Through terror, she mumbled, “Heavenly Father . . . what is happening?”
Adele’s heart began reciting His name over and over again with each beat, like a mournful dance, like the haunting sound of the violin crying in her ear. It was her one comfort. The only sure thing she knew in that moment. God. Was He there? If she called out to Him, would He follow her anxious steps through the mud? Would He sustain her through what her eyes were seeing?
She turned back around, not knowing which way to walk, following the crowd of women who were being parted from the men and boys.
“Women and children—left!” It was shouted. Barked. “Recht! Recht! Men to the recht!”
She heard wretched crying, saw the anguish as mothers’ hands were torn from their children’s and they were pushed to the left, the tears of anguish and the cry of their souls upon each face. Everything was happening so fast, yet it seemed as if the world turned round her in painfully slow motion. It felt like she was stuck in some terrible film. Or a frightful dream.
A sea of people walked to and fro as they discarded bags and suitcases marked up with scrawled names and former street addresses, tossed in mountainous piles upon the platform. And there were men with striped uniforms, almost like pajamas, herding the crowds past long lines of barbed wire fencing. Were these men prisoners too? Why so many fences? What in the world was going on?
What she was seeing—it couldn’t be happening. Would it do any good to pinch herself now?
Oh God. Do You see?
More families fractured. Sobbing. Others had agonized faces. Stunned. Painted with disbelief.
Adele shuddered and wrapped her arms tighter around the violin case in her arms. It was almost too cold to breathe, even for a spring morning in March. She could barely think. She no longer had hunger or thirst . . . all she could do was see. Her eyes still worked. They tore through the mist, looking ahead to the tall brick beast of a building that loomed up beyond the tracks. Though her other senses were numb, she could and did see what was happening, as the greeting of the camp was menacingly dark. And she had a feeling she’d remember it always, as if her soul would be burned with the memory.
“Women—this way!”
She was pulled into a line. Closer, closer they came to the beast.
A little girl walked by, head down, fighting against the cold, never looking or laughing or skipping along as all children do. She was holding her mother’s hand. That darling little girl with the kerchief tucked over her hair and tied in a knot under her delicate, porcelain chin. A baby she was. Tiny. Taking two steps to her mama’s one, her legs far too little to keep up with the quick pace of the barking guards’ instructions.
What would happen to her?
Adele had never felt so alone in her life. Was this what her Vladimir was seeing? Was he being ushered forth too? Did lines form for him in some cold, lifeless camp?
Oh heavenly Father, is he one of the strong men who crumbled to weeping in his own cattle car?
She stepped forward, looking at the mouth of the great brick beast. The wide doors welcomed their prey as an eerie snow fell down, the memories of each flake the only witness to the scene except for her. And was it snow? Something else? Why wasn’t it cold like an early March snow should have been when it drifted down and melted upon her exposed skin?
It fluttered on the breeze like paper-thin cinders from the fireplace at home.
Ash falling down?
Adele breathed out in terror. God . . . what is this place?
Auschwitz.
They allowed Adele to keep her violin.
This she hadn’t expected.
The Germans had rushed her through registration—the horror of which she was still numb to. She’d been taken through a line with the other women from the car. But most of them, especially the ones with children clinging to them, had been ushered through a wall of buildings and barbed wire and she’d been left behind.
Adele wasn’t sure where they were headed, but she wanted to go with them. At least she could have asked what was happening, could have felt a connection to some earthly being who had taken the long train journey with her. But it wasn’t to be. They were led away and she was pushed and pulled in another direction.
The SS guards spotted her—did they recognize her as Austria’s Sweetheart? Adele had always hated that name, the product of careful marketing by her parents. But it hardly mattered now. No one appeared to have been able to pick her out of the group she’d arrived with. She was just as starved and dirty, just as despondent as all the rest. They appeared to be interested in the violin, however. The black case she clung to had been the subject of immediate conversation when she made it to the front of the line. The other women and children slowly trudged away through the early-morning mist as she looked on, wishing she wasn’t alone.
They demanded answers to question after question, all in German, of course, and she was expected to give quick answers. Did she speak German? Yes. Once that was surmised, they continued at a feverish pace. Was she a Jew? No. Good. And what was her name? Nationality? Why did she have an instrument? So it was hers? Interesting. How long had she played? Was she a professional or an amateur?
Why wouldn’t her brain work?
Adele squeezed her fingernails into her palms, hoping to wake herself from the dream. Or shock her mouth into action.
She answered that she was Adele Von Bron, she was Austrian, and she did in fact play the violin. She’d had experience playing with the Vienna Philharmonic. They seemed to doubt this, likely because she was so young and because the Viennese orchestra did not take women as members, but she persisted through their skeptical glances. Yes. Formal training. No. Not a professional. She played with the Vienna Philharmonic on invitation. She’d been a student at the university in Vienna. How long? For three years. She was in the music performance program.
The SS guards whispered something, both of them in front of her looking back at her only once.
What was happening?
Adele was then ushered away from the group. This so terrified her that she could scarcely breathe. An SS officer ordered her to follow him, which she did, though her feet felt like lead as she tripped and stumbled over pebbles on the road away from the train platform.
Short, quick breaths. Shuffled steps. No words from the young man who walked in front of her, his back stiff as a poker, the gun in his belt all too visible. They passed three-story brick buildings. Barbed wire fences hummed with the electricity that coursed through them. All the same in look and eerie feel. The buildings and fences were stark, ghostly, and somehow threatening with their lack of emotion.
She glanced around, noticing that other than the guards, there were no men or boys in the area where she’d been taken. She was inside Auschwitz-Birkenau, which she’d learned while awaiting trial was a work camp for women. But some of the women on the platform were quite old and others had several children, babies even, bundled up in their arms. How would they work? Did the Germans have child care in this camp? Perhaps the older prisoners cared for the young ones while the mothers worked.
And then Adele’s thoughts were torn from looking around the camp to the sudden terror of where she was going. The path the SS guard led her upon took them past a two-story building, one that had a large brick wall that was shielded from view of the registration lines.
They walked upon a deserted, snow-powdered road.
And then suddenly—everything stopped. Breathing, thinking, even a slight halt hitched in her footfalls, which she covered for fear the guard might notice. She kept walking, but her eyes were pierced with a vision to her left.
Screaming out from the long brick wall was the unmistakable mark of death: blood spatters, head high, in clear succession as if poor souls had been lined up against the bricks but moments before. The earth was reddish-brown, the cold March ground still frozen, mud mixed with a shade of blood red in dusted piles of latent snow. She knew what it was. She’d seen it the night that the Haurbe
ch family had been gunned down. The scars on her hands seemed to burn with the memory of it even then.
Death was here. Like the life-altering scene she’d witnessed at the docks in Vienna months before, the blood told a story other than this place being a work camp.
Oh God! Is he going to . . . kill me?
She felt her stomach lurch even as the SS guard led her past the brick wall. Whether he’d noticed the death stains, she couldn’t know. He seemed unconcerned with it. He walked by at a quick pace. He didn’t stop, yet he didn’t pull the pistol from the holster on his belt to use it on her either. All the while it stayed there, the glint of metal flashing, punishing her with fear for each heavy step he took.
She breathed deep for a moment, willing herself to walk and not faint.
Should she try to run?
Adele doubted she could get away. They were walking through a maze of buildings and scattered electric fences. She’d not have known the first place to go if she tried to run away from him. And then just as quickly as terror had covered her, a temporary sense of relief rained down. He wasn’t going to kill her, at least not now, not against the horrible death-stained wall.
The SS guard ushered her into one of the buildings. She stepped through the paint-peeled door into a shocking scene—bins of clothes, glasses, and shoes overflowed everywhere. The ground floor of the two-story building was dark, lit only by the overcast sky outside the windows, the air as chilled inside as out. It smelled damp and musty. More bins. They were everywhere. And was that . . . hair? Piles of it. All around. Suitcases were stacked up against the wall until they reached the ceiling like a sad wall of aged leather wallpaper, some well made with gold leaf initials on the top and others looking quite worn.
What was going on? Were they going to cut her hair? Give her new clothes? It was hardly possible that she could have had a more threadbare dress than the ruddy-brown one she wore. It scarcely covered her. And while in somewhat good condition, her coat did little to supply real warmth. Perhaps they would issue her a prison uniform like the men at the train platform. If she was to work here, Adele supposed that the inside of the building would be in the same condition as she’d become used to on her journey—bone-chilling cold would likely be a companion for some time.
Adele clutched her violin closer as she walked through the warehouse, remembering what was inside the velvet lining of the case. She’d hidden her treasure there long ago so her mother wouldn’t find it. And now, in this place, it was the only thing in the world that brought her comfort. If she couldn’t have her Bible, then the small token would serve as her only link to her old life.
She hugged the case in a death grip.
“Halt,” the guard barked, and pointed to the ground in front of her feet.
Adele obeyed and froze her steps, stopping in an aisle between the bins.
Where was everyone? The room looked like an unused warehouse. There were no people. No registration lines. No other guards. Just inanimate objects made of wool and leather piled up to the ceiling, the only witnesses to what might happen to her here.
Her heart thumped wildly in her chest, almost like a bird flitting, about to be let out of a cage.
The guard opened a door at the end of the aisle and went inside. The door was cracked enough that Adele could see an older woman standing there, could hear hushed voices. He turned and gestured toward where she stood amongst the bins of discarded wares.
Adele swallowed hard.
Was this where she was to work?
None of it made sense.
But then, standing in the damp warehouse on a frigid spring morning didn’t make much sense either. Seeing blood on the brick wall outside—that was sheer madness. Perhaps she’d been transported through the looking-glass to some hellish Wonderland? She’d read Carroll’s classic children’s novels, never imagining that one day she’d meet the same fate as Alice, tumbling down into the depths of a grotesque nightmare world where nothing made sense.
The older woman nodded to the guard, and not requiring anything further, he whisked past them both and began marching back down the aisle. Adele could hear his boots clip against the concrete floor and seconds later the outer door slammed, leaving her and the woman inside.
“Your name?”
The woman took several steps toward her, then stopped and opened the door wide. Adele could see inside what looked like a common room of sorts. There were plain plank beds lining the side walls, two barred windows high up on the walls, light emanating from two bare lightbulbs hanging on wires from the ceiling, and a tiny black stove in the center of the back wall. The room was dim and appeared to have been deserted save for the woman who stood before her now. She was middle-aged and of normal height, her brown hair tinged with gray at her temples. Her eyes possessed laugh lines that appeared unused in a place like this.
“I asked your name.” The woman wasn’t harsh, just matter-of-fact. “Here you must answer questions immediately. Truthfully. And do exactly as you are told or you will not survive. Do you understand?”
Her mouth finally worked, though the output was stuttering.
Not survive?
“Adele. Adele Von Bron.”
“And you play the violin?”
She nodded. “Yes.”
“Good. Come in.”
Adele was led into a stark room, the wooden door closed behind her. There was no one else there, just as she’d thought. And so it seemed the time to ask at least one question—anything to make sense of the lunacy that had been playing out all around her. But what should she ask first? What was the odd snow that rained down as she’d stepped from the train? Had this woman seen the bloodstains on the brick outside? Thinking of Sophie and Eitan Haurbech, she feared for the gruesomeness that the young ones would be exposed to in such a place. Where were all of the children who had been on the train platform? She’d seen none as she walked through the camp just then.
“What is happening here?” That one question seemed to cover all things and so she asked it, rather wildly, eyes searching the wrinkled face before her. The woman seemed driven by purpose only and, rather than answering, reached for a wooden chair and set it in the center of the room.
“Sit,” she ordered Adele, which she did, the violin case still clutched in her arms.
The woman took a chair and positioned it across from her.
She sat and with a quiet, controlled voice said, “I need you to take your violin out and play it for me. If you’ve lied and cannot play, then I am to send you back outside to the guard. He’ll smoke a cigarette while he waits to hear your playing, no more than five minutes. If I do not send you outside, then he will go about his business and you will stay here. Now, I need you to play.”
Adele didn’t know why she was being asked to play. But as the woman had said, she’d not question. She opened the case on her lap and removed her practice violin, the wood gleaming cherry in the dim light of the room. She removed her bow with it and deposited the case on the ground at her feet.
“What would you like me to play?”
The woman showed no emotion on her face when she said, “It doesn’t matter.”
Adele took a deep breath and pulled the instrument up against her chin. She placed the bow upon the strings and began to play.
It was odd that the last memory of her playing had been in satin and pearls, before a grand auditorium of some of the Third Reich’s most distinguished guests. Now she played in squalor, the mold in the air stirred up by the movement of her arms. But she still played, as best as she could, for she had a feeling that the proficiency with which she did so would somehow be judged for something quite important.
It wasn’t like it had been at the concert. That playing had been a release of something magical from her soul. That had been in service to the Lord, the use of her gift for something that brought worship to Him. But here? In this moment, it was only to survive. Adele played as a gifted prodigy should, though her heart was deadened further with the sou
nd of each note.
The music here sang only of evil.
The woman raised her hand to halt her playing. “That is enough.”
Adele stopped, and though her hands shook, she tried to rest the instrument in her lap as calmly as she could. Somehow she knew she sat across from the woman who held her fate.
“You play quite beautifully.” Adele wasn’t sure how the woman knew this, but she seemed to be learned in judging how a musician should play.
Adele nodded rather than answering. Compliments had no bearing in such a place, so much so that she couldn’t bring herself to utter thanks.
“You may stop worrying,” the woman said. “I’ll not send an artist like you outside.”
A breath that Adele hadn’t known her lungs to possess was expelled, sagging her shoulders with it. She looked down at her lap, biting her lip over the tears that were forcing their way out of her eyes.
“And if you had sent me outside . . .”
“You no longer have to think on what might have happened.”
“Oh God!” The words spilled from her mouth before she could stop them. “They were going to kill me!” Panic rose in Adele’s throat, cutting off her airway. It happened faster than she could process the reality.
She’d come but a moment away from a bullet in the head.
“Try to breathe, child.” The woman sounded kind somehow. Her words were blunt, but they were tinged with some form of compassion.
She rose and crossed the room. Adele listened to the woman’s feet padding across the floor. She returned a few seconds later and placed a metal pail at her feet.
“Do you need to be sick?” she asked, and reached her hands out to take the violin.
Adele hadn’t considered it until that moment. She let the violin go when it was swept from her lap and, feeling something of a release, retched into the bucket as the woman stood over her. But after having nothing to eat or drink for more than two days, there was not much to come of it.
“Better?”
She nodded, though she felt empty. The pit of hunger in her stomach had grown so that she felt physical pain in the act of getting sick.
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