The Butterfly and the Violin (33 page)

Omara released her for a moment and turned her shoulders so that they faced each other. “Adele, I brought you here for a reason.”

She brushed a tear away from her cheek. “And what is that?”

“I must tell you that there is hope. Hope for tomorrow,” she whispered, leaning to cradle Adele’s face in her hand. “There is hope in God.”

Adele’s heart gave way then. In a rush, the vault she’d hidden deep within finally released the hold on the anguish she’d buried there. She crumpled against Omara, resting her cheek on her chest as the wounds she’d endured prompted fresh tears.

“I have prayed . . .” She sobbed, “I prayed the moment I stepped from the train. But this? This is a desert! You’ve shown me beauty. I see that it can exist in such a place. But why, after all of the agonizing prayers of His people—why is God silent?”

“Adele?”

Omara’s voice was soft. A caress. A place of respite in the midst of their seemingly never-ending nightmare.

“Look at me, child.” The woman’s voice held such a tender note that Adele felt they could be miles away from Auschwitz in that moment. “There is to be a concert in early October. High-ranking Third Reich officials will be present.”

Adele’s voice hitched in her throat. She looked up. “My parents—”

“Calm down,” she said, raising a hand to quiet her. “I know nothing of your parents’ presence at the concert. That is not why we are here.”

“Why then?”

“Now that Birkenau is joined by the first Auschwitz camp, they’ve asked that you play a solo in the orchestra concert. So you see, God is not silent. He has secured you another day. Now, you must get well so that you can practice. Alma is gone, God rest her soul, but it does not spell your end too.”

“But how can I play?” Adele pulled at the dirtied uniform she now wore. “Like this? Look at me . . . I’m a ghost.”

“I have asked the other girls for help. Marta has a friend in the kitchens and she will bring extra soup for you. They will smuggle potatoes into the block.”

“No. Even if they could find any potatoes, I can’t let them risk their lives for me. It’s a death sentence if they’re caught stealing food.”

“Then they won’t get caught.”

Adele shook her head. “But they’re starving. We all are. How can I ask them to bring me food?”

“They would do it for you, Adele, just as you would for them. The food will make you strong. Fränze and the others will watch over you as you walk to the gates each day, making sure you do not stumble or appear sick before the SS. Then we will all shield you from practice and allow you to rest in the block during the day. What I need you to do is to play the music in your mind. I need you to pray. Seek God. And above all, allow Him to heal you.”

Adele’s chin rose, pulling her eyes back to the images on the walls. She thought of the lost as her gaze traveled around the room. She heard the violin cry as scores of people walked the long road from the platform to the crematorium. Saw images of Dieter, and the Haurbechs, and her noble Vladimir, all flashing before her. She felt the coolness of the air in their secret garden, saw the butterfly tossing its kaleidoscope wings on a breeze as spring was renewed.

“You will agree to this?”

Adele decided then, with images of beauty cascading before her, that she must accept Omara’s kindness, knowing she was going to die in Auschwitz. This would be her last performance . . . Finally, her soul spent, Adele was ready to let go.

“Yes,” she said. “I will.”

“And you understand why I have brought you here?”

Adele glanced up at the painting again, feeling the good-bye bleed over her insides.

This is it, God. Isn’t it? You want me to play once more.

Just once—for You.

“I understand, Omara. And yes.” She rose up from the floor with renewed strength, palms wiping the wetness from her face. “I will play.”

CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

October 7, 1944

T
he explosions rang out in the afternoon.

Dust rained down from the ceiling with the force of the blasts and shook the walls around them. Adele’s attention was ripped from the rehearsal in the music block, as was everyone else’s, and was diverted to the sounds of screaming and popping gunfire that had erupted outside.

The orchestra froze into an eerie silence with instruments half raised, eyes and ears piqued with the awareness that something was very wrong.

Fränze breathed out into the silence, “What was that?” The tiny flute player’s whisper was barely audible above the roar of activity outside.

When the walls shook with another loud boom, everyone dropped their instruments and flew to the only window in the block. Adele instead ran to the door, thinking they could get a better understanding of what was happening if she looked outside.

She poked her head out the door only to be yanked back a second later.

“Get back, Adele!” Omara stood with hands on hips and nostrils flared as she bellowed the order. “I have not fought to keep you all alive just to lose you now.” She pointed to the back of the block and began ushering the group backward with forceful
hands. “Everyone to the back wall. Don’t you think bullets can pierce wood? Can they not destroy flesh and bone?”

More pops of gunfire in rapid succession and agonized screams made the group jump in unison. Terrified squeals permeated the air as several of the younger girls cried out. Marta stood over them, burying the younger Fränze under the protection of her torso as she looked up to Adele. The terrified flash of fear Adele saw there sent a sickening chill up her spine.

They stared, knowing what the sound was.

“
Machine
-
gun fire?
” Marta mouthed the words. Adele nodded, to which the older girl squeezed her eyes shut and whispered, “God help us.”

The heart in Adele’s chest quaked at the very thought of defenseless prisoners running from a hail of machine-gun fire aimed to mow them down. But why? Why now? She couldn’t make sense of it. The Nazis had the gas chambers and their random executions. They had the harsh labor assignments, day in and day out. Even starvation and the rapidly spreading effects of disease worked in their favor. So why would they use up their artillery resources when they had so many other means of disposing of prisoners?

The orchestra was huddled together like sardines as each girl tried to burrow down against the girl squeezed up next to her. They were a terrified mass of muffled cries and trembling flesh, all lumped together as if the girl closest to the dirt on the floor would be safe.

Marta shouted over the noise, “Adele, what is happening?”

“I don’t know,” she said, patting a hand to little Fränze’s head. The poor girl had taken to covering balled fists over her ears with such force that her knuckles were white. “Stay here,” she instructed to the now silently crying Marta, and pecked a kiss to Fränze’s temple. “All of you stay here. I’ll find out what’s happening.”

Omara had moved to the door. Cautiously, she’d cracked it open and stared out at what Adele could only imagine as a new definition
of Nazi horror. The woman must have heard her approach, as she turned with a dexterity that decried her advanced years and began shouting.

“Adele.” Omara shoved her back again toward the corner with the other girls, a bit more roughly this time. “Get back! Do you not hear the gunfire? It’s not safe!”

Adele righted her balance and took several cautious steps toward the door again. Something terrible had happened, that was clear to all. But unless she could find out whether it was safe to stay put, they could all be sitting ducks. Gunfire was frightening enough, but if their building was bombed and the walls burst into flames, their only hope might be to take their chances and make a run for it.

No one would survive if the wooden roof on the block turned into an inferno.

Omara had taken the scene quite badly. Adele could see the strain in a muscle that flexed in her jaw, as if she was grinding down her teeth with bottled emotion.

“Omara . . .” She reached a hand out to touch it to their block leader’s shoulder.

The woman didn’t respond to Adele’s fingertips as she’d expected. Instead, she opened the door a few inches wider so that they might both look out and said, “There. If you must see it. Have another look at death.”

The terror outside the block walls could only be described as a war zone. In seeing the carnage before her, Adele imagined somehow that the front lines of battle had been redrawn and the Red Army, as had been rumored by the prisoner population for weeks, had broken through to challenge the Germans on their own turf.

Is this it, God? Are we saved?

Another explosion sent a tremor to the back walls. More dust floated down from the aged wood ceiling as the younger girls cried out.

Adele’s breath shuddered in her lungs. “Is it the Red Army?” She could scarcely speak with the hope of it all.

Omara shook her head.

“Then the British? Or the Americans? Please tell me they’re here to save us.”

The older woman scoffed. “Do you see? It is not someone who would save us! We are on our own here.” Omara threw the words back in Adele’s face, her usually controlled countenance now terse, her violently darting pupils looking almost manic as they searched her face.

“But this could be it—we could all be saved! Did you not hear it? Bombs exploding and machine-gun fire? What else could it be but that we are to be rescued!”

One of the girls shouted out in response to Adele’s declaration, “Oh, merciful God! We are saved!”

Adele felt a rush of energy, a blast of adrenaline that instantly coursed through her veins, sending a shock to jump-start her limbs. She felt like she could fight, if need be. Whether born of courage or pure stupidity, she couldn’t have deciphered. All she knew was that her legs wanted to run outside and her palms twitched, longing to be armed with a weapon that would allow her to fight back. “Surely God has sent—”

“Foolish girl! No one is coming.”

Adele could see nothing beyond what she wanted to. “Omara, what would you have me see? Our hell here is over! Oh God . . . it’s over!”

“It is a revolt, Adele!”

The words hit her like a fierce smack to the face.

“What . . . ?”

Her body froze, in panic or disbelief, and she stood numbed by the fact that the war zone in front of her could only have one winning side. She knew which side that would be.

The rest of the girls looked on from their perch in the corner,
like a gaggle of frightened birds that couldn’t hope to ever find themselves uncaged. They kept their eyes fixed on her, despite Omara’s repeated order for them to lower their heads, and stared back as the truth suffocated all shreds of hope.

“What are you saying, Omara?”

The older woman closed the door to a miniscule crack when some of the activity again came closer to their door. “I am saying, Adele, that a prisoner revolt has begun. The members of the
Sonderkommando
at Crematorium IV made plans to fight back. They learned that they were to be executed and a new group brought in to take their place.”

She shook her head. “But why? Why would the SS do that?”

“It is simple logic to them. I don’t pretend to understand evil. But the
Sonderkommando
have seen too much. These prisoners can be elected to die the moment they step from the train or five months in the future. What choice do they have? They are charged with cleaning out the gas chambers and feeding the ovens with the evidence. They are witnesses to death, and a witness is a dangerous thing to the Nazis. The prisoners decided the time was right. The time to fight back is now.”

It was shock all over again for Adele, but this time it connected to a memory—the memory of a night at the SS guards’ Solahütte resort and the strange behavior of her usually wise and controlled friend. She thought of a morning the summer before when she’d snapped a string on her violin and come rushing back to the block, only to find that the odd behavior had returned with a visitor in the music block.

And it all became clear. Omara was involved in the revolt.

“You have been planning this, haven’t you?”

Omara looked her square in the face and without hesitation nodded just once.

“Women have been smuggling supplies, weapons, and gunpowder from the ammunitions factory since before you arrived.
Little bits here and there—whatever could be hidden with the bodies of prisoners who died and were being carried back to the camp at night. They were smuggled to the men in the adjoining camp, on the bodies being carried to the crematorium. It was the only way.”

Adele’s heart sank.

They weren’t saved. No one was coming to free them. No one was there to fight for them, except sorely weakened prisoners with makeshift weapons. And Omara, the only person she could rely on anymore, was involved. If they lost, which they would, the Nazis would surely take her to the gas chamber for it.

Oh God! I lost my family, my Vladimir . . . Am I to now lose the only
person I have left in the world?

The physical pain caused by the heartache in her chest shocked her. As they stood by the cracked door, with hell erupting outside, she could see no way out. Except to fight.