The Librarian of Auschwitz(47)
Hirsch blew the final whistle then and there with perfect equanimity, and went to congratulate the forward who had scored the final goal. He shook his hand firmly, and the SS guard greeted him with a smile so full of missing teeth that it looked as if someone had kicked him in the mouth. Fredy headed for the makeshift change rooms, faking an air of impartiality, and then stopped as if to tie one of his shoelaces. He allowed the players to go ahead of him, waiting until one particular player overtook him. Nobody noticed the quick, violent shove that propelled the player into the broom closet. Once inside, he pinned him up against the mop handles.
“What’s the matter?” asked the puzzled player.
“You tell me. Why did you allow that Nazi to score a goal and beat us?”
“Look, Hirsch, I know that corporal. He’s an absolute bastard, a real sadist. His teeth are broken because of all the bottles he opens with his mouth. He’s a brute. No way I was going to trip him and risk my neck.”
Fredy remembers every last word he said in reply, remembers his utter contempt.
“You couldn’t be more wrong. It’s not a game. There were hundreds of people watching, and we’ve let them down. There were dozens of children—what will they think? How are they going to be proud of being Jews if we grovel like worms? It’s your duty to give your all in every game.”
“I think you’re getting carried away—”
Hirsch stuck his face right up to the player’s and noted the look of fear in his eyes, but the man couldn’t retreat any farther in that tiny space.
“Now, listen carefully. I’m going to say this only once. Next time you play against the SS, if you don’t stick out your leg, I’ll cut it off with a handsaw.”
The player, white as a sheet, ducked to one side and scurried off.
Fredy gives a sigh of annoyance as he thinks back on it.
That man was useless. Adults are corrupted. That’s why young people are so important. You can still shape them, improve them.
On August 24, 1943, a trainload of 1,260 children from Bia?ystok arrived in Terezín. More than fifty thousand Jews had been interned in the ghetto of that Polish city and, over that summer, the SS had systematically exterminated almost all the adults.
The Bia?ystok children were lodged in a separate part of Terezín, a few blocks in the western section of the town, enclosed by barbed wire. The SS guards kept a very close eye on them. Strict orders were sent to the Council of Elders by the Hauptsturmführer of Terezín that any contact with this group of children was absolutely forbidden; they were merely passing through, and their final destination was a secret. Permission to have access was limited to fifty-three people, including health personnel. The most severe penalties would be applied to anyone ignoring these orders.
The Nazis hoped that, by prohibiting any contact with the Polish children—both witnesses and victims of the Bia?ystok massacre—they could keep the lowest possible profile for their crimes in a Europe blinded by war.
It was almost dinnertime in Terezín, and the air was starting to cool down. A thoughtful Fredy Hirsch was refereeing a game of soccer involving fifty players. He was actually concentrating harder on the colonnade leading to the street than on the swarm of legs chasing after the ball.
Despite having sent numerous written requests, he had not received permission for the Youth Office to intervene on behalf of the children from Poland. So when he spied the group of health workers returning from the banned section where the Bia?ystok children had been isolated, he handed his whistle over to the nearest boy and rushed off to meet them.
The medical team, their faces reflecting their deep exhaustion, were walking along the sidewalk still wearing their filthy lab coats. Fredy planted himself in their path and asked them what state the children were in, but they simply walked on. They had been ordered to disclose nothing. There was a nurse lagging behind the group, walking slowly by herself as if she was distracted or slightly disoriented. The woman stopped briefly, and Hirsch saw a look of tired outrage in her eyes.
She told him that the children were terrified and that most of them were suffering from acute malnutrition: “When the guards tried to take them to the showers, they became hysterical. They kicked and shouted that they didn’t want to go to the gas chambers. They had to be taken to the showers by force. One of the children, whose wound I was disinfecting, told me that he’d found out just before he boarded the train that they had killed his father, his mother, and his older siblings. He was gripping my arm with all his might and telling me in a voice full of terror that he didn’t want to go to the gas showers.”
The nurse couldn’t help feeling disturbed at the sight of these orphans trembling with fright, being guarded by the very murderers who had killed their parents. She told Fredy they clung to her legs, and faked pain and illness, but what they really needed wasn’t medicine but affection, protection, shelter, and a hug to relieve their fear.
The next day various workmen, kitchen staff, and health workers walked through the control barrier to the western section where the Bia?ystok children were being kept. The bored SS guards kept an eye on the activities of the personnel.
A squad of workmen carried through construction materials to do repairs on one of the buildings. One of them had his face hidden by the board he was carrying on his shoulder. He had the construction worker’s typically straight shoulders and muscular arms, but he was a sports instructor, not a builder. Fredy Hirsch had managed to sneak in.