by hissing at them. One of the couples spoke so loudly to one another it sounded as if an argument had broken out.

  One evening, when the noise became so loud that she could no longer hear herself speak, Alice jumped to her feet and bellowed in a piercing voice that one could hardly believe could come from such a fragile-looking person: “Attention, all children,” “Attention, all children,” “Attention, all children.”

  Her outburst was so unexpected that everyone fell silent immediately. Then into the stillness Alice spoke in a gentler voice that was both firm and friendly: “Every child must now take a doorknob in his hand and as quietly as possible close the door.”

  They all looked baffled, and one of the mothers whispered: “My God, now she has gone mad!”

  But in the next moment Alice repeated her request, grasping, as if playing charades, an invisible handle and quietly and slowly turning it. Alice repeated her mime until all those present understood and were imitating her, all the children too. Alice’s outburst left its mark. Whenever it looked as if it was about to get too noisy during the evening visit, one of the mothers would cry out: “Close the doors!”

  Alice’s fellow residents also took up her suggestion that the room had to be cleaned out as much as was feasible twice a week; the mattresses had to be taken out into the courtyard and beaten and the beds and floors scrubbed. Once or twice they dismantled the beds, as the insects that preyed on them concealed themselves in the cracks in the wood. Relations between the women in the block got better and better as they learned to live and work together: this support and cooperation was a small but important lifeline for them all. The rest—hunger, the threat of disease and death—remained unchanged. And, as soon as the lights went out, the women and children were incessantly attacked by insects. The bugs, fleas and lice were never defeated.15

  * * *

  ALICE WAS aware of her privileged position in the camp. The five women who shared the room with her had to go off to work for up to twelve hours, either in one of the camp factories or in maintenance—the kitchens, sickbays or administration. Their children were sent to “activities” (kindergarten until they were seven and the children’s “home” thereafter).

  Alice was spared physical labor from the start. Otto Zucker had exempted Alice from work and she was accepted as a member of the Free Time Organization with the task of preparing solo concerts and chamber music. The fact she had to look after the six-year-old Stephan was also taken into account. Alice could therefore pick Stephan up at the kindergarten at midday, and she often collected his friend Pavel, too, and looked after them both.

  In Theresienstadt Alice had just one purpose: to protect Stephan, provide him with warmth and prevent him from suffering. Night after night he slept in his mother’s bed. Snuggled up to her he felt an obvious sense of security. Every day she had three problems to overcome: to spare him from boredom, fuss and hunger. The saddest thing for her was when her son asked for food and there was none to give, and he had to go hungry. When she earned a little bread or margarine from a concert, she would naturally hand it on to Stephan. And even that often did not stave off the hunger for long.

  Once—the only time in her life—Alice was driven to theft. It was one of the rare occasions when none of her fellow lodgers was in the room. Stephan was crying with hunger, but Alice had nothing more to give him. Then she spied a piece of bread on a neighboring bed, and grabbed it.

  * * *

  STEPHAN WAS always so tired in the evening that he went to sleep immediately after his father left. On the other hand he woke shortly after five in the morning, long before the others. To some extent this was an advantage for Alice and Stephan as it allowed the two of them to wash and dress in peace. After six, people had to form a long queue: a torture for all those suffering from the camp sickness, diarrhea. A lavatory watch was formed on a daily basis and was supposedly responsible for order and cleanliness.

  Until the official reveille Alice and Stephan had the best part of an hour to while away. As there was nowhere to sit down, they would go back to bed after their wash. While Alice would have loved to go back to sleep, Stephan was bored. One morning he had an inspired idea: “Let’s count.” Alice was amazed, because she knew that he hated counting, and she sympathized. She had never felt much affection for arithmetic but was happy to do sums with him from that moment on. Over and over again they repeated their tables in every possible way they could and at the same time they did multiplication and division, which taxed not only Stephan, but Alice too.

  * * *

  AT THE beginning of September 1943, Alice experienced her first outbreak of panic in Theresienstadt. The cause was an order issued several weeks before by SS Command. On 24 July 1943, it was decreed that two barracks had to be cleared as quickly as possible,16 so that a group of SS officers from Berlin could prepare the empty buildings to house the archives of the RSHA, the Reichssicherheitshauptamt (Reich Security Main Office), the subsection of the SS created by Heinrich Himmler in 1939 to fight “all enemies of the Reich.” Within thirty-six hours 6,422 prisoners had to find temporary accommodation in other buildings. Leopold was also affected. He
later told Alice about the speed with which the prisoners had had to assemble the little they had left—and what was essential for their everyday lives—before they left their billets.

  As Theresienstadt was already filled to bursting, the 6,422 prisoners were divided up among the attics and cellars. From then on every nook and cranny of the ghetto was occupied. The evacuated buildings stood empty for three weeks before they could accommodate the archives: documentation of Nazi crimes.

  The SS had a quick and lethal solution to the chaos they had caused: thousands of prisoners would be transferred to camps in the east. The first selection was to be made from people from Bohemia and Moravia no older than sixty-five, a criterion which fitted around 12,000 prisoners. Another thousand had to be available as reserves: one in two prisoners from Bohemia and Moravia was under threat.

  The camp was in uproar. No one knew precisely what went on in the eastern camps, but there was much speculation. The name Auschwitz was known to the prisoners, but so far there had been no rumors of mass murder or systematic gassing. One thing was certain, however, and that was the conditions would be worse and more difficult than they were in Theresienstadt.

  The atmosphere in the camp changed overnight: people crept nervously through the streets and all social contact was marked by mistrust. Fear became a reality when the SS finally informed the Jewish elders that they had to draw up the deportation lists. The Council of Elders had to meet immediately and make their choices. A secretary typed the lists, with carbon copies: first the number of the person, then the number of the transport, then the first name and surname, followed by date of birth and address in the ghetto. Finally the carbon copies were cut up so that each name appeared on a thin strip of paper. Messengers took these strips directly round to the elders of each block and they in turn had to inform the chosen and hand over the piece of paper.