The Librarian of Auschwitz

by Antonio Iturbe

  “But the uprising can start anyway,” the girls say to him. “You give the order, and we’ll get things going.”

  He tries to explain to them that it’s not that simple, that things don’t work like that, that he’s not authorized to make a decision of such magnitude without an order from Schmulewski. They don’t quite understand what he’s telling them. Rudi is worn out.

  “I can’t make that decision; I’m a nobody.…”

  Right now, proud Rosenberg feels that he’s the most insignificant man on earth. Not only does he feel that everything is falling down around him, but that he’s going to pieces, too.

  Inside the family camp, the news is bouncing from one mouth to the next. It’s as brief as a telegram announcing a death. The shortest sentences are the most devastating; there’s no chance for a reply. The news continues on its way around the camp like a bulldozer, leaving a trail of destruction in its path.

  Fredy Hirsch is dead.

  The rumor grows, and the word suicide begins to be heard. And the word Luminal, a sleeping pill that is deadly if taken in large quantities.

  Rozsi Krausz, a Block 31 assistant from Hungary, rushes into the barrack looking shaken. Her eyes are bright with fear. She can barely say the words in Czech, but rather than sounding comical, her strange Hungarian accent adds a mournful note to the news: Fredy Hirsch is dead.

  She can’t say more; there’s nothing more to add. She collapses onto a stool and starts to sob.

  Some people don’t want to believe her. Others don’t know what to think. More assistants begin to arrive, their faces ashen, and the children’s smiles gradually disappear as they stop singing and playing games. Their faces reflect more fear than sadness. A shiver runs down hundreds of spines. Death had not managed to enter Block 31 even once in the past six months. They had managed miraculously to keep all the children alive. And now the miracle worker himself is dead. Everyone wants to know how, why—although at heart, what they really want to ask is, What’s going to happen to them without Fredy? Whistles blow, and sharp commands are shouted in German ordering everybody to return to their huts immediately for the evening roll call.

  Liesl is already waiting for Dita. She gives her a hug. They all know that Hirsch is dead. Mother and daughter don’t need to say anything; they simply stand cheek to cheek for a moment and close their eyes tightly.

  Their new Blockältester climbs up on top of the horizontal chimney that runs across the floor and calls for silence so angrily that all the muttering stops. She’s Jewish, not much older than eighteen, but she’s now the one with the power. She’s going to hand out the soup and bread rations. She won’t go hungry anymore, and she won’t have to wear those wooden clogs that smell foul, because she’ll be able to buy some boots on the black market with the pieces of bread she hides away. That’s why she won’t allow herself to waver. If the camp Kapo or the SS order her to shout, shout she will; and if they ask her to hit the inmates, that’s what she’ll do. In fact, she’ll shout and hit them before the SS order her to do it. And double what they ask, so she lives up to their expectations. First off, she shouts rudely that they are forbidden to go outside the hut until the wake-up call the next morning. The guards will shoot to kill anyone who does.

  Dita has spent so much time longing to have a bunk to herself, but now that she’s finally got it, she can’t sleep. Night has fallen on Birkenau, the camps are silent, and the only sounds outside are the wind and the monotonous hum of the electrified barbed wire fences. So much time wanting to sleep by herself, and now she doesn’t know how—she can’t. Eventually, she jumps from her bunk and walks over to her mother, who also has a bunk to herself. She snuggles up beside her mother as she used to do when she was a little girl having nightmares. When that happened, she’d climb into her parents’ bed, because nothing bad could happen to her there.

  * * *

  Rudi tries again to access camp BIId to inform Schmulewski. His excuse is that he has to hand over some important papers, but permission is denied. He insists, saying that they have to transfer Hirsch’s body, but permission is again denied. He returns to the fence to talk to his contact in BIIb, but he’s not there; everyone is inside the huts, and contact is impossible.

  Rudi returns to his tiny cubicle and, a short while later, goes out again, hoping that they’ll have changed the guard on the gate and that this time, he’ll be able to persuade the NCO to allow him into camp BIId. Just then, a horde of Kapos brought in from other camps swarm into the quarantine camp. They’re armed with clubs, and they start to hit people and shout at them to gather into two groups quickly, men on one side and women on the other. Beatings follow, and the sound of whistles, and howls of pain and panic.

  Alice runs toward Rudi and grabs hold of his arm. A guard yells viciously that the men and women must separate: “Männer hier, und Frauen hier!”

  Blows from the clubs rain down around Rudi and Alice, and blood splatters the mud. Alice separates herself from Rudi without taking her eyes off him, without abandoning her sad smile. They push her in the direction of a group of women prisoners and hurriedly lead them to a truck parked at the entrance to the camp. Vehicles keep arriving until there’s a row of trucks waiting with their engines idling.

  Rudi is momentarily paralyzed, and the crowd begins to drag him along toward a group of men huddled together to protect themselves from the blows. Suddenly he realizes that he’s being absorbed into the group of men they’re shoving toward the death trucks.

  He tries to walk against the flow before the mob swallows him up. The Kapos with their clubs, and the SS guards with their machine guns are making sure that no one escapes: They kick and shove anyone who tries. Rudi puts a cigarette in his mouth, faking a calmness he doesn’t feel, and forcefully pushes other prisoners out of his way so he can reach a Kapo he knows by sight who’s standing on the edge of the group.

  Before the Kapo can bring his club down on Rudi to force him back into the group, Rudi yells out that he’s the secretary of Hut 14—

  “The block chief has ordered me to report to him immediately.”

  The Kapo is a German with the badge of the common prisoners. He gives Rudi a quick look in the midst of the surrounding maelstrom, recognizes him, and stops his club in midflight. He gestures at a soldier with a submachine gun, and they let him leave. A man who grabs hold of Rudi’s jacket and tries to leave with him is hit in the ribs with the submachine gun. Rudi hears him pleading, but he doesn’t turn around. He walks away, trying to feign indifference, but his legs almost collapse under him.

  As he walks to his hut, he hears the noise of the shouts, the orders, the sobs, the truck doors slamming shut, the engines moving off. He thinks about Alice. He remembers her doe eyes looking at him for the last time, and shakes his head as if he wants to shake off the memory so that it won’t weigh him down. He continues on his way, walking quickly, and finally reaches his room and shuts himself inside.

  There’s no documentary evidence to indicate if Rudi Rosenberg cried.

  * * *

  Dita is still awake in her bunk, as are all the women. It’s so quiet you can even hear the sound of brakes squealing again and again on the damp ground and trucks coming to a halt with their engines still running. More and more trucks.

  And then the night explodes. Shouts, whistles, sobs, pleas, cries to an absent God erupt in the camp next door. And then the sound of truck doors being slammed is heard again, immediately followed by the screech of metal bolts. Cries of panic have given way to the sound of sobs and pitiful moans, the sound of hundreds of voices intermingling in a confused storm of screams.

  Nobody sleeps in the family camp. Nobody speaks; nobody moves. In Dita’s hut, when someone anxiously asks, “What’s happening? What will happen to them?” in a loud voice, the other women, irritated, quickly tell her to be quiet and demand total silence. They have to keep listening so they know exactly what’s happening, or maybe they want complete silence so the SS officers won’t hear them, won
’t notice them, and will let them stay alive on their filthy bunks—at least for a little longer.

  The metallic bang of truck doors rings out and the sound of the voices dies down. The rumble of the engines suggests that the first lot of loaded trucks is moving off. And then Dita, her mother, and all the other occupants of the hut think they can hear music—perhaps a hallucination produced by their own distress. But then the sound grows in volume.

  “Is that voices singing?”

  The chorus is drowning out the growl of the trucks. A perplexed voice says it out loud, and other voices repeat it, as if they find it so hard to believe that they have to tell everyone else, or themselves, about it—“They are singing! The male and female prisoners being taken away in the trucks to die are singing!”

  They can make out the Czech national anthem, “Kde Domov Můj?”—Where Is My Home?—and as another truck goes by, it carries the notes of the Jewish anthem, “Hatikvah,” while from yet another truck, “The Internationale” can be heard. The music inevitably sounds broken, like a fugue, and diminishes as the trucks move away. The voices shrink until they disappear. On this night, thousands of voices are switched off forever.

  During the night of March 8, 1944, 3,792 prisoners from the family camp BIIb were gassed and then incinerated in Crematorium III of Auschwitz–Birkenau.

  20.

  The next morning, Dita doesn’t need to wait for the yells of the Kapo to wake her, because she hasn’t managed to get to sleep. Her mother gives her a kiss, and then Dita jumps off her bunk and sets off to Block 31 for roll call, as she does every day. Except this isn’t a day like all the others; half the people who used to be with her have gone and won’t return.

  Despite the risk of attracting the attention of some Kapo or guard, Dita turns off the Lagerstrasse and heads for the rear of the huts closest to the fence. She looks over into the quarantine camp with the remote hope of finding someone alive. But there’s nothing moving among the huts of camp BIIa, except for the odd scrap of material torn from some piece of clothing fluttering on the ground.

  Nothing remains of the shouts from the previous night; just a thick silence. The camp is deserted. It’s as quiet as a cemetery. The ground is strewn with trampled hats, an abandoned coat, and empty bowls. The head from one of the clay dolls the children made in Block 31 peeps out from among the other objects. Dita spies something white lying on top of the mud: a wrinkled scrap of paper. She closes her eyes to stop herself from looking at it any longer. It’s one of Professor Morgenstern’s origami birds, trampled and crushed in the mud.

  And that’s exactly how Dita feels.

  Seppl Lichtenstern has been charged with carrying out the roll call this morning under the impassive gaze of an SS guard, but once the guard leaves the hut, everyone relaxes a little. The children have spent the whole time looking from side to side for those who are missing. No matter how much the daily roll call normally irritates the children, its brevity this morning has shattered them.

  Dita heads outside to escape the feeling of oppression in the barrack. But although dawn broke a short time ago, something is darkening the atmosphere. The breeze is carrying a dry rain that is making everything dirty. Ash. A black snowfall the likes of which has never been seen before.

  The people working in the ditches look skyward. Those hauling stones leave them on the ground and come to a standstill. The people in the workshops stop laboring, despite the yells of the Kapos, and go outside to look, in what could be their first act of rebellion—looking up at the black sky, indifferent to orders and threats.

  Night seems suddenly to have returned.

  “My God! What is it?” someone asks.

  “It’s God’s curse!” cries another.

  Dita looks up, and her face, hands, and dress are spotted with tiny gray flakes that disintegrate between her fingers. The inhabitants of Block 31 come outside to see what’s going on.

  “What’s happening?” asks a frightened little girl.

  “Don’t be afraid,” says Miriam Edelstein to the children. “It’s our friends from the September transport. They’re returning.”

  Children and teachers crowd together in silence. Many of them quietly pray. Dita cups her hands so she can catch some of that rain of souls, unable to hold back her tears, which form white furrows down her blackened face. Miriam Edelstein is hugging her son, Arieh, and Dita joins them.

  “They’ve come back, Dita. They’ve come back.”

  They’ll never leave Auschwitz again.

  Some teachers have stood their ground and say they won’t teach any classes. For some, it’s a way of protesting, while others simply find themselves incapable of carrying on. Lichtenstern tries to raise their morale, but he lacks the charisma and the self-confidence of Fredy Hirsch. And he can’t cover up the fact that he, too, is demoralized.

  One of the teachers asks what happened to Hirsch. Others gather around crestfallen, as if they were at a funeral. Someone says he was told that Hirsch was loaded into one of the trucks on a stretcher, either dying or already dead.

  “I think he killed himself out of pride. He was too proud to allow himself to be killed by the Nazis. He wasn’t going to give them that pleasure.”

  “I think that when he saw his own German compatriots had tricked and betrayed him, he couldn’t bear it.”

  “Children suffering is what he couldn’t bear.”

  Dita listens, and something stirs inside her, as if she senses that there is something about Hirsch’s death that doesn’t lend itself to a conventional explanation. She feels not only devastated but confused. What will happen to the school if Hirsch isn’t here to fix everything? She’s found a spot on a stool as far away as possible from all the others, but she can see Lichtenstern, thin and clumsy, coming her way. He’s nervous, and he’d give ten years of his life for a cigarette.

  “The children are frightened, Edita. Look at them, they’re not moving; they’re not talking.”

  “We’re all angry, Seppl.”

  “We have to do something.”

  “Do? What can we do?”

  “The only thing we can do is carry on. We have to make these children respond. Read something to them.”

  Dita looks around and sees that the children have gradually sat down on the ground in silent groups, biting their nails and gazing up at the ceiling. They’ve never been so depressed or so quiet. Dita feels weak, and she has a bitter taste in her mouth. What she’d really like to do is stay on her stool without moving or speaking or having someone talk to her, and never get up again.

  “And what am I going to read to them?”

  Seppl Lichtenstern opens his mouth, but no words come out, so he closes it again and, somewhat embarrassed, looks down. He admits that he doesn’t know about books, and they can’t ask Miriam Edelstein because she’s too overcome. She’s sitting at the back with her head in her hands, refusing to speak to anyone.

  “You’re the librarian of Block Thirty-One,” Lichtenstern reminds her sharply.

  Dita nods in agreement. She must assume her responsibility. No one has to remind her of that.

  As she makes her way to the Blockältester’s cubicle, she wishes she could ask Mr. Utitz, the chief librarian at Terezín, which would be the most appropriate book for her to read to the children under these tragic circumstances. She has a serious novel, some math books, and some books about understanding the world. But before she has even lifted the pile of rags which hide the trapdoor to the hidey-hole, she’s already made up her mind.

  She takes out the messiest of the books—little more than a bundle of unbound sheets. It may be the least suitable, the least pedagogic, and the most irreverent of them all. There are even teachers who disapprove of it, finding it indecent and in poor taste. But those who believe that flowers grow in vases don’t understand anything about literature. The library has now become her first-aid kit, and she’s going to give the children a little of the medicine that helped her recover her smile when she thought sh
e’d lost it forever.

  Lichtenstern gestures to one of the assistants to go and stand guard at the door, and Dita sits on a stool in the middle of the hut. The odd child looks at her with halfhearted curiosity, but most of them continue to examine the tips of their clogs. She opens the book, finds a page and starts to read. Maybe they can hear her, but no one is listening. The children are listless; many of them are lying on the floor. The teachers continue to whisper among themselves, chewing over what they know about the deaths of the September group. Even Lichtenstern is sitting on a stool, his eyes closed in an attempt to distance himself.

  Dita is reading for nobody.

  She begins with a scene in which the Czech soldiers, under orders from the Austrian high command, are traveling by train to the front, and Švejk’s outrageous opinions manage to irritate an arrogant lieutenant called Dub, who inspects the troops when they reach their destination. He paces back and forth accompanied by his habitual refrain. “Do you know me?” he says. “Well, I’m telling you that you don’t really know me! But when you do know me I’ll reduce you to tears, you idiots!” The lieutenant asks them if they have any brothers, and when they say they do, he shouts that their brothers must be just as stupid as they are.

  The sad-faced children are still sitting in their corners, although the odd one has stopped chewing his nails and a few others have even stopped staring at the ceiling and are watching Dita as she continues to toss words into the air. A few of the teachers have also turned their heads toward her, although they haven’t entirely abandoned their conversations. They can’t quite work out what Dita is doing on her stool. Dita goes on reading until the grim-faced lieutenant comes across Švejk, who’s criticizing a propaganda poster in which an Austrian soldier is using his bayonet to skewer a Russian Cossack to a wall.

  “What is it about the poster that you don’t like?” Lieutenant Dub asks him rudely.

  “What I don’t like is the careless way in which the soldier is handling his regulation weapon, sir. The bayonet could snap when it hits the wall. Moreover, it’s a fairly useless action, because the Russian already has his hands in the air, so he’s surrendered. He’s now a prisoner, and you have to treat prisoners properly, because they’re people, too.”