The Librarian of Auschwitz(111)

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 talk: 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.