The teachers don’t look at the packages of food, but at the bundles of broken people whom the guards are beating into formation so they can be put through the typical macabre routine of every transport: separating those who will be shaved, tattooed, and thrown into the quagmire where they’ll work till they drop from those who’ll be killed then and there. The six-and seven-year-olds in the family camp on the other side of the fence sometimes joke about the new arrivals. It’s hard to tell if they really are making fun of them and don’t care about the suffering of these strangers, or if pretending to their companions that they don’t care is their way of seeming to be strong and overcoming their own anxiety.
On the first night of Passover, families usually gather around the table and read the Haggadah, which tells of the exodus of the Israelites from Egypt. It’s customary for four glasses of wine to be drunk in God’s honor. The keara is prepared, a traditional plate on which the following foods are placed: zeroah (usually a lamb bone); beitzah (a brown egg, which symbolizes Pharaoh’s hard heart); maror (bitter herbs or horseradish, which symbolize the harshness of Jewish slavery in Egypt); charoset (a sweet mixture of apple, honey, and dried fruits, which represents the mortar used by the Jews to build their houses in Egypt); and karpas (a small amount of parsley in a cup of salted water to symbolize the life of the Israelites, always bathed in tears). And the most important element, matzah, the unleavened bread, of which each person around the table takes a piece. The last supper Jesus shared with his disciples was a celebration of Seder, and the Christian Eucharist arose from this Jewish rite. Ota Keller explains all this to his group of children and not one of them misses a word: Religious traditions and the traditional meal are sacred to them.
Lichtenstern has got his way—they’ll be able to celebrate Passover. Although they don’t have all the ingredients to allow for the celebration in the Orthodox manner, all the children are waiting expectantly when the block chief comes out of his cubicle carrying a piece of wood that serves as the special plate. Laid out on it in precise order are a bone of something that could be chicken, an egg, a slice of radish, and a pot full of salted water with some herbs floating in it.
Aunt Miriam has put beetroot jam into the morning tea to create pretend wine. She is also the one charged with kneading the bread dough. Valtr, one of the men who regularly helps with the hut’s maintenance tasks, has got hold of a thick piece of wire and bent it to form a metal grill on which to bake the bread. The children watch the entire process, mesmerized. In a place where food is such a scarce commodity, they observe in amazement how a handful of flour and a little water give rise to a delicious bread with a mouthwatering aroma. Finally, a miracle.
The youngest ones, who have been chasing each other noisily at the back of the barrack, are soon told to be quiet, and a respectful silence charged with mysticism floats in the air.
Finally, six pancakes of bread are ready and are placed in the middle of the board. It’s not much for more than three hundred children, but Lichtenstern orders each person to take a tiny piece, just enough to be able to taste the matzah.
“It’s the unleavened bread that our forefathers ate during their escape from slavery to freedom,” Lichtenstern tells the children.
And they all start to pass in front of him in an orderly manner to receive their sacred little piece.
The children return to their groups, sit down, and listen to their teachers explaining the story of the exodus of the Jews while they eat their ritual bread and drink fake wine. Dita bounces her way between the groups, listening to the different voices telling their versions of the same extraordinary deeds that make up the long march through the desert under the leadership of the prophet Moses. The children are fascinated by these stories, and they listen attentively as Moses climbs up the steep slopes of Mount Sinai to get closer to that thunderous God, then the Red Sea parts to allow the Jews passage to the other side. It is probably the most unorthodox celebration of Passover night in history—it’s not even night, but midday. And of course they can’t eat the traditional lamb; there’s nothing of the Seder that they can eat. But, as a special treat, each child will receive half a cookie. The effort itself, however, and the faith with which they celebrate the festive day, despite all their deprivations, turns it into a moving ceremony.
Avi Fischer gathers together the choir and they begin to sing Beethoven’s Ode to Joy, at first timidly and then with style. Since it’s hard to rehearse anything in secret in this hut, most of those present know the words by heart from hearing it so often, and they launch into song as well, until there is a single, giant chorus of hundreds of voices.
The power of their music passes through the walls and filters through the barbed wire fences. The prisoners working in the camp’s drainage ditches stop briefly and lean on their shovels to hear better.
“Listen! It’s the children—they’re singing.…”
In the clothing hut and in the mica hut, where they make condensers for electric machines, they also slow down their work for a moment and turn their faces toward the happy melody filtering through from some place that seems foreign to the Lager.
“No, no,” someone replies, “it’s angels from heaven.”
In the ditches into which ash never stops falling, and which the Kapos pressure the inmates to dig until their hands bleed, that music and those voices carried by the wind are a miracle. The words speak of a time when millions will embrace each other, the whole world will exchange kisses, and all mankind will be brothers and sisters. A cry for peace shouted as loudly as possible in the biggest factory of death of all time.
The Ode rings out so loudly it even reaches the desk of a notable music lover. He lifts his head as if he smells the aroma of a delicious tart so strongly that it must be tracked to the oven in which it is baking. He quickly abandons his papers, crosses the Lagerstrasse of the family camp, and plants himself on the threshold of Block 31.
The children have already repeated several times the strains of the first verse, which is the one they all know by heart, and they have just reached the end of the chorus when the figure wearing the peaked cap with its silver death’s head insignia appears in the doorway, projecting an excessively large and menacing shadow. Lichtenstern feels icy cold, as if winter had suddenly returned.
Dr. Mengele …
He continues to sing, but his voice weakens. They aren’t authorized to celebrate any Jewish feasts. Dita becomes momentarily mute, but then she immediately picks up the words again because, even though the adults have fallen silent, the children have continued to sing with all their might as if nothing has happened.