Playing for Time (10 page)

“One can’t keep the rates steady, they change all the time. It depends on how the consignments come in, on their freshness, on their country of origin—things from France are much sought after. The SS value them particularly and take everything, which sends prices up. Demand also has some effect. Do you understand?”

Perfectly—it was just like the black market. Amazing: we were talking just like shopkeepers.

“Will there be anything else? In the transport that’s arrived today there are marvellous scents.”

“No, I’m absolutely broke,” I answered gravely.

Already I had stopped reacting as I would have done a few days ago, for it took me a few minutes to grasp how outrageous our conversation had been.

As she left, Renate stopped to pick up several further orders.

The girls, elbows on the table, ate slowly to spin out their pleasure, take stock of their boxes, cut a shaving of sausage, suck an atom of mouldy jam from their fingers and laugh, laugh like lunatics. I laughed with them, though somewhere within me I acknowledged the illogic of this scene.

Yet our reactions were understandable: death, life, tears, laughter, everything was multiplied, disproportionate, beyond the limits of the credible. All was madness.

Auschwitz A Very Peaceful Little Town

This morning, the SS warden came in with long angry strides, her heels resounding on the concrete of our floor as on a pavement; Tchaikowska was so rigidly at attention that her great wobbling chest trembled like blancmange. One sneeze and our blockowa would send us to Block 25. Here, everyone wielded the power of life and death over you.

Planted in the middle of our room the warden, chin high, yelled as though she were receiving instructions straight from the Führer: “Jews to the right, Aryans to the left!”

Mechanically, passively, I was about to obey, when Clara grabbed me firmly and dragged me into the middle, between the two groups which were forming. With our yellow stars on our chests, we must have looked suspect standing there stolidly, isolated and incongruous.

Tchaikowska’s fist was clenched so that the knuckles showed white.

“What do you think you’re doing there?” bawled the SS woman.

“We’re half-Jews, Frau Aufseherin.”

“Was is das?”

Alma, surprised, translated the astonishing statement:
“Mischlinge!”
I wondered how this farce—I couldn’t regard it as anything else—was going to end. Yet it would have been surprising if our case had not been anticipated. I was to learn later that half-Jews were more rarely deported, particularly if their mothers, as in our case, were Aryan.

The little mud-coloured eyes of the warden, as lively and gentle as a concrete wall, settled on us incredulously; then she seemed to be going over the small print in her mind, but apparently her superiors hadn’t expressed themselves on this subject, because, hands on hips, legs apart, she said flatly: “I see, you’re half-Jews. Well, well, we’ll have to see. I’ll have you taken to the Auschwitz office of central administration. I’ll get some light thrown on this matter. We’ll sort it out!”

She departed with the same vengeful step.

Apparently indifferent, shrugging her shoulders, Alma went back into her room; our gesture certainly didn’t warrant breaking the pattern of old habits. The Aryan Poles sniggered, Tchaikowska and Pani Founia gesticulated in our direction. I laughed openly, to be berated by Clara: “For goodness’ sake, shut up; you are maddening, you’re making the whole thing look ridiculous.”

I answered solemnly: “What if they were to give us half-rations as a result?”

“You’re completely mad,” said Clara, irritated. “You don’t take anything seriously.”

The grinding voice of Rachela, a swarthy, angular girl, protested something in a medley of Polish and Yiddish which Ewa roughly translated for us. “Rachela says that you’re wrong, that you need only a Jewish great-great-grandfather to be considered Jewish, and that all you’ll get out of this is to end up you-know-where a bit more quickly.”

“I don’t think so,” said Little Irene. “After all, it’s the truth. They’ll find out whether it makes any difference.”

“They’ll go out, see the town—the shop windows perhaps!” Anny said dreamily.

“Rachela says you won’t be given a chance to tell your story, that they won’t take you to Auschwitz but straight to the gas chambers.”

Florette on the other hand thought perhaps we’d be lucky enough to be half-gassed.

Ewa summed up by saying she thought we were right. “After all, they should have their noses rubbed in the absurdity of their racism. And it’s just possible that they might deal with you according to Aryan regulations.”

The discussion was cut short because a new topic of interest presented itself: a runner announced the arrival of a musician from the men’s orchestra. This was an important event. When he entered, kept at a distance by the furious invective of Tchaikowska, who forbad us to approach him or talk to him, we devoured him with our eyes. He was tall, a cap covering his shaven skull, thin as a post but decently dressed in a clean striped uniform. He looked embarrassed and asked for Alma. Tchaikowska bore down on him and swept him into the music room. Through the open door we followed all his movements with a liberal commentary:

“Look, he’s getting the double bass.”

“He’s definitely a musician.”

“He’s Yvette’s teacher.”

Alma sent for Yvette and forbad us to enter the music room. A man in our block—times were indeed changing. We were expressly forbidden to go near them, and in any case their appearance was rare in the extreme. Sometimes we came across an electrician, a plumber, or a carpenter doing repairs. Jenny pointed her ferretlike snout and observed: “It’s a real private lesson, if I were you I’d keep an eye on her; her teacher might still have just enough strength in his trousers to deflower her.”

Rolling her
r’s
ferociously Lili responded: “In Greece, where I come from, women have a sense of honour.”

“Let’s not have any of that stuff. French women are no more whores than you are. My man enjoyed me. It may make you laugh but that’s how it was!”

We laughed in the obvious hope that
he
might hear us, that
he
would look round and see us, that we should exist for him. His presence was enough for us to utter all manner of absurdities, chattering hen parrots preening their feathers for a chance male who’d happened upon the hen house. Poor fellow, I thought as I watched him give Yvette her lesson; she was dwarfed by the large instrument. He had the precise movements of a professional. Ewa thought she recognized him as an excellent Polish concert cellist. He was young and his hands were tender and caressing with his instrument, as they would have been with a woman. Under Alma’s severe eye, he placed Yvette’s fingers on the strings, held up her wrist weighed down by the heavy bow.

We fell silent. We contemplated that male hand, that shoulder—bowed as it was—level with Yvette’s head, and we daydreamed.

The next morning a Wehrmacht soldier came into our block. He had come to fetch Clara and me. The girls told us that it was a good sign it was not an SS man. Young, barely seventeen, rifle slung across his shoulder, he beckoned to us to follow him. And what if despite everything he were taking us to the gas chambers? Tchaikowska ordered us to put a nameless striped garment, a sort of dustcoat, over our clothes. The girls from our little group, Ewa, the two Irenes, Anny, Florette, and Jenny, smiled at us, not daring to embrace us. The Poles clucked, and I wondered which of their distinctive qualities was the more grievous, their stupidity or their spite.

We set off on foot. Well-shod, warmly dressed, we emerged from the camp like smartly turned-out princesses, or so we thought. It was good to walk along a road. Under a stiff layer of snow, I saw a bit of yellowed grass: “Look, Clara, grass! It still exists.”

I was about to stop, but the sight of our guard prevented me. He was so young that he shouldn’t have been hardened yet, unless of course he was all the more fanatical because of it, but his eyes, which had a fine golden look to them, glinted coldly when they came to rest on us, as empty as the gaze of the others, all the others.

What was marvellous was that, as we moved away from Birkenau, the frightful smell of burnt flesh which always filled our nostrils faded, giving way to smells of life. It was an easy two miles to Auschwitz, which seemed to be a peaceful little town. Its Polish roofs, rather flat and snow-covered, stood out clearly against the cold, pale winter sky.

“Fania! Houses—chimneys with smoke.”

It was true. This smoke was that of people who were alive, warming themselves, preparing food; it was light, blue and yellow, so different from that which, black as soot and thick as tar, billowed from our crematoria.

People were going quietly about their business; the shops had windows even if there was not much in them. We passed a few people, women, little old ladies trotting along, elderly men. Not a single young person of either sex. Where were they? At the war? It was a silent town; the snow we sank into muffled all noise. As we passed, no one turned round, no one vouchsafed us a look. There was neither curiosity nor hostility; we didn’t exist. When would we cease to be nothing?

These people, doing normal things, going in and out of their houses, these women doing their shopping, holding young children with apple-red cheeks, did they know that they were happy? Did they know that it was marvellous to see them, that for us they represented life? Why did they begrudge us a look? They couldn’t fail to notice us, to know where we came from; our striped garb, the scarfs hiding our shaven heads, our thinness betrayed our origins. When they went out walking, they were not forbidden to pass by the camp of Birkenau, whose sinister appearance hardly concealed its function. Did they think that those five chimneys, with their sickening smoke, were for the central heating? What exactly was I asking for? That that little town of five or six thousand inhabitants should revolt, that its Germanic population, resettled there since the German victory, should rise up and liberate the camp? Why should they have felt responsible for us? A sudden surge of violence sent the blood into my head: they were all responsible! All men were. The indifference of a single one was our death sentence.

I stared at them intensely. I didn’t want to forget their ratlike faces. They didn’t see us. How convenient! They didn’t see our striped clothes any more than they saw the detachments of “moslems” who wandered haggard through their peaceful little town, surrounded by SS and dogs. I was sure that later, after the war, those people would say that they “didn’t know,” and they would be believed.

Clara took my arm. “You are looking glum. Take advantage of our walk, it’s marvellous to be here. Our guard isn’t bad; he’s leaving us be. It’s better than being cooped up in the block.”

She was right. One had to savour the fleeting moment, get the maximum pleasure from it.

“Why didn’t they question us at the camp?”

“I imagine our case doesn’t concern them, it must be a matter of civil administration.”

We stopped in front of a wooden hut, presumably an annex of the general administration building. We went up three steps and our soldier stood aside to let us pass. This politeness was unexpected. What wasn’t, though, was to find ourselves face to face with an enormous portrait of Hitler.

The room was furnished as an office, and behind a big table was an SS man, big, fat and dirty. Beside him was a French prisoner of war, a big red
F
painted on his old uniform jacket. Our hearts beat faster. He was particularly nondescript, but to us he was a living wonder. We were made to sit down, some way from the table, and the interrogation began. The German did the questioning and the Frenchman translated:

“Name of your mother?”

“Bernier, Marie.”

“Nationality?”

“Aryan Frenchwoman.”

“Religion?”

“Catholic.”

“Father’s name?”

“Goldstein, French Jew.”

“
Nein
,” grumbled the SS.

I had to answer one question at a time. We began again.

“What was his job?”

“Engineer.”

“Where?”

“He died some time ago.”

He shook his head; it must have annoyed him to think that nature was sometimes allowed to take its course.

“Have you any sisters?”

“No.”

“Brothers?”

I had two brothers whom I adored; the elder was in America, the younger in the Resistance. Brightly, firmly, I lied:

“I’m an only child.”

Now we began on the rest of my family, back into the mists of time. Having negotiated the problem of my parents, I could cope with that of grandparents with ease and felt that previous generations could be dispensed with. “I don’t know anything about their origins.”

My breeziness astounded the Frenchman. He translated my answers slowly to the fat white worm of an SS man, who, clutching his sputtering penholder, transcribed them into German so painfully that I nudged Clara’s elbow, wondering whether he really knew how to write.

Clara knew her family tree to perfection, though she gave a noticeable and understandable bias to the Catholic side, which left our interpreter and our laborious scribe quite indifferent. While the SS continued to scratch away and shuffle his papers, the Frenchman asked us why we had come here.

“So that you should know that we’re half-Jews.”

“What can it matter what you are, what good can it do you?”

“It might save us the trip to the ”little works.“

“What?” he asked, alarmed.

“You know, the little factory that processes you into smoke.”

He turned green. “That’s enough. You know that you’re not supposed to know anything about that. None of you must know. Don’t even talk about it. It doesn’t exist.”

“The corpses from the crematoria died natural deaths, did they,” I sniggered, “from hunger, for instance? No one is killed, are they? They must think we’re blind and mad.”

He paused and didn’t dare raise his voice: “That’s enough! I don’t want any trouble!”