The Librarian of Auschwitz: Chapters 13–17

He felt much more removed from the girls; there wasn’t that sense of camaraderie he had with the boys.

Hirsch blew the final whistle then and there with perfect equanimity, and went to congratulate the forward who had scored the final goal.

Fredy headed for the makeshift change rooms, faking an air of impartiality, and then stopped as if to tie one of his shoelaces.

“You couldn’t be more wrong. It’s not a game. There were hundreds of people watching, and we’ve let them down. There were dozens of children—what will they think? How are they going to be proud of being Jews if we grovel like worms? It’s your duty to give your all in every game.”

He felt a nervous twinge when he saw two SS guards in front of him, but rather than backtracking, he kept on walking even more resolutely toward them.

Fredy, adopting a light tone, tried to invent some excuse for being there, but the guard was adamant. “To the guard post! Now!”

“So you aren’t aware that all contact with this contingent of children is forbidden?”

Even Gabriel stopped dead at her over-the-top reaction, which culminated in the girl planting herself in front of him and, in a fit of rage, slapping him so hard she almost wiped the freckles off his face.

Caught unawares by a herd of mud-and-snow-covered cherubs with imploring eyes in front of her, she stops waving her arms and puts her hands on her hips.

Papa said that the Kapo in his hut is a German social democrat, not a Jew. He’s aloof, but quite fair.

If they weren’t so much taller than her, she’d give each of them a slap. For being so brazen...or so stupid.

It was just a nightmare...but Dita is filled with a sense of foreboding.

She feels bad, and even worse when she realizes she’s been very rude to her mother just when what her mother most needs is comfort and support, but she can’t stop feeling furious at her mother’s docility.

She kicks a stool and then grabs it and brandishes it like a mace.

Morgenstern knows that the comfort he’s offering is scant—worn-out and old-fashioned—something old people say, but in Auschwitz, it’s the medicine that helps people to endure the sadness they feel for those who have died.

It seems to Renée that the SS officer is genuinely crestfallen, as if his discomfort were not a pretense and what she thought of him really mattered.

The expression on her face is one of such indignation that Pestek realizes he’s made another mistake.

Then, as if she were suturing an open wound, she uses a rudimentary needle and thread to resew some pages that are on the verge of coming loose.

After all, who says she wants to be a young lady? And anyway, she’d rather be a research scientist investigating microbes or an airline pilot than a prissy young thing who wears frilly dresses and white ribbed stockings.

A furious officer reprimands the soldier-protagonist, a poor potbellied, shabbily dressed soul who’s a bit of a fool.

She doesn’t like it; the situation is almost decadent. She likes books that enlarge life, not the ones that belittle it.

He’s the adjutant to Lieutenant Lukáš, who yells at him, calls him an animal, and gives him a whack on the back of his head whenever Švejk drives him mad.

They branch out into digressions and little stories about relatives and neighbors whom the soldier, absolutely seriously, introduces into his response in the most absurd way.

Rüdin was also one of the architects of the law of obligatory sterilization promulgated by Hitler in 1933 for people with deformities, mental disabilities, depression, or alcoholism.

The old man has lost his business and his house—both requisitioned by the Nazis—along with his dignity as an upper-class citizen.

He looks around, and what he sees is sad: emaciated people dressed in rags like beggars.

If she were prudent, the two books that haven’t been placed in the secret hiding spot would remain hidden under her smock until the next morning.

She continues to wave the pages in the air and again questions what sort of values they are inculcating in their youth if they allow them to read such books.

Eventually, when everything is back in its place, Dita carefully opens the book and addresses herself to the circumspect Lichtenstern and Miriam Edelstein, who has a neutral look on her face.

“These are some of the bad ideas this foolish book teaches: that war is stupid and bestial. Do you disagree with this, too?”

“What Edita just read seems very sensible to me. Moreover,” she adds looking straight at Mrs. Křižková, “we can’t say that this is a sacrilegious book that treats religion disrespectfully when all it says, in the end, is that some Catholic priests are drunkards. Nowhere is the scrupulous integrity of our rabbis questioned.”

“What Edita just read seems very sensible to me. Moreover,” she adds looking straight at Mrs. Křižková, “we can’t say that this is a sacrilegious book that treats religion disrespectfully when all it says, in the end, is that some Catholic priests are drunkards. Nowhere is the scrupulous integrity of our rabbis questioned.”

She unobtrusively moves the bench with the books a few meters, so she can follow Ota Keller’s classes more closely.

Vivisection is an extraordinary experience. It’s like the view a watchmaker has of a watch, but of life.

It’s deplorable that an SS Kommandant with dozens of assistants at his disposal is incapable of appearing with perfectly polished boots or properly ironed shirt collars.

He despises country bumpkins like Schwarzhuber who cut themselves when they shave.

Schwarzhuber is about to reply, but he realizes that this pedantic, middle-class doctor is deliberately provoking him, and he’s not going to play along.

She’ll understand later, but right at that moment, she’s incapable of seeing in his change of heart that rare moment of clarity that comes to people when they find themselves on a cliff-edge of life. From the top of the precipice, everything looks incredibly small.

But Rudi had found him especially bleak and, moved by his anguish, couldn’t avoid asking him if the signs were bad.

Acquaintances and teachers from Block 31 walk past Dita on their way to the quarantine camp along with many faces she’s never noticed before—most of them are gaunt and grave.