The Librarian of Auschwitz(4)
From the little she remembers of her childhood, Dita recalls that peace smelled of chicken soup left cooking on the stove all night every Friday. It tasted of well-roasted lamb, and pastry made with nuts and eggs. It was long school days, and afternoons spent playing hopscotch and hide-and-seek with Margit and other classmates, now fading in her memory …
The changes were gradual, but Dita remembers the day her childhood ended forever. She doesn’t recall the date, but it was March 15, 1939. Prague awoke shaking.
The crystal chandelier in the living room was vibrating, but she knew it wasn’t an earthquake, because nobody was running around or worried. Her father was drinking his breakfast cup of coffee and reading the paper as if nothing were happening.
When Dita and her mother went out, the city was shuddering. She began to hear the noise as they headed toward Wenceslas Square. The ground was vibrating so strongly that it tickled the soles of her feet. The muffled sounds grew more noticeable as they got closer to the square, and Dita was intrigued. When they reached the square, they couldn’t cross the street, which was blocked off by people, or see anything other than a wall of shoulders, coats, necks, and hats.
Her mother came to a dead stop. Her face was strained and suddenly aged. She grabbed her daughter’s hand to turn back, but Dita’s curiosity was strong. She yanked herself free of the hand that was holding on to her. Because she was small and skinny, she had no trouble wiggling her way through the crowd of people on the sidewalk to the front where the city police were lined up, their arms linked.
The noise was deafening: Gray motorcycles with sidecars led the way one after another. Each carried soldiers in gleaming leather jackets and shining helmets, with goggles dangling from their necks. They were followed by combat trucks, bristling with enormous machine guns, and then tanks thundering slowly down the avenue like a herd of menacing elephants.
She remembers thinking that the people filing past looked like the mechanical figures from the astronomical clock, that after a few seconds, a door would close behind them, and they would disappear, and the trembling would stop. But they weren’t automatons; they were men. She would learn that the difference between the two is not always significant.
She was only nine years old, but she felt fear. There were no bands playing, no loud laughter or commotion.… The procession was being watched in total silence. Why were those uniformed men here? Why was nobody laughing? Suddenly, it reminded her of a funeral.
With an iron grip, her mother caught her again and dragged her out from the crowd. They headed off in the opposite direction, and Prague became itself again. It was like waking up from a bad dream and discovering that everything was back to normal.
But the ground was still shaking under her feet. The city was still trembling. Her mother was trembling, too. She was desperately pulling Dita along, trying to leave the procession behind, taking hurried little steps in her smart patent-leather shoes.
*
Dita sighs as she clutches the books. She realizes with sadness that it was on that day, not the day of her first period, that she left her childhood behind. That was the day she stopped being afraid of skeletons and old stories about phantom hands, and started being afraid of men.
2.
The SS began their inspection of the hut with scarcely a glance at the prisoners, focusing their attention on the walls, the floor, and the surroundings. The Germans are systematic like that: first the container, then its contents. Dr. Mengele turns around to speak with Fredy Hirsch, who has remained standing almost at attention all this time. Dita wonders what they’re talking about. Few Jews could hold a conversation with Mengele, or Dr. Death as he is called, with such assurance. Some say that Hirsch is a man without fear. Others believe the Germans warm to him because he is German. Some even suggest his impeccable appearance hides something unsavory.
The Priest, who is in charge of the inspection, makes a gesture Dita can’t interpret. If the guards order them to stand to attention, how will she hold the books without them falling out?
The first lesson any veteran inmate teaches a recent arrival is that you must always be clear about your goal: survival. To survive a few more hours and, in this way, gain another day that, added to other days, might become one more week. You must continue like this, never making big plans, never having big goals, only surviving each moment. To live is a verb that makes sense only in the present tense.
It’s her last chance to leave the books; there’s an empty stool just a meter away. When they stand up to form lines and the guards find the books there, they won’t be able to accuse her; all of them and none of them will be guilty. And they won’t be able to take all of them to the gas chambers. Though, without a doubt, they’ll shut down Block 31. Dita wonders if it would really matter. She’s heard how some of the teachers initially questioned the school: Why make the children study when there’s little chance they’ll leave Auschwitz alive? Does it make any sense to talk to them about polar bears or drill them on multiplication tables, in the shadow of chimneys belching out the black smoke of burning bodies? But Hirsch convinced them. He told them that Block 31 would be an oasis for the children.
Oasis or mirage? Some of them still wonder.
The most logical thing would be to get rid of the books, to fight for her life. But Dita hesitates.
The sergeant stands to attention in front of his superior. When he hears the order, he shouts out,
“On your feet! Attention!”