The Librarian of Auschwitz(113)
Volkenrath calmly adjusts her partially collapsed blond topknot, takes her Luger out of her belt, and rams the barrel against the woman’s forehead. She also gives the woman a look as rabid as a dog foaming at the mouth—the foam Pasteur dedicated himself to studying. The prisoner raises her arms, and her legs shake so much she looks as if she’s dancing. Volkenrath laughs.
She’s the only one laughing now.
The gun is like a rod of ice against the prisoner’s head, and warm urine begins to trickle down her legs. It’s not very respectful to wet yourself in front of a supervisor. They all grit their teeth and prepare themselves for the sound of the gunshot. Some women look down so they won’t see the head exploding into little pieces. Volkenrath has a heavy vertical wrinkle between her eyebrows running right up to her hairline. It is so noticeable and deep that it looks like a black scar. The knuckles clutching the gun are white from the fury with which she’s holding it. She’s angrily pushing the weapon against the woman’s forehead, and the woman is crying and peeing at the same time. Finally, the supervisor removes the gun; the prisoner has a reddish circle on her forehead. With a movement of her chin, Volkenrath sends her back to her place.
“I’m not going to do you the favor, Jewish bitch. No, it’s not your lucky day.”
And she lets loose a demented guffaw that sounds just like a saw.
A white-haired woman spends much of the night crying over the death of her daughter. She doesn’t even know what caused the death. In the morning, she kneels behind the hut and starts to dig a grave for the girl with her bare hands. She manages only to make a small hole a sparrow might fit into. The woman flops onto the muddy ground, and her bunkmate comes over to console her.
“Is no one going to help me bury my daughter?” the woman shouts from the ground.
There’s not much energy left, and no one sees the sense in wasting what little there is on something that can’t be fixed. Even so, various women offer to help her and start to dig. But the ground is hard, and their weak hands start to bleed. Exhausted and in pain, the women stop, although they’ve removed only a few fistfuls of earth.
Her friend tries to persuade her to take her daughter to the pit.
“The pit … I’ve seen it. No, please, not there. It offends God.”
“She’ll be with all the other innocents. That way, she won’t be by herself.”
The woman agrees very reluctantly. Nothing can console her.
The camp stinks. It’s filled with the excretions of those who have dysentery. They lean against the wooden walls of the huts and collapse onto the ground on top of their own excrement, and nobody lends them a hand. If a dead person has family or friends, they take the body to the pit. If they don’t, the body lies on the ground in the camp until some SS guard takes out her gun and forces prisoners to drag the body away.
Dita, Margit, and Liesl walk slowly around the camp, and the sight is equally devastating no matter where they look. Dita holds Margit’s hand on one side, and her mother’s on the other. Her mother is shaking, either with fever or horror, but it’s impossible to distinguish disease from degradation.
They go back to their hut, and it’s even worse: the sour smell of disease, the moans, the monotonous murmur of prayers. Many of the ill are unable to get down from their bunks; many of them perform their bodily functions right where they are, and the smell is unbearable.
Dita looks at the devastatingly gloomy bunks. Family and friends are gathered around, trying to give relief to the sick, but in many cases, the sick are suffering alone, fading alone, dying alone.
Dita and her mother decide to leave the hut. April has arrived, but it continues to be intensely cold in Germany—a cold that hurts your teeth, numbs your fingers, and freezes your nose. Anyone who stays outdoors starts to shake.
“It’s better to die of cold than of disgust,” Dita says to her mother.
“Edita, don’t be vulgar.”
Many other prisoners have opted, like them, to move outside. Liesl and the two girls have found a bit of space by the hut where they can lean against the wall, and that’s where they stay, wrapped up in blankets they prefer not to examine too closely. The camp is closed, nobody goes in or out anymore, and there are only a few guards in the towers with machine guns. They should try to escape—if they are caught, at least they’ll die more quickly—but they don’t even have the strength to try. There’s nothing left.
As the days go by, everything collapses. The SS guards have stopped patrolling the camp, which has turned into a cesspit. There hasn’t been any food for days, and the water has definitely been cut off. Some prisoners drink from the puddles, but they soon writhe on the ground with stomach cramps and die of cholera. The weather is getting warmer, and the corpses are decomposing more quickly. No one remains to remove them.
Hardly anyone gets up from where they are. Many will never get up again; some try, but their legs, thin as wire, are too weak, and they collapse on the ground, which is covered with excrement. Others fall spectacularly on top of corpses. It’s hard to distinguish between the living and the dead.
Explosions from the battles are getting closer. The shots are louder, the impact of the bombs sends vibrations up their legs, and the only hope they have left is that this hell will end in time. But death seems to advance much more quickly and resolutely on its own front.
Dita hugs her mother. She looks at Margit, whose eyes are closed, and decides that she’s not going to fight any longer. She shuts her eyes, too; the curtain lowers. She promised Fredy Hirsch she’d hold out. She hasn’t given up, but her body has. And anyway, Hirsch himself also let go in the end. Or not? But what does it matter now?