The Librarian of Auschwitz(6)



Though she looks straight ahead, Dita feels the Priest’s gaze piercing her, and fear forms a lump in her throat. She needs air; she’s suffocating. She hears a male voice, and she’s already preparing herself to step out from the middle of the group.

It’s all over—

But not yet. It’s not the voice of the Priest, but a much more timid one. It’s the voice of Professor Morgenstern.

“Excuse me, Sergeant, sir, do you give me permission to go back to my place in the line? If it’s all right with you, of course—otherwise I’ll stay here until you give me the order. The last thing I’d want to do is to cause you any kind of trouble.…”

The Priest looks angrily at the insignificant little man who has dared to address him without permission. The old professor has put his glasses back on, cracked lens and all, and still standing out of line, he looks dopily toward the SS officer.

The Priest strides toward him, and the guards follow behind. For the first time, he raises his voice.

“Stupid old Jewish imbecile! If you’re not back in line in three seconds, I’ll shoot you!”

“At your service, whatever you order,” the professor replies meekly. “I beg you to forgive me, I had no intention of being a nuisance. It’s just that I preferred to ask rather than committing an act of insubordination that might be contrary to the rules, because I don’t like behaving in an inconvenient manner, and it’s my wish to serve you in the most fitting way—”

“Back in line, idiot!”

“Yes, sir. At your orders, sir. Forgive me once again. It wasn’t my intention to interrupt, rather—”

“Shut your mouth, before I put a bullet in your head!” yells the Nazi, beside himself.

The professor, bowing his head in an exaggerated manner, steps backward, returning to his group. The enraged Priest does not notice that his guards are now behind him, and as he turns abruptly, he barrels into them. It’s a spectacular scene: Nazis bounce off each other like billiard balls. Some of the children laugh quietly, and the teachers, alarmed, elbow them to be quiet.

The sergeant looks to Mengele, who despises nothing more than incompetence, before he angrily thrusts his men aside and resumes the inspection. As he walks in front of Dita’s row, she clenches her numb arm. And her teeth. In his agitation, the Priest thinks he’s already inspected this group and moves on to the next. There are more shouts, more shoves, the odd search … and the soldiers move slowly away from Dita.

The librarian can breathe again, though the danger has not passed: The guards remain in the hut. Her arm aches from holding it in the same position for so long. To distract herself from the pain, she thinks of how fate brought her to Block 31.

*

It was December when Dita and her family arrived in Auschwitz. On their very first morning in the camp, before the morning roll call, her mother bumped into an acquaintance from Terezín, Mrs. Turnovská, who had owned a fruit shop in Zlín. The encounter was a small joy amidst the misery. Mrs. Turnovská told Dita’s mother of the barrack-school for children. There, they held roll call under cover, out of the wet and cold, each morning. There, they didn’t have to work all day. Even the food rations were a little better.

When her mother said that Edita was fourteen—just a year too old to join the school—Mrs. Turnovská told her that the director of the school had convinced the Germans he needed a few assistants to help maintain order in the hut. In this way, he’d taken on a few children aged fourteen to sixteen. Mrs. Turnovská, who seemed to know everything, knew the deputy director, Miriam Edelstein, from her hut.

The women found Miriam walking quickly along the Lagerstrasse, the camp’s main avenue, which stretched from one end to the other. Miriam was in a rush and in a bad mood; things hadn’t gone at all well for her since her family’s transfer from the Terezín ghetto, where her husband, Yakub, had been chairman of the Jewish Council. When they arrived at the camp, he was put with the political prisoners in Auschwitz I.

Mrs. Turnovská sang Dita’s virtues, but before she could finish, Miriam Edelstein cut her off: “The quota for assistants has been filled, and many people before you have asked me for the same favor.” With that, Miriam set off in a great hurry.

But just as she was about to disappear down the Lagerstrasse, she stopped, then returned to the spot where she had left the women. They had not moved.

“Did you say that this girl speaks perfect Czech and German, and that she reads very well?”

In celebration of Hanukkah, the camp was staging a performance of Snow White and the Seven Dwarves, and the prompter who would remind actors of their lines had died that morning. And so that afternoon, Dita entered Block 31 for the first time as the new prompter for Snow White.

Thirty-two huts, or barracks, formed camp BIIb. They were in two rows of sixteen, lining either side of the Lagerstrasse. Block 31 was the same as those other rectangular barracks, divided by a horizontal brick stove and a chimney, which stood on the foot-flattened dirt floor. But Dita realized that there was one fundamental difference: Instead of rows of triple bunks where the prisoners slept, there were stools and benches, and instead of rotten wood, the walls were covered with drawings of Eskimos and Snow White’s dwarves.

Cheerful chaos reigned as volunteers worked to transform the dismal hut into a theater. Some arranged seating, while others transported colorful costumes and cloth decorations. Another group rehearsed lines with the children, and at the far end of the hut, the assistants positioned mattresses to form a small stage. Dita was struck by the bustling activity: Against all odds, life stubbornly carried on.

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