The Librarian of Auschwitz(101)
They can’t understand each other; he speaks only Polish. But the way in which Dita leans over, the way her eyes sparkle with happiness, he understands better than any speech. He lowers his head in a ceremonial bow as if they had met at a reception in a palace.
Dita thanks him in all the languages she knows. He winks at her and slowly enunciates “jajko.” She blows him a kiss with one hand before starting to run back to her hut. Still smiling, the Pole pretends to jump and catch the kiss in the air.
As she runs back with her white treasure to find her mother and have a feast, she thinks this language lesson will accompany her for the rest of her life; in Polish, an egg is a jajko. Words are important.
This will become especially clear the next day. During morning roll call, the prisoners are informed that after the evening’s roll call, each adult will be given a postcard so they can write to their loved ones. The camp Kapo, a German with the triangle of a regular convict on his jacket, goes up and down the rows repeating that no defeatist or defamatory messages about the Third Reich are allowed; in such cases, the postcards will be destroyed and their authors severely punished. And he stresses the word severely with an ill will that foreshadows the punishment.
The block Kapos are given even more concrete instructions: Words like hunger, death, execution are forbidden. Also out are any words that cast doubt on the great truth: They are privileged to work for the glorious Führer and his Reich. During the meal break, Lichtenstern explains that the camp Kapo has insisted that each block chief order their respective huts to write cheerful messages. The director of Block 31, his face ever skinnier on his diet of cigarettes and turnip soup, tells them to write whatever they please.
All sorts of comments are heard throughout the day. Some people are surprised by this humanitarian gesture on the part of the Nazis, allowing them to contact their families and ask them to send food packages. But the veterans quickly explain to them that the Nazis are, first and foremost, pragmatic. It suits them to have packages sent to the camp; they’ll help themselves to the best items. And Jews outside the camps will receive comforting messages from family members, generating doubt about what’s happening in Auschwitz.
There is reason for concern: The members of the September transport were given postcards to write just before they were sent to the gas chambers. The December transport is now about to complete its six-month stay in the camp.
But postcards are also distributed to the recent May arrivals. A contagious uncertainty is added to the habitual hunger and fear in Block 31. No one can focus on the afternoon games and songs.
The postcards are finally handed out—to adults only—after the evening roll call. Many of the inhabitants of other huts have gone to line up in front of Arkadiusz, the black marketeer, who has delivered the packets of postcards and discreetly made it known that he has several pencils for loan in return for a piece of bread. Others have gone to find Lichtenstern, who has a few pencils for the school and has reluctantly allowed them to be used.
Dita sits down outside the door of her hut with her mother and watches people nervously pacing, holding their postcards. Her mother wants Dita to write to her aunt; it’s been almost two years with no news. Dita wonders what will have happened to her cousins, what will have happened in the world out there.
By her estimation, there’s room for thirty words. If the gas chamber awaits them after they’ve written their postcards, then those thirty words will be the last ones she’ll leave behind, her only legacy. And she can’t even put down what she really feels, because if the letter is gloomy, they won’t send it and they’ll punish her mother. Are the Germans really going to read more than four thousand postcards? she thinks to herself.
The Nazis are disgustingly methodical.
And she keeps turning over those thirty words. She overhears one of the women teachers say that she will mention in her card that she was reading a book by Knut Hamsun, to signal to her relatives Hunger, the title of his most famous novel. Dita finds that somewhat obscure. Others try subterfuges, too—some ingenious, others so metaphorical that no one will understand them—to hide their forbidden messages of genocide. Some want to ask for the maximum allowable amount of food; others want news of the outside world, but many simply want to say that they were alive. In the afternoon, the teachers organize a competition to see who was best able to disguise the secret messages.
Dita tells her mother they should write the truth.
“The truth…”
Her mother, somewhat scandalized, mutters the word truth as if it were blasphemy. Telling the truth implies talking about terrible sins and writing about aberrations. How could you consider telling even a small part of something so abominable?
Liesl Adler feels ashamed of her own fate, as if anyone who receives such luck has to be guilty of something. She regrets the fact that her daughter is so impulsive and so flighty, that she isn’t more discreet in weighing up the significance of things. In the end, she takes the card and decides that she herself will write a note in which she’ll say that the two of them are fine, thanks be to God; that her beloved Hans, may he be with God, didn’t overcome an infectious disease; and that they are really looking forward to seeing all of them again. Dita looks at her mother defiantly for a moment, and Liesl tells her that they know this postcard will reach its destination and keep them in touch with their family.
“This way, they’ll have some news about us.”