Cheese! she thinks now, as she lies on top of her bunk in Auschwitz. What did cheese taste like? I don’t even remember anymore. Wonderful!
It is true that in Terezín, despite being wrapped in four layers of sweaters, she felt the same cold as Joachim, the same cold as the patients lying on lounge chairs on the balconies of their rooms at night, wrapped in blankets and breathing in the cold mountain air that was supposed to be so good for restoring their damaged lungs. And lying there in Terezín with her eyes closed, she shared Joachim’s view that youth is over in a flash.
It was a long novel, so during the next few months, she shared her own enforced confinement with Joachim and his cheerful cousin Hans. She delved into the secrets, gossip, and obligations of the luxurious Berghof, where illness made time seem to stand still. She shared the conversations between the cousins and the other patients and, in a way, took part in them. The reality in the book became truer and more understandable than the one that surrounded her in that walled city. And it was much more credible than the Auschwitz nightmare of electrified wires and gas chambers that formed the world she currently inhabited.
One afternoon, a half-German girl who used to hang around in the small room they shared in the ghetto, but whom Dita ignored, decided to ask the girl who was always reading if she knew the Russian novel The Republic of ShKID, and if she’d heard of the boys in Block L417. Well, of course she’d heard about the boys!
That was when Dita closed her book and pricked up her ears. Curious, she asked Hanka to take her to meet them … “Right now!”
Hanka tried to tell her that it was a bit late in the day, so maybe tomorrow, but Dita, smiling now as she remembers that moment, cut her off:
“We don’t have a tomorrow. Everything has to be now!”
The two girls set off quickly for Block L417, a boys’ block, which they were allowed to visit until seven p.m. At the entrance, Hanka stopped and turned to her roommate with a serious look on her face.
“Watch out for Ludek.… He’s very handsome! But don’t even think about flirting with him, because I saw him first.”
Dita raised her right hand with mock solemnity, and the two girls laughed as they headed up the stairs. As soon as they arrived, Hanka started to chat to a tall, slim boy. Not knowing what else to do, Dita approached a boy who was drawing a picture of planet Earth as seen from space.
“What are those really weird mountains in the foreground?” she asked him without any introduction.
“It’s the moon.”
Petr Ginz was the editor-in-chief of Vedem, a clandestine, loose-leaf magazine, which was read out loud every Friday, and which contained information about events in the ghetto. But it also accepted opinion pieces, poems, and fantasies. Petr was a great admirer of Jules Verne, and From the Earth to the Moon was one of his favorite books. At night, lying on top of his bunk, he’d think about how incredible it would be to have a cannon like Mr. Barbicane’s from which he could launch himself into space inside a giant ball. He stopped drawing for a moment, looked up, and stared at the girl who had questioned him with such self-confidence. He liked the sparkle in her eyes, but he nevertheless addressed her severely.
“You’re very curious.”
Dita blushed and was overcome with shyness. She regretted being such a chatterbox. And then Petr’s attitude changed.
“Curiosity is the primary virtue of a good journalist. I’m Petr Ginz. Welcome to Vedem.”
Now Dita asks herself what sort of a chronicle Petr Ginz would have written about the activities of Block 31. She wonders what became of that skinny, sensitive boy.
That day, after their first encounter, Dita was walking with Petr in front of the so-called “Dresden barracks.” When he had asked her if she’d like to accompany him to do an interview for the magazine, Dita had hesitated for a second—probably not even that—before saying yes. They were going to interview the director of the library.
She was thrilled at the idea of being a journalist, and she felt a shiver of pride when she arrived with the determined Petr Ginz at the entrance to Building L304, where the library was located. They asked the receptionist if the director, Dr. Utitz, could receive two journalists from the magazine, Vedem, and the woman smiled amiably and asked them to have a seat.
Emil Utitz appeared a few minutes later. Before the war, he had been a professor of philosophy and psychology at the German University in Prague, and a columnist for various newspapers.
He told them the library had about sixty thousand books. These came from the hundreds of public libraries and private collections belonging to the Jewish community, which the Nazis had closed down and plundered. He also explained that the library still had no reading room, and so for the time being, it was a mobile library, by which he meant that the books were wheeled from building to building and could be borrowed. Petr asked Utitz if it was true that he had been a friend of Franz Kafka. The director nodded.
The editor in chief of Vedem then requested permission to accompany one of the librarians on a book round so that they could explain in the magazine how it all worked. Utitz happily agreed to the request.
On the appointed afternoon, Petr had to attend a poetry recital, so it was Dita who cheerfully accompanied the librarian, Miss Sittigová, as she pushed her trolley of books around the streets of Terezín. After a day’s labor in the workshops, factories, and foundries or at agricultural tasks, the opportunity to escape offered by the library-on-wheels was warmly welcomed. But Miss Sittigová told her that books were often stolen, and not always so they could be read. They were also used as toilet paper or as fuel for the stoves.
The librarian didn’t even have to announce her arrival in a loud voice: “Library service!” Young and old passed on the news in a chorus of mixed voices, which rang out merrily until people began to emerge from the doors of their buildings and eagerly leaf through the available books. Dita so enjoyed pushing the books that from then on, she began to travel around with them regularly. Once her day’s work was over, if she didn’t have an art class, she would spend the rest of the afternoon helping the librarian with her work.