The Librarian of Auschwitz(64)
“These are some of the bad ideas this foolish book teaches: that war is stupid and bestial. Do you disagree with this, too?”
Silence.
Lichtenstern wishes he had a cigarette to put between his lips. He scratches his left ear to gain time, and finally decides to speak so he won’t have to pass judgment.
“Forgive me, but I have to go and see the medics urgently about a matter to do with the children’s visits.”
Too many women at the same time. Lichtenstern opts to remove himself, and quickly.
Without wishing to, Miriam Edelstein has become the referee in the battle over reading matter.
“What Edita just read seems very sensible to me. Moreover,” she adds looking straight at Mrs. K?i?ková, “we can’t say that this is a sacrilegious book that treats religion disrespectfully when all it says, in the end, is that some Catholic priests are drunkards. Nowhere is the scrupulous integrity of our rabbis questioned.”
The two women teachers, offended and angered by the sarcasm, turn around as they mutter who knows what complaints and reproaches. When they are a safe distance away, Miriam Edelstein whispers to Dita that she’d like to borrow the novel one afternoon when Dita has finished it.
17.
Dita spreads out her library for another morning. When she went to Hirsch’s cubicle, she found him sketching out tactics for his volleyball team, which is going head-to-head with another teacher’s team in an important game behind the hut this afternoon after lunch. Dita is not as cheerful as her boss; she has pins and needles in her legs after the lengthy morning head count.
“How’s it going, Edita? It’s a lovely morning—the sun’s going to come out for a while today, you’ll see.”
“My feet are killing me, thanks to these wretched head counts. They’re never ending. I hate them.”
“Edita, Edita … Blessed head count! Do you know why it takes so long?”
“Well…”
“Because we’re all still here. We haven’t lost a single child since September. Do you understand? More than five thousand people in the family camp have died from disease, starvation, or exhaustion since September.” Dita sadly nods her head. “But not a single child from Block Thirty-One! We’re succeeding, Edita. We’re doing it.”
Dita gives him a sad smile of victory. If only her father were there so she could tell him.
*
She unobtrusively moves the bench with the books a few meters, so she can follow Ota Keller’s classes more closely. Now that her father has gone, she has to keep up her studies on her own; Keller always has something interesting to say. She studies him—his thick woolen sweater and round face, which suggests he was probably a chubby little boy.
He’s talking to the children about volcanoes.
“Many meters underground, the Earth is on fire. Sometimes, the internal pressure creates cracks from which white-hot material rises to form volcanoes. This material is molten rock, which becomes a really hot sort of paste called lava. At the bottom of the sea, volcanic eruptions create lava cones, which end up forming islands. That’s how the islands of Hawaii, for example, were formed.”
Dita listens to the sounds of the lessons rising from the little groups; it’s like steam heating up the inhospitable stable in which they are located and converting it into a school. And she asks herself yet again why they are all still alive.
Why have they allowed five-year-olds to run around here? It’s the question they all ask themselves.
If Dita could place her metal bowl against the wall of the Lager officers’ mess hall and listen, she would have the answer she’s looked for so many times.
SS Camp Kommandant Schwarzhuber, in charge of Birkenau, and Dr. Mengele, the SS captain with “special” responsibilities, are the only two left in the mess hall. The Kommandant has a bottle of apple schnapps in front of him while the medical captain has a cup of coffee.
Mengele studies the Kommandant with detachment—his long face and fanatical look. The medical captain does not consider himself an extremist; he’s a scientist. Perhaps he doesn’t want to admit to being envious of Schwarzhuber’s incredibly blue eyes, so unmistakably Aryan compared to his own, which are brown, and which, together with his darker skin, give him a disconcertingly southern Mediterranean appearance. At school, some children made fun of him, calling him a Gypsy. He’d love to lay them down on his dissection table and ask them to repeat their comments to him now.
Vivisection is an extraordinary experience. It’s like the view a watchmaker has of a watch, but of life …
He observes Schwarzhuber drinking. It’s deplorable that an SS Kommandant with dozens of assistants at his disposal is incapable of appearing with perfectly polished boots or properly ironed shirt collars. It’s a sign of slackness, and that’s unforgiveable. He despises country bumpkins like Schwarzhuber who cut themselves when they shave. And on top of that, Schwarzhuber does something that utterly annoys Mengele: He repeats conversations they’ve already had, using the exact same words and the same stupid arguments.
Yet again Schwarzhuber asks Mengele why his superiors have such an interest in this absurd family camp, expecting the doctor to give him the usual answer. Mengele musters his patience and puts on a show of affability while deliberately speaking as if to a small child or the mentally handicapped.