Playing for Time (11 page)

I didn’t sympathize with his fear. “That imbecile beside you doesn’t understand anything,” I hissed.

“How do you know?”

“Look at him; if he has such trouble writing, I’d be very surprised if he knew French.”

“You don’t know them. There may be someone listening behind the door. The guard might speak our language. I’ve every intention of getting back to my wife and children, personally.”

“And we’ve every intention of staying alive!”

With thick stubby fingers the SS man fingered the papers he’d just filled up, then raised heavy lids and spat out a few words to our interpreter, who translated:

“You’re to take off part of your star, just keep the part that says
F.”

Clara couldn’t move fast enough to take advantage of this delightfully ironical authorization: the star of David thus dismantled, all we had left was a yellow triangle with an
F.
We really were half-Jews. The administration had arranged for everything!

His task over, without a look, the SS ordered us out.

Our return journey was somewhat slow and painful. We were out of practice for walking and due to three months of undernourishment we were exhausted by the time we got back to the block.

We had a bizarre reception. As we entered girls moved, groups formed, as in a play. Florette, Anny, the two Irenes, Ewa, Jenny, the little Greeks Yvette and Lili, curious and well-intentioned, questioned us. What was Auschwitz like? What about the people? Were there children in the streets, things in the shops? Where had we gone? What had they asked us?

“Well, well, you really are halves,” exclaimed Jenny, pointing at our chests.

This gesture attracted the attention of the others. The Aryan Poles sniggered, Founia slapped her thighs. We were certainly providing some merriment. Tchaikowska, fingers of her right hand imitating scissors, cut her left index finger; then the imaginary scissors fell to the floor and the mime became obscene. Clustered around those two horrors, Irena opened a black mouth with yellow stubs, Kaja crushed the thin Marisha with her bulk, Wisha, holding Zocha by the shoulders and Marila by the waist, smiled foxily—a charming picture! Only Halina’s face remained expressionless. The Poles weren’t satisfied with laughter, they proceeded to vituperation. In execrable French Danka, waving huge fists that could have sent a healthy bullock to its knees, expressed the group opinion: “You, filth, you ashamed of being Jews. But you will be Jews, never you Aryan, you afraid, so you deny parents. Judas!”

This last insult, oddly, seemed to be particularly appreciated by the Polish Jews, Rachela and Masha, and even by the only Czech, Margot, who was intelligent and well-educated.

“You’ve behaved like dirty goyim, that’s what,” Rachela lectured us. “You shouldn’t have said you weren’t Jewish, you’ve dishonoured the Jews in your families. They spit on you and curse you through us!”

So now Clara and I were caught between two groups, the neutral and the others—two accused facing a bawling mass. How could one blame them? All the hatred of their masters accumulated month after month, drawn from those days, hours, and minutes during which they’d undergone the worst humiliations in silence, now rose from within them and poured itself over us; we had become a pretext, we had enabled them to explode openly, virtuously. Craning their necks, vindictive as a gaggle of geese, twelve German Jews rose up against us: Helga, the brutal, vulgar percussion player; Karla, the fat round little thing who played the pipes; Sylvia, only fifteen and clay in the others’ hands; Lotte, the guitarist, who might have been less aggressive had she been prettier; the other Lotte, whose stupidity was her only excuse; Frau Kroner, the ultra-timorous; and the acrimonious Ruth, perhaps the worst of all. Even the meek, passive ones were in the ranks: Elsa, a violinist who had been going into the leather trade; Regina, Alma’s “chambermaid”; Julie the silent. At their head, leading the attack, were Rachela and Hilde, the Zionist, scorn blazing from her lovely inspired black eyes. “You’ve allowed the star of David to be cut in two. It’s not you who have denied us, but we who reject you…”

She sought her words carefully, mingling French and German; she rose to biblical heights, involving our posterity down to the seventh generation. I couldn’t take this diatribe seriously. It all seemed ridiculous, disproportionate, unimportant. It was like a child’s theatre, with puppets gesticulating from the wings of a stage occupied by a tragedy. They bored me, I felt like turning my back on them and was just about to do so when I heard Clara’s confident, piping voice:

“I didn’t expect this sort of reaction. You’re just jealous. There’s no reason why we shouldn’t have told the truth, I can’t see what it matters to you… If we can avoid the gas chambers, we’d be wrong not to do so.”

Her voice rose in a crescendo, the others answered back violently. Alone, as was their custom, the Russians remained outside the debate. The more moderate, like the Greek Jews, Julie and Lili, whom Yvette was bound to follow, called us “poor idiots.” The others ended their lecture calling us “liars.”

What had truth to do with it? Had we not the right to cut ourselves off as much as possible from the “chosen race” when faced with the other, the “master race”? It would be afterwards, if there were to be an afterwards, that we would have to fight, to vindicate our portion of Judaism. In the name of which virtues should we not have seized this opportunity if it existed?

I was silent but, as they say in Russian, I’d roll that round my little finger, I wouldn’t forget.

There was an abrupt drop in pitch; alerted by our uproar, Alma had come in and was staring at us coldly.

“You’re back?”

Did she think we wouldn’t be?

“Are you satisfied?”

Her ironic gaze lingered over our unusual star. Without a word, she turned smartly and went back into her room. I felt I was blushing, and that struck me as the most absurd thing of all. Behind me, I heard the discussion being endlessly continued around our squat black stove:

“It’s ridiculous to accuse us of betraying the Jews; since we’re half and half, we’re just as much betraying the Catholics,” reasoned Clara.

“Typical half-caste dilemma,” pontificated Little Irene.

I considered that the whole pathetic business was being paid too much attention. Personally I’d made my decision and I calmly sewed my second triangle back on.

“Why are you doing that?” asked Clara nervously.

“I don’t know, but I am.”

And indeed I didn’t know; but something drove me to that gesture, the same something, in all probability, which also led me to tell the police my real identity, preferring to die under my father’s name rather than under an assumed one.

A few moments later, grumbling: “Your absurd gesture is forcing me to do the same. I could hardly stick it out on my own!” Clara also reconstituted her star of David. A curious star, that one, whose “magic” virtues have earned it the name “David’s shield.”

The Day of Rest

That Saturday started badly. It was very cold outside; the windows were frosted over despite our stove. Almost all of us had been troubled by nightmares or desperate insomnia. Since yesterday, the deportees had been at work finishing the railway which would enable the transports to come right into the camp about fifty yards from our block, between the men’s camps and our own. The little station of Auschwitz would become an ordinary station once again. This would put an end to transport by truck, which used up too much fuel.

Florette slept on and I felt sorry for her; she had told me that her sleep was peopled with fairy-tale dreams and princes charming. What a marvellous escape. Each morning it was the same struggle: she clung grimly to her refuge. I shook her but she didn’t even groan; she was totally oblivious.

“Wake her, or Tchaikowska will be down on her like a ton of bricks!” Ewa warned me.

Too late. Pani Tchaikowska, shouting
“Aufsteben!”—
Up!— fit to snap her vocal cords, made her morning entrance, accompanied by the inevitable Pani Founia. With head raised—Florette slept on the third tier—Pani Founia belted out her repertoire of Polish insults. To no effect. Florette slumbered on. She slept on her stomach, head prudently in her arms so that her ears were blocked. Pani Founia went off promising darkly that this matter would be taken care of by higher authorities. I had no chance to climb up and shake the dogged sleeper one last time.

“Achtung! Zum Appell! Funf zu funf.”“
Accompanied by angelic-faced Irma Grese, Frau Drexler, the chief inspector, entered, her gunner’s gait particularly martial this morning. She first cast her eye upon the empty beds, with their impeccable hospital corners. She froze in front of Florette, the horizontal line of her mouth shrinking still further; with her leather-gloved hand, she flicked off the cover. Innocent, childlike, a bare foot appeared. She seized it: Florette’s body seemed to become dislocated, like a floppy puppet’s, her head seemed almost to shatter on the concrete. My heart beat in my throat. Florette lay stretched out on the floor, her nightdress raised to reveal thin thighs, pitiful little flabby buttocks. She stirred, sat up, then got up and stood there, in her nightdress (which was expressly forbidden ), eyes wandering dazedly, immobilized in an approximate position of attention.

The look of lofty disdain which Drexler cast the poor girl teetering in front of her filled me with rage. Beside her, Grese of the corn-coloured plaits smiled vaguely. Her pure, innocent eyes settled curiously on Florette, her slim black riding whip tapping her leather boot imperceptibly. She couldn’t have been more than twenty. Numerous stories were told about her, all demonstrating her unusually meticulous ferocity. The women had learned to dread the penalty of her attentions, the least of which meant a whiplash on the nipple. She was said to be sensitive to feminine charms, and Florette, something of a tomboy with astounding green eyes, was very beautiful. That would be the last straw. My imagination ran riot. The wardens didn’t even honour the poor girl with an insult. They passed by hurriedly, other roll calls awaited them.

After their departure, Alma marched coldly up to Florette to deliver her stinging slaps on both cheeks. Her gesture disgusted me, my constrained silence a measure of my powerlessness. As a punishment, she was ordered to wash out the music room. Hardly had Alma turned her back than Florette broke into furious curses, and on this occasion I approved. Then she sank down, collapsing at the foot of the bedpost, sobbing desperately: “Papa, mama… mama…”I bent down and took her in my arms.

“Come on, Florette, stop that. You know you’ve got to get up. You put yourself in the wrong and those bitches take advantage of it. Tomorrow I’ll get you out of bed, I’ll make it for you…”

She wept furiously: “No, you won’t and I won’t either. They make me sick!”

The calm but authoritative voice of Little Irene cut short the crisis. “That’s enough of that. Get dressed, make your bed, you won’t have time to drink your coffee. The room must be washed before the rehearsal. I can’t imagine what pleasure it gives you constantly to create problems for yourself like this!”

Wonderfully calmed and crestfallen, Florette agreed. “You’re right, I won’t let it happen again.”

Little Irene was the only one who had this power over her. Some minutes later, on her knees, cloth in hand, Florette was rapidly washing the floor of the music room and complaining, “Those cows, those filthy cows!”

“You see,” observed Little Irene to me, “she’s incorrigible.”

“It’s true, she’s unbearable. Her behaviour will land us all in trouble,” chipped in Clara acrimoniously.

The mild, doll-faced Clara who had huddled against me in the quarantine block had changed beyond recognition. These wolves were turning her into a hyena.

“Fania!” She was looking at me, her eyes bright with astonishment.

“What?”

“Fania, your hair…”

“What about it?”

“It’s growing again, but it’s white. All white.”

Outside, the roll call had been interminable. I thought of the girls out there dying of cold. As the strings tended to snap and as the orchestra was prevented from playing by frozen fingers, we were temporarily exempted from parades, but the others, the work detachments, went out. Those poor creatures, haggard, fleshless, dirty, dragging the dogged remaining flicker of life within them around, those women transformed into frightened, breathless little animals, more dead than alive—for us they were the “others.” An awful term. I thought of them constantly, their existence obsessed me, seemed to me to deprive me of the right to be warm, clean, and comfortably dressed. The only thing I had in common with them was hunger, and even then I hadn’t seen any moslems in the music block; we definitely had a stronger grip on life than they did.

I’d hardly been here ten days; sometimes it felt like a year and sometimes an hour. My experience was not sufficient to answer the questions I perpetually asked myself. Our relationships with the “others” worried and disturbed me. Little Irene told me she’d tried to contact the camp Resistance and failed; men and women alike had wrong ideas about the “orchestra girls,” they were suspicious of us. Contact between us was at best sporadic. However, one of these women did come to see us, briefly. To sit on a chair, to be beside a stove was to risk punishment, or indeed death. It was through her that we learned of their working life:

“The SS make us build houses, we have to pile stones one on top of the other; they’re covered with ice, they burn our hands. When they don’t like what we’ve built, we have to climb on our wall and throw down the blocks we’ve just built up with such difficulty. Other prisoners who bring the blocks to the wall are working below; as they’re forbidden to move, we try to throw the stones as far as possible, but some of us can hardly lift them, and yesterday three were killed by stones falling on their heads. Our corporal laughed. He said:
”Ach,
these
judinnen
are no good for manual labour, they’re so clumsy they kill their own friends…‘ “

She stretched her arms out towards us, mere bones wrapped in a loose covering of cracked, wrinkled skin.