The Librarian of Auschwitz(95)
Stanis tells them to follow him. They walk silently in the dark along deserted paths for quite some time until they reach an abandoned stone hut with a collapsed straw roof. The wooden door gives way easily with a push. Inside, the vegetation and dampness have overgrown the four-sided stone space. The Pole squats down, lights a match, removes a few pieces of rotten wood, and grabs hold of a metal ring. He pulls on it and reveals a trapdoor. He takes a candle from his pocket and lights it. With help of the light, they go down a staircase into an old storeroom for hay built underneath the hut, but now containing some mattresses, blankets, and provisions. The three of them dine on cans of soup heated over a little gas camping stove. Then, for the first time in ages, Fred and Rudi sleep peacefully.
The Pole is a man of few words but extraordinary efficiency. They leave early the next morning, and he proves to know the forest tracks with the accuracy of a wild boar. After an entire day walking through the forests with barely a stop, they spend the night in a cave. The next day, they don’t even stop. They go up and down the mountains, avoiding the patrols with ease, searching out rocks to hide in until the danger has passed and they can continue on their way. And at dawn the day after, they finally stand on Slovakian soil.
“You’re free,” says the Pole by way of farewell.
“No, we’re not,” answers Rudi. “We still have one duty to fulfill. The world must know what’s happening.”
The Pole nods, and his bushy mustache moves up and down in agreement.
“Thank you, thank you very much—you’ve saved our lives,” Rudi and Fred tell him.
Stanis shrugs; there is nothing to say in reply.
The second part of the two men’s journey will consist of trying to ensure that the world knows what’s really going on inside the Third Reich, what Europe doesn’t know or doesn’t want to know: that it’s a question of something more than a war about borders—it’s the extermination of an entire race.
*
On April 25, 1944, Rudolf Rosenberg and Alfred Wetzler appeared before Dr. Oscar Neumann, the representative of the Slovakian Jews, in the headquarters of the Jewish Council in Zilina. Given his position as registrar in Auschwitz, Rudi was able to dictate a report full of chilling statistics. For the first time, the report described the mechanics of murder on a massive, organized scale, the physical exploitation of slave labor, the appropriation of belongings, the utilization of human hair for the production of cloth, and the extraction of gold and silver teeth and fillings with the objective of melting them down and converting them into coins for the Reich. Rudi calculated the number of Jews liquidated in Auschwitz at 1.76 million.
Rudi also spoke about lines of pregnant women with children clinging to their skirts being led to showers that spewed out poisonous gas; about punishment cells the size of concrete coffins, within which the prisoners couldn’t even sit; about the long workdays spent outdoors by prisoners with snow up to their knees, dressed only in a summer shirt, and with only a bowl of watery soup for the entire day. He talked and talked, and from time to time, tears came to his eyes, but he didn’t stop talking. He was possessed by a feverish desire to shout at a world deafened by the bombs of war that an even dirtier and more terrible war was happening within Europe’s borders behind closed doors. And it had to be stopped, no matter the cost.
When Rudi finished dictating his report, he felt exhausted but satisfied, and at peace with himself for the first time in years. The report was sent immediately to Hungary. The Nazis had taken that country and were organizing the transportation of Jews to concentration camps, which the whole world believed were merely gathering places, not realizing that in reality they were factories of death.
But war not only destroys bodies with machine guns and explosions; it also wipes out sanity and kills souls. Rudi and Fred’s warnings reached the Jewish Council in Hungary, but nobody took any notice of them. The Jewish leaders preferred to believe certain promises made to them by the Nazis and went ahead with the allocation of Jews to transports heading to Poland. This led to a massive increase in the number of arrivals of Hungarians in Auschwitz. After all the pain and suffering, after the joy of freedom, Rudi had to swallow the bitter pill of disillusionment. The report didn’t save the Hungarian lives he believed they’d be able to save. War is like an overflowing river: It’s hard to control and, if you put up a small barrier, it only gets swept along in its path.
Rudi Rosenberg and Fred Wetzler were evacuated to England, where they presented their report. They were listened to in the British Isles, although there was little that could be done from there except, perhaps, to fight with greater daring to put an end to the madness devastating Europe.
25.
On May 15, 1944, another transport arrived in the family camp from Terezín with 2,503 new deportees. The next day a second train arrived with another 2,500. And on the eighteenth, a third contingent arrived. All in all, there were an additional 7,500 people, of whom almost half were German Jews (3,125); the rest were 2,543 Czechs, 1,276 Austrians, and 559 Dutch.
It’s been chaotic this first morning—shouts, whistles, confusion. Dita and her mother have not only been forced to sleep together in the same bunk, but have had to share it with a third prisoner. She’s a very frightened Dutch woman who hasn’t even been capable of saying “good morning.” She spent the night trembling.
Dita hurries toward Block 31, where Seppl Lichtenstern and his team are overwhelmed trying to reorganize their barrack school. The situation is anarchic because, on top of everything else, there are now German and Dutch children in the hut along with the Czech speakers, and it’s difficult for them to understand each other. Three hundred additional children arrived in the May transport, and Dita has received orders from Lichtenstern and Miriam Edelstein to suspend the library service temporarily until new class groups have been organized and the situation becomes clearer.