One of the women carrying the feet of the corpse leads the way and they come to an area that’s fenced off with barbed wire. Two guards armed with submachine guns accompany them. They reach a piece of waste ground where a German officer in shirtsleeves meets them and orders them to halt. They stop, still holding the dead woman, and the officer gives her a quick look. He jots something down in a notebook and signals for them to go on. One of the veterans whispers that it’s Dr. Klein, and it’s his job to control outbreaks of typhus. If the disease is detected in a hut, the Germans send the infected women to a quarantine camp to die.
As the four women advance, the stench becomes more nauseating. There are several sinewy men working a few meters farther on; the dirty handkerchiefs they use to cover their noses make them look like bandits. Another group of women is standing in front of them, in the process of depositing a corpse next to several other bodies. One of the men signals to Dita’s group that they should leave their body on the ground. The men throw the bodies into an enormous pit, as if they were sacks of potatoes. Dita leans over the edge for an instant, and what she sees makes her so queasy she has to grab hold of one of her companions.
“My God…”
It’s a huge trench crammed with corpses. The ones on the bottom look singed; the ones on top are piled up in a jumble, a tangle of arms, heads, and yellowish skin.
Dita’s stomach churns, but it’s her most deeply held convictions that are stirred more than anything.
That’s all we are? Bits of decomposing matter? A few atoms, like those of a willow tree or a shoe?
Even the veteran who has been here several times is upset. No one speaks on the return journey. Seen like this, life appears to have no value.
When Dita gets back, her mother gives her a look asking how it went. Dita hides her face in her hands. She’d like to be left alone, but her mother hugs her and shares her pain.
The chaos increases. Although there are no organized work groups anymore, they’re given the order to stay close to the hut all day in case they are needed. Occasionally, one of the SS guards appears, her arms swinging energetically as she displays her healthy-looking, well-fed legs. She calls out some names in a shrill voice and tells them to go with her to work on the drainage ditches or in some shop. A couple of times, Dita is recruited for a workshop where they punch holes in belts and tabs for uniforms. The machines are very old, and you have to use a lot of force to make the puncher strike the strips of leather with sufficient pressure.
After roll call one morning, the supervisor appears in front of the assembled group. Volkenrath is easily recognizable because of the ostentatious bun of hair on top of her head from which blond strands are always escaping. She has the appearance of someone who’s been to an expensive salon and then rolled around in a barn. Dita has heard that when she was a civilian, she was a hairdresser, which explains the hairstyle she sports amid the filth, lice, and typhus of Bergen-Belsen.
Volkenrath is her usual angry self, which scares even her assistants. It occurs to Dita that if Hitler hadn’t come to power and war hadn’t broken out, this unscrupulous woman now standing in front of them with a killer’s glint in her eye would be yet another of those slightly plump, pleasant hairdressers who give the girls ringlets and cheerfully comment about the neighborhood gossip. Their clients, including German-Jewish women, would lower their heads, and she would cut their hair with her scissors, and none of them would be the least bit worried about placing their necks in the hands of this oversized woman who is addicted to somewhat fanciful, upswept hairstyles. If anyone had insinuated that, some years down the track, Elisabeth Volkenrath might be a murderer, the entire community would have been outraged. Good old Beth? That woman wouldn’t hurt a fly! they’d say indignantly. They’d demand that the author of the calumny retract it immediately. And they might have been right. But things have turned out otherwise. Now if any of the women who arrive at her establishment don’t behave in the way she wants, the inoffensive girl from the hairdressing salon puts a rope around their neck and hangs them.
Dita is absorbed in these thoughts when a sound penetrates her brain like the metal puncher piercing the leather in the workshop:
“Elisabeth Adler!”
The administrative mess is so bad that the Germans have gone back to calling the prisoners by their names, not their numbers. The voice of the SS supervisor (authoritarian, strong, aggressive, military-sounding, impatient) rings out again calling for … “Elisabeth Adler!”
Her mother had been distracted. She now makes a move to step out of the line, but Dita is much faster and decisively steps forward.
“Adler, here!”
Adler, here! Liesl’s eyes open wide, and she’s so taken aback by her daughter’s audacity that, for a few seconds, she doesn’t know what to do. Just as she decides to step forward and sort out the mix-up with the guards, there’s a shout of “Break ranks!” The sea of women energetically surging around her blocks Liesl’s path, and by the time the knot of people has untangled itself, her daughter has disappeared inside the hut to transfer that day’s corpses. Liesl stands stock-still, getting in the way of her companions, who are in a pointless hurry, as if they’d forgotten they have nowhere to go. Dita emerges a short while later carrying a body with three other inmates. Her mother, still rooted to the same spot, and now on her own in the middle of the avenue of mud, angrily watches her daughter heading off.
Another trip to mankind’s final frontier.
Dita again leans over the edge of the pit and comes back pale with queasiness. They all say it’s the stench that makes them ill, but what really upsets them is the sight of those lives thrown on a dump site.
Dita hopes she never gets used to it.
When she gets back to the hut, her mother is still standing near the door, as if she hadn’t broken ranks after the roll call. Her expression is one of deep anger, even rage.
“Are you stupid? Have you forgotten that assuming the identity of another prisoner is punished by death?” Liesl shouts at her.
Dita can’t remember the last time her mother shouted at her. An inmate walking by turns to stare, and Dita feels herself blushing. It seems unfair, and she feels tears flooding her eyes, even though she doesn’t want to cry. Only her pride prevents them from spilling out. She nods and turns around.
She can’t stand it when her mother treats her like a child. It’s not right. Dita did it because she knows her mother is weak and doesn’t have the strength to carry a corpse. But Dita hasn’t been given a chance to explain. She thinks her mother should be proud of her, but instead she’s earned the worst reprimand since the slap Liesl gave her in Prague.
She doesn’t value anything I do.…
She feels misunderstood. She may be in a concentration camp, but she’s no different from the millions of other teenagers the world over who are about to turn sixteen.