The Librarian of Auschwitz(8)

It astonished Dita that he would remember her. Hirsch had been in charge of the Youth Office in the Terezín ghetto, but she’d caught a glimpse of him only a few times as she helped one of the librarians wheel her trolley of books.

Dita was perplexed, though. She was no librarian. She was just a fourteen-year-old girl.

“Forgive me, but I think there’s been a misunderstanding. The librarian was Miss Sittigová; I only helped her.”

The director of Block 31 smiled. “I noticed you several times. You were pushing the library cart.”

“Yes, because it was very heavy for her, and the little wheels didn’t roll easily on the cobblestones.”

“You could have spent the afternoon lying on your pallet, going for walks with your girlfriends, or just doing your own thing. But instead, you pushed the cart so that people could have their books.”

She was looking at him, perplexed, but Hirsch’s words left no room for argument. He was in charge of an army. And like a general, he pronounced, “You are a librarian.”

He added, “But it’s dangerous. Very dangerous. Handling books here is no game. If the SS catches anyone with a book, they execute them.”

As he said it, he raised his thumb and extended his index finger. He aimed that imaginary pistol at Dita’s forehead. She tried to appear unbothered, but she was becoming nervous at the thought of this responsibility.

“Count on me.”

“It’s a huge risk.”

“I don’t mind at all.”

“They might kill you.”

“I don’t mind.”

Dita tried to sound decisive, but she was unsuccessful. She could not control her trembling legs, and Hirsch stared at her shaking limbs.

“Running the library requires a brave person.…”

Dita blushed. The more she tried to stay still, the wilder her trembling became. Her hands began to shake, too, and she feared the director might think her too weak for the job.

“S-s-so you’re not counting on me, then?”

“You seem like a brave girl to me.”

“But I’m trembling!” she replied, devastated.

Then Hirsch smiled in his particular way. “That’s why you’re brave. Brave people are not the ones who aren’t afraid. Those are reckless people who ignore the risk; they put themselves and others in danger. That’s not the sort of person I want on my team. I need the ones who know the risk—whose legs shake, but who carry on.”

As she listened, Dita’s legs began to tremble less.

“Brave people are the ones who can overcome their own fear. You are one of those. What’s your name?”

“My name is Edita Adler, Mr. Hirsch.”

“Welcome to Block Thirty-One, Edita. May God bless you. Please call me Fredy.”

They had waited quietly until everyone had gone. Then Dita entered Fredy Hirsch’s cubicle—a narrow rectangle with a pallet and a pair of old chairs. It was almost bare, with only a few food packages, scraps of material left over from the set of Snow White, and Fredy’s food bowl in sight.

Hirsch told her something that left her dumbstruck: They had a library on legs, a “living library.” Teachers who knew particular books well had become book-people. They rotated among the different groups, telling the children stories they knew almost by heart.

“Mrs. Magda is really good with The Wonderful Adventures of Nils Holgersson, and the children have fun when she makes them imagine that they’re flying over the skies of Sweden holding on to geese. ?a?ek does a really good job with stories of the American Indians and the adventures of the Wild West. Dezo Kovác is almost like a walking Bible.”

But this living library wasn’t enough for Fredy Hirsch. He told her about the books that had reached the camp clandestinely. A Polish carpenter called Mietek had brought three, and a Slovak electrician, another two. They were the sorts of prisoners who moved among the camps with greater freedom, as they were employed to do maintenance work. They had managed to sneak some books from the ramp where the luggage from the arriving transports was sorted by privileged prisoners.

As the librarian, Dita would be in charge of keeping track of which books were lent to which teacher, as well as collecting the books when classes were finished and returning them to their secret compartment.

Hirsch made for a corner where scraps of material were piled up, and moved them aside. He removed a wooden board, and books began to emerge. Dita couldn’t restrain her joy and clapped.

“This is your library. It’s not much.” And he looked at her out of the corner of his eye to see what effect it was having on her.

It wasn’t an extensive library. In fact, it consisted of eight books, and some of them were in poor condition. But they were books. In this incredibly dark place, they were a reminder of less somber times, when words rang out more loudly than machine guns.

Dita picked up the books one by one, holding them in her hands as carefully as she would a newborn baby. The first one was an unbound atlas, with a few pages missing. It showed a Europe of the past, with empires that had ceased to exist some time ago. The political maps were a mosaic of vermilion, brilliant greens, orange, navy blue, in sharp contrast to the dullness that surrounded Dita: the dark brown of the mud, the faded ocher of the huts, and an ashy clouded sky. She started to leaf through the pages, and it was as if she were flying over the world. She crossed oceans and mountains, navigating with her finger along the rivers Danube and Volga, and then the Nile. To put all those millions of square kilometers of seas, forests, all of Earth’s mountain ranges, all the rivers, all the cities and countries into such a tiny space was a miracle that only a book could achieve.