The Librarian of Auschwitz

One day, Margit and Dita are sitting in the spring sun when they see Renee. They ask her about the SS officer who used to stare at her. She tells them he wasn’t really a bad person, but Margit and Dita are offended by this statement. Renee tells them what his plans were about rescuing her, then she tells them he was shot. Renee regrets telling too much and walks away,

One day near the fence, Dita meets a Polish boy. He keeps saying a Polish word that she doesn’t understand, but she knows he wants to give her something. They decide to meet at another section of the fence, but when she gets there, she sees Mengele. The boy has vanished. It feels like a set up as she sees Mengele staring at her. She is convinced he will kill her, but he doesn’t even look at her as he walks by. He is whistling Bach. It is then that she realizes he doesn’t recognize her and never intended to spend his days watching her. He doesn’t even know who she is. She is amazed that all this time she believed something that any rational mind would never have believed. After Mengele disappears from sight, the Polish boy gives Dita an egg. Dita has not had an egg for two years. She returns to the hut and shares the feast with her mother.

One day, the prisoners are all given postcards and told to write to loved ones back home. There are rules about what they can and cannot say. When Dita’s mother considers writing the truth, she feels sick. Dita is afraid of these postcards because she remembers that the people from the September transport were also given the chance to write to family back home just hours before their death. Maybe this signals the end of Dita’s life. Also, everyone understands that most of their loved ones are dead.

The allied bombings are coming closer and more often. Rumors persist that the Germans are losing ground. Miriam Edelstein tells Dita that the Red Cross are not going to come, and Dita feels cheated. Then, she learns that Block 31, and the school, must be vacated by the next day. Dita gathers all the books, cleans and mends them, and hugs them as if to say goodbye. Then, she puts them in their hiding place. 

After Block 31’s evacuation, Dita and Margit talk about what might come next. Dita admits that she never found out what happened to Fredy. It was either suicide, an accident, or the Germans murdered him knowing that an uprising was abreast of them. She believes she will never know.

Miriam Edelstein and her son, Arieh, are taken by Jeep to her husband at the torture prison of Auschwitz I. Miriam barely recognizes her husband. He has wasted away. An SS corporal takes out a gun. In front of Miriam and Yakub, they shoot Arieh, then Miriam, forcing Yakub to watch. In a way it doesn’t matter. By the time the corporal shoots Yakub, “he is surely already dead inside” (354).

Dita and her mother and all the other prisoners are told it is time to line up for selection. Long lines snake the camp, while Mengele and two corporals with guns slowly go through the selection. All the women are told to strip, and as they go through the line naked, Mengele looks at them with an evil, clinical eye. The guards stare at the woman with lascivious grins on their faces.

When it is Dita’s turn, and she is asked her name, age, and profession, and for some reason, she tells Mengele she is a painter. Mengele pauses. He wants to know if she can paint him sometime. She says she will. Mengele pauses to reflect and, as Dita knows an officer reflecting is dangerous thing: “Any veteran would say that nothing good can come out of that mind” (361). Mengele smiles and sends her to the right. She has no time for relief. Her mother is next. Her mother, who looks so defeated, is selected for the left. In a strange move, her mother walks toward the right and gets in line behind Dita. No one notices. It’s a miracle. Dita has heard nothing about Miriam Edelstein, and she has not seen Margit or Margit’s father.

Dita and her mother are shipped to Hamburg, where they work in a brick factory. The Germans are losing the war. Often, the SS take this fact out on the Jews, beating and killing them for sport as an outlet for their rage. Dita suffers because her mother looks so defeated. Liesl suffers because she feels she has failed her daughter. The only thing she can do for her daughter, she thinks, “is worry her as little as possible” (364). One day, Dita sees Renee chatting with some girls. Renee waves but then walks by as if falling in love with a Nazi belongs to a different life. Soon, Dita and her mother are shipped out of the brick factory to Bergen-Belsen.

Bergen-Belsen is a work camp, so they know they won’t go to the gas chamber. The women’s supervisor, Elisabeth Volkenrath, is as sadistic as any guard they’ve ever seen. Bergen-Belsen was once run by the war division, but now the SS have taken over. Transports arrive daily. There is little food and the barracks are crowded with people, lice, and typhoid. It’s a death camp in its own way. The prisoners are trying to learn what type of work is done at Bergen-Belsen. One of the veterans says there’s no work at Bergen-Belsen anymore; “You just survive for as long as you can” (370). The conditions are deplorable.

Most of the guards have vanished. When a new transport arrives, no one is there to handle the people. Each day, Volkenrath comes into the barracks and asks how many have died. Then, she points to two random prisoners to pick the bodies up, take them outside, and throw them in the pit. This goes on day after day. 

One day, it is Dita’s turn to carry a dead body to the ditch along with a Gypsy woman. As they near the pit, the stench makes Dita nauseous. She peers into the pit, and there are hundreds, maybe thousands of bodies. She is overcome by the sight. She contemplates her life: “That’s all we are? Bits of decomposing matter? A few atoms, like those of a willow tree or a shoe?” (375).

Sometimes, Volkenrath shows up and tells people to go dig a ditch or some other meaningless job. Volkenrath wears her hair in a bun. The gossip is she was once a hairdresser. Now, she’s a murderer and an angry, Jew-hating person. One day, when she calls two names to gather up the dead bodies, Dita hears her mother’s name called. Dita jumps up before her mother has a chance to stand up. Impersonating another prisoner is punishable by death, but Dita won’t allow her mother to witness such sacrilege and terror as to see her fellow Jewish brothers and sisters heaved into a mass open grave. Later, Liesl scolds Dita, and Dita is outraged that after all they’ve been through her mother would treat her like a child.

One day, they are moved to a new barracks: a big room without bunks, just straw on the floor. That is where Dita sees Margit. Their reunion is joyful. Liesl takes Margit in, as if she is Dita’s sister, and they form a small family of three. Margit lost her father in the selection and doesn’t know what happened to him. Next to Dita are two other sisters, Margot and Anne Frank. They both have typhus and die. Dita is devastated. The only crime any of them have committed is “being Jewish” (383).

Transport upon transport arrives, bringing mostly Hungarians. When they ask where the latrines are, everyone laughs. There are no latrines. There is no food, no blankets, and little water. One of the prisoners who arrives demands to work, not to die there. Volkenrath pulls out her gun. She puts it to the prisoners head. The woman urinates in fear. Volkenrath glares at the woman with a look “as rabid as a dog foaming at the mouth” (385). She laughs when the woman loses control of her functions. Then, she pulls the gun away. She tells the prisoner that she’d rather see the woman die slowly and more painfully.

The barracks smell like human waste. They are cesspools of disease. Like many of the others, Liesl, Margit, and Dita move outside. The guards are all gone. The allied bombings get closer and closer every day. Many prisoners drink from the puddles and contract cholera. Many of them don’t get up from their spot on the ground and die there. Days go by. Dita decides to quit fighting. She cannot move. Margit lies there with her eyes closed. Dita begins to feel delirious. She begins to see the characters in the books she has read: “Her sanity is already as slippery as butter” (389).

Then, she hears shouting. There is movement, activity. Soldiers in brown uniforms appear. They raise their guns. Then, they look around at the wasted humanity and lower their guns. They cannot believe what they are seeing: “There are some soldiers who faces show compassion; others, incredulity; and many, disgust” (391). They simple cannot comprehend what they are seeing. For the first time during the war, the Jews who’ve been so brutalized, tortured, and arrested, are watching the British arresting the Germans who remain. They watch as the soldiers arrest Volkenrath. 

The prisoners watch as the British force Volkenrath and other SS to move dead bodies to the pit at gunpoint. They are unable to give anyone a proper burial because disease is spreading so quickly. They give the Jews food and whatever medical help they can, but so many continue to die. One day, Margit reunites with her father. She is overjoyed. She learns that the British have already made arrangements for her and her father to travel to Prague. Dita and Liesl are happy for Margit: “Seeing her happy makes them happy” (392). Margit tells them that her home will be their home. They know she is serious.

Dita doesn’t want to spoil Margit’s sweet outcome, but she is worried about her mother, who is growing increasingly sick as time goes by. The British send Liesl to a field hospital and put her under clean sheets, where she is heavily sedated. Dita never leaves her side, except to take a walk. She is told to always wear a mask. One day she sees one of the nurses, a man named Francis, reading a book. It’s a Western. He gives her the book, and she doesn’t care that it’s in English. Just holding a book, smelling it, and fanning the pages gives her peace.

Dita’s mother doesn’t improve. Dita is shocked into disbelief that after all her mother has overcome, she may not make it. Dita ruminates about her mother, thinking, “She isn’t going to live in peace. It isn’t fair” (394). A few more days go by, and Liesl dies. Dita is devastated but takes some relief in knowing that at least her mother died while free. The British make immediate arrangements for Dita to go home, but she has no home to go to.

The war has ended. Edita is in Prague to find Margit. She has the address that Margit’s father wrote down and gave to her before they left so that she could find them. When she locates the apartment, an overweight woman who is not Jewish greets her. Dita can tell she’s not Jewish because “fat Jews are an extinct species” (399). The woman tells Dita that Margit and her father are not there. She and her husband invite her in for some food, and Dita appreciates how kind they. The woman tells Dita that she has a note that Margit left behind. It tells Dita where they are, and to come as soon as possible.

Dita must first get travel documents and identification. She begins the process of returning to life among the living. As she waits in a long, slow line for her papers, she sees Ota Keller. She is amazed, then happy. Ota talks about his father, who didn’t make it. He weeps. So does Dita, but she likes Ota’s good spirit. After they’ve finished their business at the government office, Ota asks Dita where she is going next. She tells him she has to go to the Jewish Community Office, and he asks if he can accompany her. She is delighted and says yes.

A few days later, Margit is sweeping the steps of a building while she daydreams about a young man who does deliveries. All of a sudden, she hears someone say, “You’re a very fat, girl” (405). Margit is about to say something rude, when she looks up and sees that it is her friend, Dita. They run to each other and hug. They are crying and laughing. Dita can’t believe that something actually worked out for her. She thinks, “Finally something good was true. They were waiting for her” (404).

In Teplice, Dita and Margit take classes to make up for lost schooling. Ota, who works in Prague as a teacher, comes on the weekends and walks through the bucolic town. Everywhere they go, they see reminders of their fractured lives, especially the once beautiful synagogue, now destroyed.

Eventually, Ota and Dita marry in Prague. Ota finally gets his father’s business back, but soon the Soviets arrive and take it back. Now, the country is not fascist, it is communist. Ota eventually finds work at the Ministry of Culture. He is the only one who is not a communist. Eventually, he is accused of being an enemy of the party so he and Dita emigrate to Israel, where they run into Avi Fischer, an old inmate from Block 31. Avi had been the one who created the glee club for the children.

Ota and Dita settle in Israel and have three children. Ota wrote a novel titled The Painted Wall that takes place in Block 31. In his book, he exonerates Hirsch, writing that the doctor gave him an overdose of sedatives after he heard that Hirsch would head the uprising. Dita and Ota are married for 52 years before Ota’s death.

Rudi Rosenberg changes his name to Rudi Vrba. After his escape, he reported to the Hungarian-Jewish community what he had been through at Auschwitz, but they did not heed his call and sent thousands of Hungarian Jews to their death. Rudi remained critical of the Hungarian-Jewish community all his life. He and his fellow escapee, Fred Wexler, wrote another report that was later used during the Nuremberg trials.

Elisabeth Volkenrath was arrest by the British troops at Bergen-Belsen. She was tried and condemned to death by hanging. Rudolph Höss was hanged in Auschwitz I where Miriam, Yakub, and Arieh Edelstein were murdered. Adolf Eichmann was tried in Jerusalem and subsequently executed.

David Schmulewski the member of the resistance who worked in the gas chambers, lived in exile in Paris. Siegfried Lederer escaped and ended up in Slovakia. Joseph Mengele was never caught, despite being nearly found in Uruguay. When his son visited him before he died, he asked his father if he had committed such atrocities, and he denied any involvement. He was never captured and brought to justice.

Margit married and had three daughters, the last one named Dita. She remained in Prague. and though Dita lived in Israel, they remained friends. After Margit died, Dita stayed in touch with Margit’s three girls.