The Librarian of Auschwitz(106)
Standing in front of the all-powerful Dr. Josef Mengele, owner of life and death like an Olympian god, she recites her name, Edita Adler; her number, 73305; her age, sixteen (she’s added a year). When it comes time to provide her profession, she hesitates briefly and then, instead of saying something useful and convenient that will please the SS man with the iron cross on his chest, she finally says, “Painter.”
Mengele, bored, tired by what for him must be mere routine, looks her in the eye more attentively, in the same way that snakes lift their heads when prey comes within reach.
“Painter? Do you paint walls or portraits?”
Dita feels her heart beating repeatedly in her throat, but she answers in her impeccable German and with a composure that smacks of rebellion:
“I paint portraits, sir.”
Screwing up his eyes a little, Mengele looks at her with the faint hint of an ironic smile.
“Could you paint me?”
Dita has never been so scared. She couldn’t be in a more vulnerable position: fifteen years old, alone and naked in front of men with submachine guns who are going to decide right now if they will kill her or let her live a little longer. Sweat runs down her naked skin, and the drops fall to the ground. But she answers with surprising vigor.
“Yes, sir!”
Mengele studies her slowly. It’s not a good sign if the medical captain pauses to think. Any veteran would say that nothing good can come out of that mind. Everyone is waiting for the outcome. There’s not a sound in the hut; you can’t even hear people breathing. Even the SS guards with the submachine guns don’t dare disturb the doctor’s moment of reflection. Finally, Mengele gives an amused smile and, gesturing with his gloved hand, sends her to the right—to the fit group.
But there’s no sigh of relief from Dita yet: Her mother is next in line. Dita walks more slowly and turns her head to look back.
Liesl is a woman with a sad face and a sad body, and her shoulders are hunched, all of which emphasize her sickly appearance. She’s convinced she won’t make the cut and is defeated before she even starts to fight. She hasn’t a chance, and the doctor doesn’t waste a second.
“Links!”
Left. The bigger group, the one for the useless women.
Nevertheless, with no attempt at rebellion of any kind, simply because of her mother’s total bewilderment—or so it seems to Dita—Liesl heads toward the right behind her daughter and stands in a line where she shouldn’t be. It takes her daughter’s breath away: What’s her mother doing here? They’ll drag her away, and there’ll be a terrible scene. She’ll chain herself to her mother, come what may. Let the guards drag both of them out.
But fate, which has behaved so badly toward them, determines that just at this very moment, not one of the guards, tired of the docile manner of the prisoners and more concerned with eyeing the younger girls than with being vigilant, actually notices. Nor does Mengele, distracted just then by the registrar, who apparently has not heard one of the numbers dictated to him and asks the doctor for his assistance. Some of the women sent to the left have shrieked and begged and thrown themselves on the ground, and the guards have had to drag them away. But Liesl didn’t complain or protest. She has calmly walked nude in front of Death’s eyes with a naturalness and a lack of haste that would have unnerved even the bravest of the brave.
Dita has to grab her chest to stop her heart from leaping out. She glances at her mother, who is standing behind her and looking at her absentmindedly, seemingly unaware of what she has done. She’s not brave enough to do something like that in a premeditated way … although Dita doesn’t know what to think. Without saying a word, they hold hands tightly and squeeze as hard as they can. And they look at each other and say everything with that glance. Another woman joins the line and places herself behind Liesl to hide from the guards’ line of sight.
The Germans send them to the quarantine camp. Once there, there are joyous hugs among those who find themselves in this group, which has been saved for now, and dejected faces near the entrance waiting for relatives and friends who never arrive. Mrs. Turnovská isn’t in the quarantine camp group, nor are any of the woman who were part of her mother’s conversation group. The children don’t arrive, either. And Dita has heard nothing more of Miriam Edelstein, although it is true that there’s a great deal of confusion. They begin to evacuate the first groups of people toward the station platform before the final selections of BIIb have been completed. Margit isn’t in Dita’s group, either.
It is a fact that they have momentarily dodged death. But survival is a minuscule consolation when so many innocent people are left behind to die.
28.
Another train. Eight months have passed since the liquidation of the family camp, and once again they are inside a stock car traveling to who knows where. Her very first trip was from Prague to Terezín. Then it was from Terezín to Auschwitz. Next, it was from Auschwitz to Hamburg. And now Dita no longer knows where this diaspora by train, which has derailed her youth, is taking her.
On the Auschwitz platform, the Germans had shoved them into a freight train and sent them with a group of women to Germany. It was a voyage of hunger, of thirst, of mothers separated from their children, of daughters without mothers. When they opened the stock car in Hamburg, the SS found a container full of broken dolls.