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.
The little ones are nervous, and there are quarrels, shoving, fights, arguments, tears, and an air of confusion that seems to keep growing. They can’t keep still; they’re upset by the bites from bedbugs, fleas, lice, and all manner of mites that live in the wet straw. Good weather encourages not only flowers but all sorts of bugs as well.
Miriam makes a drastic decision: She decides to use the last bit of coal that was being kept for an emergency to heat up buckets of water to wash the children’s underwear. There’s a huge kerfuffle, and there’s no time to dry them fully on the chimney, so the children have to put them on again still damp, but it looks as if most of the insects have been drowned and as the day progresses, calm is gradually restored.
When those who have been assigned to work in Block 31 reach the row of huts where it is located, they think they have arrived at a bog. But discovering a clandestine school has left them stunned—and hopeful.
Lichtenstern calls them all together at the end of the day, when groups have been more or less organized and a certain school routine has been put in place. He introduces them to a young teenage girl with the legs of a ballerina and woolen socks, who is nervously rocking back and forth on her wooden clogs. Anyone who doesn’t look at her carefully would think she’s slight, maybe even fragile, but if they study her, they’ll see the fire in her eyes. She seems to move about shyly, but at the same time she shamelessly observes everything around her. She tells them she’s the block librarian.
Some people ask her to repeat what she’s just said because they can’t believe what they’re hearing: “Is there a library as well? But books are forbidden!” They don’t understand how such a dangerous and delicate matter can be in the hands of a young girl. So Miriam asks her to climb onto a stool so that everyone will listen to her.
“Good afternoon. I’m Edita Adler. We have a library of eight paper books and six ‘living’ books.”
The look of puzzlement on the faces of some of the recent arrivals is so obvious that even Dita, who started speaking in a serious voice in order to convey her responsibility properly to so many adults, can’t keep back a small laugh.
“Don’t worry. We haven’t gone mad. Obviously, the books aren’t alive. It’s the people who tell the stories who are alive; you’ll be able to borrow them for your afternoon activities.”
Dita continues to explain how the library works in Czech and amazingly fluent German. The newly appointed teachers standing in front of her are still bewildered by the inherent contradiction that arises in the discussion of the normal operation of a school inside the most abnormal place in the world. When she is done, Dita bows her head in the slightly exaggerated manner of Professor Morgenstern and barely manages to stop herself from laughing at her own formality. She finds even funnier the openmouthed amazement with which some of them look at her as she makes her way back through them to her more secluded spot.
“She’s the librarian of Block Thirty-One,” they whisper.
There’s such a racket in the afternoon that it’s impossible for Dita to hide away and read. She goes to her usual hiding spot and finds half a dozen boys gathered there torturing ants.
Poor ants, she thinks. They must already have a tough enough time finding crumbs in Auschwitz.
So she puts A Short History of the World under her clothes, scurries off to the latrines, and hides down the back behind some containers. Clearly it’s hard to see, and the smell is awful—but it’s so bad that the SS guards rarely stick their heads inside. What Dita doesn’t know is that for precisely that reason, the latrines are the preferred spot for black market deals.
It’s almost soup time and hence the time to do business. Arkadiusz, a Polish man who does repair jobs around the camps, is one of the most active black marketeers: tobacco, a comb, a mirror, a pair of boots.…
He’s Santa Claus with a prisoner’s face, who can be asked for anything as long as you’re prepared to give him something in return. Dita hears voices in the hut and turns over the pages of her book even more quietly. The conversation filters into her ears. One of the people talking is a woman.
Dita can’t see her, but Bohumila Kleinová has a pointed nose that turns up, making her look somewhat haughty, but her soft, swollen bruised eyelids spoil that impression.
“I have a client. I’ll need a woman the day after tomorrow, in the afternoon, before the evening count.”
“Aunt Bohumila can arrange it, but the Kapo in charge of our hut is a bit nervous, and we’ll have to give her more.”