Dita tries to peer over the wall of soldiers to see what’s happening inside the hut by getting up on her tiptoes. Despite the fact that both her own life and her mother’s are at risk, she can’t stop thinking sadly about her library. The books are still in the hidey-hole, stored underground and sleeping deeply until someone finds them by chance and opens them, thereby restoring them to life, just like the Prague legend of the Golem, who lies inert in a secret place waiting for someone to resuscitate him. She now regrets not having left a message with the books in case some other prisoner trapped inside Auschwitz finds them. She would like to have said, Take care of them, and they’ll take care of you.
They have to wait naked for several more hours. Their legs hurt, and they become weak. One woman sits down because she can’t take any more, and she refuses to stand up despite the shouts and threats of a young Kapo. Two guards haul her off to the hut as if they were carrying a sack of potatoes. The rest of the women suspect that they’ll have thrown her directly onto the reject pile.
Dita’s turn finally comes, and enveloped by murmurs and prayers, she and her mother walk through the entrance of Block 31. The woman just in front of them is sobbing.
“Don’t cry, Edita,” whispers her mother. “Now’s the time to show that you’re strong.”
Dita nods. Inside the hut, despite the tension in the air, the armed SS soldiers, and the table in front of the chimney where Mengele pronounces his sentence, she somehow feels protected. The Germans haven’t removed the children’s pictures from the walls. There are various versions of Snow White and her dwarves, princesses, jungle animals, and ships drawn in many colors from the early days when there were still some drawing classes. She realizes how much she misses being able to draw in Auschwitz as she used to in Terezín, to turn the chaos of her emotions into a picture.
However, though the drawings and stools are still there, Block 31 no longer exists. It is no longer a school. It is no longer a refuge. Now, just inside the door, they come up against an office table with Dr. Mengele seated behind it, together with a registrar and two guards with submachine guns. Two groups of those already selected are forming at the back of the hut. The one on the left will stay in Auschwitz, and the one on the right will be sent to work at another camp. The young women and the middle-aged women who look healthy—in other words, those who can still work—are in the group on the right. The other, much bigger group consists of small children, old women, and women who look sick.
When they say that the group on the left is going to stay in Auschwitz, they are telling the truth: Their ashes will settle on top of the forest slime and mix forever with the mud of Birkenau.
The impassive Nazi doctor waves his white-gloved hand to the left and to the right, and channels people to one side of life or the other. He does it with remarkable ease. And without hesitation.
The line in front of Dita is dwindling. The woman who was crying has been sent to the left with those whom the Reich deems weak and expendable.
Dita takes a deep breath: It’s her turn.
She takes a few steps and stops in front of the medical captain’s table. Dr. Mengele looks at her. Dita wonders if he really will recognize her as a member of Block 31, but it’s impossible to know what he’s thinking. What she sees in the doctor’s eyes, however, sends shivers up her spine: nothing. No emotion whatsoever. The look is frighteningly empty and terrifyingly neutral.
He recites the questions he’s spent hours routinely asking each inmate:
“Name, number, age, and profession.”
Dita knows that the instructions given to everyone are to name any profession that might be useful to the Germans—carpenter, farmer, mechanic, cook—and the instructions given to minors is to bump up their age and say they are older so that they’re more likely to make the cut. Dita knows all that, and she has to be careful, but her character demands something different.
Standing in front of the all-powerful Dr. Josef Mengele, owner of life and death like an Olympian god, she recites her name, Edita Adler; her number, 73305; her age, sixteen (she’s added a year). When it comes time to provide her profession, she hesitates briefly and then, instead of saying something useful and convenient that will please the SS man with the iron cross on his chest, she finally says, “Painter.”
Mengele, bored, tired by what for him must be mere routine, looks her in the eye more attentively, in the same way that snakes lift their heads when prey comes within reach.
“Painter? Do you paint walls or portraits?”
Dita feels her heart beating repeatedly in her throat, but she answers in her impeccable German and with a composure that smacks of rebellion:
“I paint portraits, sir.”
Screwing up his eyes a little, Mengele looks at her with the faint hint of an ironic smile.
“Could you paint me?”
Dita has never been so scared. She couldn’t be in a more vulnerable position: fifteen years old, alone and naked in front of men with submachine guns who are going to decide right now if they will kill her or let her live a little longer. Sweat runs down her naked skin, and the drops fall to the ground. But she answers with surprising vigor.
“Yes, sir!”
Mengele studies her slowly. It’s not a good sign if the medical captain pauses to think. Any veteran would say that nothing good can come out of that mind. Everyone is waiting for the outcome. There’s not a sound in the hut; you can’t even hear people breathing. Even the SS guards with the submachine guns don’t dare disturb the doctor’s moment of reflection. Finally, Mengele gives an amused smile and, gesturing with his gloved hand, sends her to the right—to the fit group.
But there’s no sigh of relief from Dita yet: Her mother is next in line. Dita walks more slowly and turns her head to look back.
Liesl is a woman with a sad face and a sad body, and her shoulders are hunched, all of which emphasize her sickly appearance. She’s convinced she won’t make the cut and is defeated before she even starts to fight. She hasn’t a chance, and the doctor doesn’t waste a second.
“Links!”
Left. The bigger group, the one for the useless women.
Nevertheless, with no attempt at rebellion of any kind, simply because of her mother’s total bewilderment—or so it seems to Dita—Liesl heads toward the right behind her daughter and stands in a line where she shouldn’t be. It takes her daughter’s breath away: What’s her mother doing here? They’ll drag her away, and there’ll be a terrible scene. She’ll chain herself to her mother, come what may. Let the guards drag both of them out.