The Librarian of Auschwitz(112)

“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.”

Margit remembers that moment, which has been burned into her memory, and shakes her head as if she can’t believe it.

“Did they know that being in that group of old people, sick people, and children was almost certainly a death sentence? Maybe they did, and were just happy for me, because I was part of the group of those who might be able to save themselves.”

Dita shrugs, and Liesl strokes Margit’s head. They picture Margit’s mother and sister at that moment when they are already on the other side, when the fight for survival is over and there’s no longer any fear.

“They were smiling,” whispers Margit.

They ask about her father; she hasn’t seen him since that same morning in BIIb.

“I’m almost glad I don’t know what has become of him.”

Maybe he died; maybe he didn’t; either way, the uncertainty keeps her company.

Margit may already be sixteen, but Mrs. Adler orders her to transfer her blanket to their hut. There is so little control that nobody will notice, and the three of them will sleep together on the bunk.

“You’ll be uncomfortable,” Margit replies.

“But we’ll be together.” And Liesl’s answer brooks no response.

Liesl Adler takes charge of Margit as if she were her second daughter. For Dita, Margit is that big sister she has always wanted. As they are both dark-haired and have a sweet smile and gap teeth, many people in the family camp were convinced that they were sisters anyway, and the misunderstanding pleased both of them.

The two girls examine each other. They are thinner and somewhat the worse for wear, but neither one says so to the other. They cheer each other on. They talk, although there’s not much to tell. Chaos and hunger, total indifference, infections and sickness. Nothing new.

A few rows from their bunk, two actual sisters ill with typhus are already losing the game of life. The younger sister, Anne, is shaking with fever in her bunk. The elder, Margot, is even worse. She’s lying immobile in the lower bunk, connected to the world by a wisp of breath that is fading.

If Dita had gone over to look at the girl who was still alive, she would have discovered that they were very similar: teenagers with a sweet smile, dark hair, and the eyes of dreamers. Like Dita, Anne was an energetic and talkative girl, a bit of a rebel and with an imagination. She was also a girl who, apart from her unruly and self-assured appearance, had a reflexive and melancholy inner voice, but that was her secret. The two sisters had arrived in Bergen-Belsen in October 1944, after they’d been deported from Amsterdam to Auschwitz. Their crime: being Jewish. Five months have been too many to avoid death in this wet hole. Typhus has no respect for youth.

Anne dies alone in her bunk the day after her sister. Her remains will stay buried forever in Bergen-Belsen’s mass graves. But Anne has done something that will end up being a small miracle: Her memory and her sister’s memory will bring them back to life many years later. In the secret place in Amsterdam where the two girls and their family hid, she spent two years writing notes about her life in the “house at the back”—some rooms attached to her father’s office, which were closed off and converted into a hiding place. For two years, with the help of family friends who supplied provisions, the family lived there, together with the van Pels family and Fritz Pfeffer. Shortly after they moved into their hideout, they celebrated Anne’s birthday, and among the presents was a small notebook. Since she couldn’t have a close friend in the hideout with whom she could share her feelings, she shared them with that notebook, which she christened Kitty. It didn’t occur to her to give a title to this outline of her life in the “house at the back,” but posterity took care of that. It has become part of history as The Diary of Anne Frank.





30.

Food has become a rarity. The Germans give them only a few pieces of bread for the entire day. Every now and again, a pot of soup appears. Dita and her mother have lost even more weight than they did in Auschwitz. The inmates who have been there the longest and know this situation well are no longer skinny or emaciated—they’re just wooden puppets with stick arms and legs. Water is scarce and you have to wait in line for hours to fill a bowl from any tap that’s still dripping.

And yet another transport with women arrives at this jam-packed camp where there’s nothing but infections and sickness. They are Hungarian Jews. One of them asks for the latrines. What an innocent.

“We have bathrooms with gold taps. And be sure to ask Volkenrath to bring you some bath salts.”

Some of the women laugh uproariously.

There aren’t any latrines. They made holes in the ground, but these are already full.

Another woman from the transport, furious, turns to one of the guards who have just arrived and tells her that they are workers. They must be sent to a factory and taken out of this dunghill. She’s had the misfortune to say it to the least appropriate person. One of the veterans tells her it’s Volkenrath, the supervisor of the guards but the warning comes too late.