The Librarian of Auschwitz: Chapters 6–12

“So why do you request it?” Dita asks him reproachfully. “Aren’t you aware that we have a limited number of books and you can’t ask for them on a whim?”

I beg your forgiveness. I’m an egotistical and capricious old man.

“That girl gets too easily flustered,” says Dita somewhat contemptuously when Renée leaves them.

Schmulewski has asked him to find out what he can about Hirsch discreetly.

She watches a teacher right at the very back gesticulating, the geometry book in her hand.

The light escaping from Hirsch’s cubicle allows her to see him returning to it looking utterly dejected. She’s never seen him looking shattered before. The normally proud man hangs his head.

At that moment the siren sounds, announcing that curfew is about to start. The last stragglers, who have braved the cold of the night and the fury of the hut Kapos, run toward their rickety bunks, but Dita doesn’t have the will to run.

And how many members of the Resistance speak with that pretentious Berlin accent?

It suddenly occurs to her that maybe he’s pretending to be a Nazi informer, but that the information he’s passing over to them is irrelevant or inaccurate, and that’s how he keeps them mollified.

The documentary would "prove” that the rumors about the internment and murder of Jews were false.

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.

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.

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.

If he tells the German commanders that “inmate Dita Adler hides clandestine books under her clothing,” they’ll catch her in flagrante at the next inspection. But if he wanted to denounce her...why wouldn’t he have done it already?

After all, doesn’t he revel in the position of assistant to the German Kapo in his barrack?

In his books, he explains that the mind is a storeroom where memories languish and send people mad.

He sounds pensive as he continues. “Can you picture it? Do you have any idea what it would mean to get inside that machine, fly back in time to 1924, and prevent Adolf Hitler from being released from jail?”

And he says it so seriously that Dita can’t tell if this young teacher, who has the poise of an experienced man despite his youth, is joking or absolutely serious.

In the same way that the impertinent Nils, clutching the neck of his goose, begins to mature and to realize that there is more to the world than him, so, too, the group of listeners rise above their harsh reality, full of the egotism of people pushing into the line to get to the soup first or stealing their neighbor’s spoon.

She can’t avoid overhearing the teachers’ voices, which sound fraught this afternoon.

Dita’s sense of curiosity—piqued by the young teacher Ota Keller—has led her to spend her afternoons curled up in her hidden corner reading H. G. Wells.

The story of our world is a story that is still very imperfectly known. A couple of hundred years ago, men possessed the history of little more than the last three thousand years. What happened before that time was a matter of legend and speculation.

I tossed a spadeful of dirt onto the feet of the girl next to me, and she started to screech like a wild animal. There was a bit of a kerfuffle, and the rest of the German patrol came over.

Major Rudolf Höss and Eichmann lead the retinue, which includes other members of the SS, among them Schwarzhuber, the Kommandant responsible for Auschwitz-Birkenau.

The prisoner, unperturbed, stands stock-still, holding some dirty plates, not looking at the pistol or at the person pointing it.

The rumor put out by Mrs. Turnovská—so rightly dubbed Radio Birkenau by Dita—that there’ll be a special meal of sausages for the prisoners, has turned out to be false.

“If he doesn’t hate us, why does he collaborate with this whole aberration?”

He mustn’t touch the wire, but he can’t dither. He’s got ten seconds before the guard turns back to face them.

There’s no such thing as secrets in the camp; rumors are rife, like the mold that covers the walls from floor to ceiling, and they corrupt everything in their path.

In the stiflingly ceremonious atmosphere of the Berghof, protected by carnival dispensation, he had dared to address her informally and call her Clawdia.

Dita closes her eyes and relives that moment when he prostrates himself so romantically before Clawdia and, in a gallant and impassioned manner, declares his rash love.

“There’s nothing more to say.”
“Why not?” The words of his interlocutor are loaded with irony and resentment.

“Come on! Is it so horrible? I’m one, too, and I don’t consider myself a monster. Do you think I am? Do you think I deserve to be branded a pariah?”

Ludwig fixes his crumpled lapel with the fastidiousness of a dandy.

The Kapo with the pink triangle slowly nods his assent, accepting defeat.

Fredy had matters to attend to, but he accepted his mother’s request because one of the JPD teachings he had absorbed was to respect hierarchies and ranks zealously.

The plan was to get them out of Bohemia and lead them through neutral countries all the way to Palestine. They needed to be in excellent physical shape, but they also had to know the history of the Jews and their adversities so that they would feel a sense of pride and be keen to return to the land of their forebears.

Such was his effectiveness and charisma when it came to his charges that the leaders of the Jewish Youth Council in Prague decided to put this responsible and tenacious young man in charge of the groups of children new to the club, who were often a bit disoriented.

Unlike the children who had been brought up with the havlagah principle of self-restraint, whose parents had imbued them with a strong sense of Jewishness and Zionism, and who had arrived mentally prepared and bursting with enthusiasm, this other group consisted of shy, sad, and apathetic children.

Unlike the children who had been brought up with the havlagah principle of self-restraint, whose parents had imbued them with a strong sense of Jewishness and Zionism, and who had arrived mentally prepared and bursting with enthusiasm, this other group consisted of shy, sad, and apathetic children. They weren’t interested in games or sports, and none of Fredy’s funny stories prompted a smile.