The Librarian of Auschwitz

by Antonio Iturbe

  Dita stretches out her mother’s blanket on the floor and tells her to lie down. Mrs. Adler does as she’s told and curls up. She puts her face on the blanket and encounters an army of jumping fleas, but she’s unfazed. It doesn’t even matter anymore. One of the new arrivals asks a veteran what sort of work is done in the camp.

  “You don’t work here anymore,” the woman on the floor answers reluctantly. “You just survive for as long as you can.”

  They’ve heard the sound of explosions from Allied planes throughout the day, and at night they can see the glow of detonating bombs. The front is already very close; they can almost touch it. It spreads a certain euphoria among the prisoners. The noise from the Allied bombs sounds like an ever-approaching storm. Some of the women discuss what they’ll do when the war is over. One woman without any teeth says she’ll replant her entire garden with tulips.

  “Don’t be stupid,” replies a bitter voice. “If I had a garden, I’d plant potatoes so I never spend another day of my life feeling hungry.”

  In the morning Dita and her mother understand what the internee meant when she said that you don’t work in Bergen-Belsen, you just survive. A pair of SS guards wakes them up with kicks and shouts, and they rush outside to line up. The guards disappear, however, and the new inmates stand at the door for a long time awaiting instructions that never arrive. Some of the old hands haven’t even got up from their blankets and stoically put up with the kicks without moving.

  More than an hour later, a guard appears and shouts at them to line up for roll call, but immediately notices that there is no list of names. So the guard asks for the hut Kapo. Nobody answers. She asks three more times, getting angrier with each one.

  “You damned bitches! Where the devil is the Kapo of this fucking hut?”

  Nobody answers. Red with rage, the guard furiously grabs a prisoner by the neck and asks her where the Kapo is. The victim is a new arrival and tells her she doesn’t know. Then the guard turns to a veteran, who’s easily recognizable because she’s almost a walking skeleton, and repeats her question while aiming at her with her club.

  “Well?”

  “She died two days ago.”

  “And the new Kapo?”

  The inmate shrugs her shoulders.

  “There isn’t one.”

  The guard thinks this over and doesn’t know what to do. She could name any one of these women Kapo, but there isn’t a single regular prisoner among them. They’re all Jews in this hut, and she could be looking for trouble. Eventually, she turns around and leaves. The veteran prisoners break ranks of their own accord and go back inside the hut. The newcomers, still standing by the entrance to the hut, exchange looks. Dita almost prefers to remain outside, as she’s constantly bombarded by fleas and lice inside and she feels an intense itchiness over her entire body. But her mother is tired and gestures inside with her head.

  Once there, they ask a veteran what time breakfast appears. The huge grimace, which hides a bitter smile, is eloquent.

  “Breakfast time?” says another woman. “Let’s pray we have a dinnertime today.”

  They spend the whole morning doing nothing until someone shouts a harsh “Achtung,” which makes everyone quickly stand. The supervisor comes into the hut, followed by a couple of assistants. She points her club at one of the veterans and asks if there are any deaths. The prisoner points to the back of the hut, and another inmate in the area points to the ground. A woman hasn’t gotten up at the sound of the shout. She’s dead.

  Volkenrath looks around quickly and signals to four prisoners, two veterans and two newcomers. She doesn’t say a word, but the old hands already know what has to be done. They hurry over to the corpse with unexpected enthusiasm, and each of them grabs a leg. They know they have to get hold of the right part: The legs of a corpse weigh less, and that end is sometimes less unpleasant. Rigor mortis has already dislocated the jaw, and the woman’s mouth and eyes are open excessively wide. With a nod of their heads, they indicate that the other two prisoners should grab the shoulders. Between the four of them, they make their way to the door, carrying the dead woman.

  The guards disappear again, and nobody else comes into the hut until evening. Then a guard looks inside and signals to four inmates to go to the kitchen to get the pot with the soup. That causes a stir, and there are shouts of joy.

  “Dinner’s on!”

  “Thank you, God!”

  The inmates reappear carrying the pot with the help of two long planks so they won’t burn themselves, and that night they dine on soup.

  “This cook studied at the same school as the one in Birkenau,” says Dita between sips.

  And Liesl ruffles her daughter’s shoulder-length hair, which is starting to turn up at the ends.

  In the days that follow, anarchy will increase. There’ll be days when they eat a bowl of soup at lunchtime, but there’ll be no breakfast or dinner; on the odd day they’ll have lunch and dinner, but at other times they won’t get any food at all. Hunger becomes a form of torture and a source of anxiety that blocks the mind and doesn’t allow for thought; there’s just the agonized wait for the next meal. All that free time, combined with the anxiety caused by hunger, turns the mind into mush, and everything starts to fall apart.

  29.

  More prisoners arrive in the weeks that follow, and the gaps between meals becomes longer. The mortality rate grows exponentially. Even without gas chambers, Bergen-Belsen becomes a killing machine. Half a dozen bodies have to be removed from Dita’s hut every day. The deaths are officially listed as due to natural causes.

  Whenever the guards arrive to pick the prisoners assigned to remove the dead, all the women freeze and hope it’s not their day to win the lottery. Dita tries to blend in with the others.

  But today is her lucky day.

  The SS guard unmistakably points at her with the club. She’s the last one selected, so when she reaches the corpse, the positions at the feet are already taken. She and a very dark woman who looks like a Gypsy pick up the dead woman by her shoulders. Dita has seen many dead bodies over these years, but she has never touched one. She can’t avoid brushing against this woman’s hand, and its marble-like coldness makes her shiver.

  Dita and the Gypsy woman support the bulk of the weight. But she worries about the dead woman’s arms, how to keep them from swinging.

  One of the women carrying the feet of the corpse leads the way and they come to an area that’s fenced off with barbed wire. Two guards armed with submachine guns accompany them. They reach a piece of waste ground where a German officer in shirtsleeves meets them and orders them to halt. They stop, still holding the dead woman, and the officer gives her a quick look. He jots something down in a notebook and signals for them to go on. One of the veterans whispers that it’s Dr. Klein, and it’s his job to control outbreaks of typhus. If the disease is detected in a hut, the Germans send the infected women to a quarantine camp to die.

  As the four women advance, the stench becomes more nauseating. There are several sinewy men working a few meters farther on; the dirty handkerchiefs they use to cover their noses make them look like bandits. Another group of women is standing in front of them, in the process of depositing a corpse next to several other bodies. One of the men signals to Dita’s group that they should leave their body on the ground. The men throw the bodies into an enormous pit, as if they were sacks of potatoes. Dita leans over the edge for an instant, and what she sees makes her so queasy she has to grab hold of one of her companions.

  “My God…”

  It’s a huge trench crammed with corpses. The ones on the bottom look singed; the ones on top are piled up in a jumble, a tangle of arms, heads, and yellowish skin.

  Dita’s stomach churns, but it’s her most deeply held convictions that are stirred more than anything.

  That’s all we are? Bits of decomposing matter? A few atoms, like those of a willow tree or a shoe?

  Even the veteran who has been here several times is ups
et. No one speaks on the return journey. Seen like this, life appears to have no value.

  When Dita gets back, her mother gives her a look asking how it went. Dita hides her face in her hands. She’d like to be left alone, but her mother hugs her and shares her pain.

  The chaos increases. Although there are no organized work groups anymore, they’re given the order to stay close to the hut all day in case they are needed. Occasionally, one of the SS guards appears, her arms swinging energetically as she displays her healthy-looking, well-fed legs. She calls out some names in a shrill voice and tells them to go with her to work on the drainage ditches or in some shop. A couple of times, Dita is recruited for a workshop where they punch holes in belts and tabs for uniforms. The machines are very old, and you have to use a lot of force to make the puncher strike the strips of leather with sufficient pressure.

  After roll call one morning, the supervisor appears in front of the assembled group. Volkenrath is easily recognizable because of the ostentatious bun of hair on top of her head from which blond strands are always escaping. She has the appearance of someone who’s been to an expensive salon and then rolled around in a barn. Dita has heard that when she was a civilian, she was a hairdresser, which explains the hairstyle she sports amid the filth, lice, and typhus of Bergen-Belsen.

  Volkenrath is her usual angry self, which scares even her assistants. It occurs to Dita that if Hitler hadn’t come to power and war hadn’t broken out, this unscrupulous woman now standing in front of them with a killer’s glint in her eye would be yet another of those slightly plump, pleasant hairdressers who give the girls ringlets and cheerfully comment about the neighborhood gossip. Their clients, including German-Jewish women, would lower their heads, and she would cut their hair with her scissors, and none of them would be the least bit worried about placing their necks in the hands of this oversized woman who is addicted to somewhat fanciful, upswept hairstyles. If anyone had insinuated that, some years down the track, Elisabeth Volkenrath might be a murderer, the entire community would have been outraged. Good old Beth? That woman wouldn’t hurt a fly! they’d say indignantly. They’d demand that the author of the calumny retract it immediately. And they might have been right. But things have turned out otherwise. Now if any of the women who arrive at her establishment don’t behave in the way she wants, the inoffensive girl from the hairdressing salon puts a rope around their neck and hangs them.

  Dita is absorbed in these thoughts when a sound penetrates her brain like the metal puncher piercing the leather in the workshop:

  “Elisabeth Adler!”

  The administrative mess is so bad that the Germans have gone back to calling the prisoners by their names, not their numbers. The voice of the SS supervisor (authoritarian, strong, aggressive, military-sounding, impatient) rings out again calling for … “Elisabeth Adler!”

  Her mother had been distracted. She now makes a move to step out of the line, but Dita is much faster and decisively steps forward.

  “Adler, here!”

  Adler, here! Liesl’s eyes open wide, and she’s so taken aback by her daughter’s audacity that, for a few seconds, she doesn’t know what to do. Just as she decides to step forward and sort out the mix-up with the guards, there’s a shout of “Break ranks!” The sea of women energetically surging around her blocks Liesl’s path, and by the time the knot of people has untangled itself, her daughter has disappeared inside the hut to transfer that day’s corpses. Liesl stands stock-still, getting in the way of her companions, who are in a pointless hurry, as if they’d forgotten they have nowhere to go. Dita emerges a short while later carrying a body with three other inmates. Her mother, still rooted to the same spot, and now on her own in the middle of the avenue of mud, angrily watches her daughter heading off.

  Another trip to mankind’s final frontier.

  Dita again leans over the edge of the pit and comes back pale with queasiness. They all say it’s the stench that makes them ill, but what really upsets them is the sight of those lives thrown on a dump site.

  Dita hopes she never gets used to it.

  When she gets back to the hut, her mother is still standing near the door, as if she hadn’t broken ranks after the roll call. Her expression is one of deep anger, even rage.

  “Are you stupid? Have you forgotten that assuming the identity of another prisoner is punished by death?” Liesl shouts at her.

  Dita can’t remember the last time her mother shouted at her. An inmate walking by turns to stare, and Dita feels herself blushing. It seems unfair, and she feels tears flooding her eyes, even though she doesn’t want to cry. Only her pride prevents them from spilling out. She nods and turns around.

  She can’t stand it when her mother treats her like a child. It’s not right. Dita did it because she knows her mother is weak and doesn’t have the strength to carry a corpse. But Dita hasn’t been given a chance to explain. She thinks her mother should be proud of her, but instead she’s earned the worst reprimand since the slap Liesl gave her in Prague.

  She doesn’t value anything I do.…

  She feels misunderstood. She may be in a concentration camp, but she’s no different from the millions of other teenagers the world over who are about to turn sixteen.

  Dita is mistaken, however: Liesl is immensely proud of her daughter. She’s not going to tell her so. She’s been tortured with doubts about the sort of person her daughter would become growing up under military repression, with inadequate schooling, in places infected by hatred and violence. Her daughter’s generous act confirms all her intuitions and hopes—she knows that if Dita survives, she’ll be a fine woman.

  But she can’t say all this to Dita. If she showed satisfaction at such reckless behavior, it would encourage Dita and spur her on to putting her life in danger again and again to save her mother from punishment. In any event, as a mother, she wants to avoid such things for her daughter. Because life isn’t either better or worse for Liesl anymore. Life has become unimportant to her. Her only happiness is the one that she sees in her daughter’s eyes. Her daughter is still too young to understand all this.

  The next day, a guard, whom Dita has christened Crowface, turns up at the hut and orders them all to line up outside.

  “Everybody out! And I mean everybody. I’ll finish off anyone who doesn’t get up with a bullet!”

  Grumbling, taking their time, the women start to mobilize.

  “Take your blankets!”

  The women exchange looks, but the mystery is soon revealed. The Germans are moving them to the main women’s camp to make room for a new contingent that has just arrived. Inside the main camp, the inmates are just as emaciated and water is very scarce, so it’s only used for rationed drinking water. Nothing can be washed. The chaos has reached such heights that some prisoners don’t even wear their striped uniforms, while others put a vest or another piece of clothing over their prison tops. Grime blackens the women’s skin to the point where it’s hard to know if they are wearing strips of clothing or strips of blackened, peeling flesh. An SS guard is supervising a group of women gritting their teeth as they work in a drainage ditch; it’s hard to distinguish between their arms and the handles of the hoes.

  The hut is crammed but has the small advantage of containing bunks like the ones in Auschwitz, which means they have dirty straw mattresses—they’re packed with bedbugs, but at least they stop their bones from digging into themselves. A lot of women are lying down. Most of them are ill and have stopped getting up. Others pretend they are ill so they’ll be left alone. The guards don’t approach them because they’re terrified of catching typhus.

  Dita and her mother sit down on the empty bunk they’ll be sharing. Her mother is very tired, but Dita feels restless and gets up to explore the camp. There’s not really much to see: huts and fences. There are groups of women still able to chat animatedly, the ones from the most recent transports who still have some energy stored in their bodies, but there are others who don’t have the strength even to t
alk: You look at them, and they don’t look back.

  They’ve given in.

  Then she notices a girl along the side of the one of the huts. She’s wearing the striped dress of a prisoner and a white kerchief on her head—astonishingly white in the middle of this gigantic dunghill. Dita looks at her and then shuts her eyes because she thinks she’s mistaken in what she’s seeing. But when she opens them again, it’s not a mirage. She’s right there.

  “Margit…”

  Her friend suddenly raises her head and starts to stand up but finds herself bowled over by Dita, who throws herself on top of Margit, and the two of them fall over and roll around, laughing, on the ground. They grab hold of each other by the arms and stare at one another. If happiness is possible in these sorts of circumstances, then at this very moment, they are happy.

  They hold hands and go off to see Dita’s mother. As soon as she sees Liesl, Margit approaches her and, although she’s never done it before, hugs her. In fact, she clings to her shoulders; she’s needed a safe haven where she can cry, for a long time.

  After she’s eased some of her pain, Margit tells them that the selection in the family camp was awful; her mother and sister were both assigned to the group that had been condemned. With the precision of someone who has relived the same scene many times over in her mind, she explains how they were sent to the ranks of the feeble.

  “I could see them the whole time we were inside the hut, until they finished the selection. They were very calm and holding hands. Then the smaller group of fit women, which I was part of, was ordered to leave. I didn’t want to go, but a tide of women was pushing me toward the door. I could see Helga and my mother on the other side of the hut’s chimney, getting smaller and smaller, and surrounded by old women and children. They were watching me go. And do you know what, Ditiňka? As they were watching me leave … they were smiling! Can you believe it? They were doomed to die, and they were smiling.”