“Weakness is a sin,” he whispers, almost out of breath.
Growing up in Aachen, all the children walked to school. Fredy was the only one who ran, his schoolbooks tied to his shoulders with a rope. The store owners would jokingly ask him where he was going in such a hurry, and he greeted them politely, but never slowed down. He had no reason to hurry; he just enjoyed running. Whenever an adult asked him why he ran, he would answer that walking made him feel tired, but running never did.
He would race into the little square in front of the main entrance to the school and then, because there were no old people sitting on the bench at that hour, he would leap over it as if he were taking part in a steeplechase. Whenever the opportunity arose, he would tell his classmates that it was his ambition to be a professional athlete.
At the age of ten, his childhood was smashed into a million pieces when his father died. Sitting on the stool in the barrack, Fredy tries to picture his father, but he can’t. His strongest memory of him back then is of the hole left by his absence. That emptiness, which he felt so acutely, has never been filled. He continues to feel that uneasy sense of being alone, even when he’s surrounded by people.
After his father’s death, Fredy started to lose the strength to run. He stopped enjoying races and lost his bearings. His mother had to spend all day working, and so, to stop him from spending long stretches at home on his own or fighting with his older brother, she signed him up for a German-Jewish version of the Boy Scouts called the Jüdischer Pfadfinderbund Deutschland or JPD. They ran activities for young children and had a separate sports branch called Maccabi Hatzair.
The first time Fredy entered the large and somewhat shabby premises, with its list of rules tacked to the wall, it smelled of bleach. He remembers choking back his tears. Little by little, young Fredy Hirsch found the warmth that was lacking in his empty house. He found companionship, tabletop games on rainy days, excursions that always included a guitar and someone telling an inspiring story about Israel’s martyrs. Games of football and basketball, sack races, athletics—they all became a life raft he could cling to. When Saturday rolled around and all the others stayed at home with their families, he would go to the sports grounds by himself to throw balls at the rusty hoops on the basketball court or do endless rounds of sit-ups until his T-shirt was soaked with sweat.
He wiped out all his concerns and banished his insecurities by training to the point of exhaustion. He would set himself small challenges: race to the corner and back five times in under three minutes, do ten push-ups and clap his hands together on the last one, sink four baskets in four attempts from a particular spot on the basketball court.… His mind was a blank while he was concentrating on his challenges; he was almost happy.
His mother remarried, and throughout his adolescence, Fredy felt more at home in the JPD headquarters than at home. When school was over, he’d go straight there, staying late into the evening. He always had some reason to give his mother for not coming home: meetings of the youth board—of which he was a member; the need to organize excursions or sports tournaments; maintenance work around the premises.… As he got older, he became less and less capable of connecting with kids his own age. Few of them shared either his heightened Zionist mysticism, which encouraged him to see the return to Palestine as a mission, or his passion for endless sports training. His peers invited him to the odd party, where the first couples began to form, but Fredy kept making excuses. Eventually they stopped asking him.
He discovered that what he enjoyed most was coaching teams and organizing tournaments for the youngest children. And he was very good at it, inspiring the kids with his passion. His teams always fought to the bitter end.
“Let’s go! Keep going! Try harder, harder!” he’d shout at the children from the sideline. “If you don’t fight for victory, then don’t cry when you lose!”
Fredy Hirsch never cries.
Up, down. Up, down. Up, down
When he is finished with his push-ups, Fredy stands, satisfied. That is, as satisfied as the secret keeper can be.
5.
Rudi Rosenberg has been inside Birkenau for almost two years, and that’s quite an achievement. It’s turned him into an old camp hand at the ripe age of nineteen and earned him the position of registrar. The registrar keeps the books on prisoner numbers in a place where the ebb and flow of people is tragically constant. The Nazis, meticulous about everything, including killing, have a high regard for this position. That’s why Rudi doesn’t wear the regular prisoner’s uniform. He proudly sports a pair of riding pants, a luxury item. All the other prisoners wear filthy striped uniforms except for the Kapos, the cooks, and those in positions of trust like the barrack secretaries and registrars. And other exceptional cases, like in the family camp.
Rudi passes through the control post of the quarantine camp he’s been assigned to, on the other side of the fence from camp BIIb, the family camp. He displays the affable smile of a model prisoner for any guards he comes across. They let him through when he tells them he’s headed for camp BIIb to deliver some lists.
He walks along the wide perimeter dirt road connecting the camps of the Birkenau complex and gazes at the distant line of trees that marks the start of the forest. At this hour on a winter afternoon, it forms a dim outline. A gust of wind carries a faint scent of the wet undergrowth, moss and mushrooms. He closes his eyes for a moment to savor it. Freedom is the smell of a damp forest.
He’s been summoned to a secret meeting to talk about the mysterious family camp.
When Rudi Rosenberg arrives at the designated meeting point behind one of the barracks in camp BIIb, two men, leaders of the Resistance, are waiting for him. One wears a cook’s apron and is sickly pale; he introduces himself as Lem. David Schmulewski, the other man, started out as a roofer and is now assistant to the Block?ltester of Block 27 in camp BIIb. He is dressed in civilian clothes: worn corduroy pants and a sweater that’s as wrinkled as his face.
They’ve already received basic information about the arrival of the December intake of prisoners to family camp BIIb, but they want Rosenberg to provide them with all the details he has. Rudi confirms the arrival of five thousand Jews from the Terezín ghetto. They arrived at the family camp in two separate trainloads three days apart. As with the September intake, they’ve been allowed to stay in civilian clothes, their heads haven’t been shaved, and children have been allowed entry.