Auschwitz Violin (4 page)

“All right for now. Back to your shop, and don’t let me hear that you aren’t hard at work. I’ll keep the violin. Out of here.”

Raising his voice, the Commander called out to his aide with cruel amusement: “I’ve had the violinist punished. We’ll see him when he’s out of confinement.”

Then, addressing Daniel again, “What are you waiting for? Out of my sight.”

Daniel hurried away so fast that he almost fell. His desperate act of courage had not been sufficient to keep the accomplished musician from being punished. Daniel hadn’t dared to say a word, not with the Commander standing beside his dog. Who knows, he might have set it loose.

Daniel was miserable when he returned to his carpenter’s bench, where fortunately he was never at a loss for work. He had been naïve enough—not yet sufficiently steeped in camp cruelties—to think that the Commander would be satisfied with the newly repaired violin and wouldn’t punish Bronislaw, his “personal” violinist, for something that was not his fault. But logic did not reign at the Dreiflüsselager, much less compassion.

Eva eats good, thick slices of bread and butter, Daniel thought, in an attempt not to let desperation and exhaustion sweep him away. But he immediately returned to his previous train of thought: I should have warned the Commander that the repair was only provisional, that another, more thorough restoration—opening up the violin, reinforcing it from inside—might be required. But it had been impossible to utter a word; all his courage had been consumed the night before. Icy fear had sealed his lips. What would happen if the crack reappeared? What would be done to Bronislaw and himself? The thought stayed with him all day as he labored the full eleven and a half hours.

Over his midday soup, Daniel talked to Freund, who was visibly relieved when he saw him. When he hadn’t appeared in the barracks the night before, the men there had feared the worst—that he had been sent back to the confinement cell. Daniel had never even given them a thought as he labored over the violin. It wasn’t that he had forgotten where he was but that he had moved everything distasteful to a compartment far back in his mind. All of it: the whippings, mud, frost, the damp fog, the shadow of the gallows, the shouts and insults. But it had all resurfaced when Sauckel uttered the words “I’ve had the violinist punished.” All the ugliness was snared, like a slimy fish, by the Commander’s excruciatingly painful hook.

Bronislaw hadn’t been whipped, or at least not in public, or they would have had to form ranks. He might, however, have been whipped in private, in a basement with no one present. It had been done before. If this had happened to Bronislaw, sooner or later it could happen to all of them.

Better not to dwell on it, Daniel thought, but to remember that soon I’ll be called back to the Commander’s house. The Swine wants yet another shelf … maybe the cook will slip me some leftovers. Besides, tomorrow’s Thursday, the only day of the week we’re given potatoes cooked in their skins, instead of watery turnip soup. Maybe they’ll serve me a large potato.

The hours passed slowly, like a long cloak dragging on the ground. The day seemed interminable to Daniel after his sleepless night. It was longer than any other day, except for the four in the confinement cell, where he had lain like a mistreated dog.

That night, murmurs swept through the barracks. The mechanic had more news! But Daniel didn’t want to hear, or even know. He was dead tired and could read in the inmates’ eyes that the news was bad. He knew it would keep him awake, and he knew that if he did not sleep he would be sick, ready for “the infirmary” … the sinister journey to the Death Camp.

“Tomorrow,” he said. “Tell me tomorrow.”

The drone of the inmates’ whispering rocked him to sleep. There was nothing out there, other than time, other than the river of life, that could not wait. He dreamed he was in an enormous, cold waiting room filled with smoke. Through the window he glimpsed long cattle trains that rolled through the station without stopping, their wagon doors shut. When the doors opened, his friends were shoved onto the platform, but he remained silent, glued to the metal bench where he was sitting. From the ceiling hung corpses and violins. Then a train stopped, but the stationmaster, wearing a military cap and with the same kind eyes as the guest the other night, separated him from the others.

“Not you,” he said. “This isn’t your train. You have to finish the viola.”

An inspector approached, whip in hand, and Daniel wanted to flee. He lifted one leg but couldn’t move; he opened his mouth but couldn’t scream. He opened it wider and wailed.

“Shut up!” Freund whispered urgently into Daniel’s ear, clapping a hand over his mouth. “You’re with me. It’s a nightmare.”

“You were right,” Freund told him at breakfast, his mouth full of bread, “not to want to know the news last night. You were so upset it would have kept you from sleeping.”

“I feel better this morning, you can tell me.”

All of the inmates had been released after roll call; no incident had occurred. It was 6:15, so the two friends sat down on a rock in the dark while the violin maker listened to the brutal and unwelcome news. By a strange coincidence, perhaps by the will of God or by the Commander’s impulsive decision to repair the violin, Daniel had been saved. Now he knew why Rascher had had that expression of disappointment on his face. The luthier was young, still healthy, and no doubt would have made a good specimen. Four young inmates, one of whom was from their barracks, had been “selected” to participate in the Monster’s experiments.

“You didn’t even realize last night that one was missing.”

“What’ll they do to them?”

Freund was assigned to an auto repair shop, and he often picked up information from reliable sources there. He’d gotten this latest news because the chauffeur for one of the Obersturmführers had been explaining Rascher’s projects to another driver.

The horror of the account wormed its way through Daniel, like a snake rising from the mud. Fortunately I’m sitting down, he thought. It can’t be true! Could they actually be doing something so horrible? While he had been repairing the crack in the violin and clamping together the beautiful graining, Daniel thought as he covered his mouth to keep from vomiting, the monsters had been plunging prisoners into freezing cold water.

“Four degrees centigrade,” Freund said. “Very methodical. And they keep them in it till they lose consciousness.”

“Why do they do it? What do they say?”

“The Nazis say it’s to apply the results of the experiments to German aviators who are fished from the Baltic when their planes go down, but I don’t believe it. Nor do any of the mechanics, not even the officers. I’m sure it’s just to see them suffer. It gives them a hard-on to torture people—the bastards—a hard-on stiff as a board.”

“Don’t they die from the cold?”

“Some do, but they say it’s only a small percentage, ‘nothing important.’ You know how they say they bring them back to consciousness? They warm them between two naked women—prostitutes or prisoners. They call it experimenting with animal heat. They watch to see if the prisoners recover, constantly spying on them, taking their temperature. If they regain consciousness, they cover all three of them with a blanket. A mechanic who was at another camp before told me the bastards laughed as they talked about it. But it’s time to go now. Come on, get up, make an effort.”

They never saw the inmate from their barracks again.

 

 

 

Concentration Camp III consists of many isolated subcamps in
Upper Silesia that have been established with the object of servicing
industrial companies. At the moment of writing, all of these camps
have their own security systems, which is to say, they are
surrounded by barbed wire, electrified fences, and watch towers.

The subcamps of Concentration Camp III are controlled by
650 brigades of guards.

In order to provide greater security, another measure has been
taken: the creation of an exterior security ring controlled by the
Wehrmacht
.
The work camp that services I
.
G
.
Farbenindustrie,
which currently has at its disposal 7,000 prisoners, lies within this
exterior ring. Altogether, the I.G. Farben plants have approximately
15,000 men, in addition to our prisoners.

On the previous day Daniel had glued together the two plates that would form the belly of the violin. The grains from the beautiful Hungarian spruce were a perfect match. He had taken the precaution of slightly warming the edges so the glue would penetrate the pores of the wood. Now came one of the stages that Daniel most enjoyed, although it was one of the most difficult: marking the exact shape he wanted to give the instrument. He had a clear vision in his head, and despite the inevitable obstacles, he was confident that his experience could bring the violin to life.

He couldn’t help pausing to smell the wood before he started. He worked for a long time, then stopped when he was tired and looked approvingly at what he had accomplished. The design was exact. He was weak, but his hands had not shaken as he followed the template: the edges were neat, precise. He had probably labored over it too long. He took the fretsaw from its hook, laid it half on, half off the workbench, and, uttering a prayer—unconsciously perhaps—he began to saw. For the uninitiated, it can be difficult to maneuver the little saw, never quite touching the outline, leaving only a millimeter to be sanded later, so that the edges will form a clean, clear line, like paper cut with a guillotine. Daniel, however, never found this part difficult. He thought of nothing except the sinuous line he was following, its beautiful shape—just like a woman’s body. All of his energy, what little remained, was concentrated in his right hand. He had reclaimed his former talent.

The first half was finished, and his forehead was drenched in sweat from the exertion. He wiped it carefully so it wouldn’t affect his vision. He found the second part less tiring. As the silhouette of the violin began to acquire the shape of the template, drawing closer to his mind’s ideal, he was filled with a sense of well-being—something he hadn’t experienced for months—a physical well-being even. His hands possessed a memory of their own, he knew they did. The musicians who trusted him to repair their violins or cellos, or commissioned a new viola, had said the same. Daniel had always enjoyed talking to them, learning new things about their profession. His luthier fingers had guarded the memory of the delicate tasks demanded by his craft.

No, this time he didn’t wake up with a start, nor did anyone have to shake him out of his slumber. His mornings were spent crafting the violin. But the mealtime siren, the hurried departure of carpenters and cabinetmakers anxious to finish their shift, the sudden hunger pains reminded him that this was not
his
shop. He was in the
lager
, ordered by the Commander to make a violin.

All of the workshops within the camp, except for the ones that repaired vehicles, were now closed in the afternoons. All capable prisoners were employed in the plants that manufactured airplane and tank parts, weapons. The bombings were constant, and some of the prisoners had been put to work constructing underground galleries for a new arms factory. Daniel was sent to one of the I.G. Farben factories, one of many that exploited slave labor. Freund, however, remained in the camp working in the repair shop all day; the Führers and chauffeurs continued to value him because he was an exceptionally good mechanic.

At his carpenter’s bench, Daniel felt alive again, but when he and his co-workers left at the end of the shift, he had the impression that he was entering a nightmare where he was caught in a monster’s slimy tentacles. Rather than a nocturnal nightmare, this one commenced at midday; the semblance of calm acquired during the morning vanished, and in its place a knot gripped his chest. The whole idea of
his
violin seemed absurd, like a rose in a pigsty. A violin in the Three Rivers Camp. A violin as a survival tactic. Perhaps.

Unexpected events, unpleasant ones usually, surprised him but little; he had slowly become inured to them. Anything could happen. The crowded barracks could grow more crowded, additional bunks could be squeezed in for new prisoners—some of whom were always Russian. Inmates could be deprived of lunch with the excuse that they hadn’t worked hard enough at the factory. Or, on the contrary, they could discover that a raw carrot had been added to the turnip soup, following the new doctor’s advice (Rascher had been promoted). They could be ordered on a Tuesday or Friday morning to stand in formation in the Appellplatz—near the site where Daniel had been whipped—and, stiff and trembling from the cold, witness the hanging of a “subversive” prisoner accused of being a spy or a communist.

Although everything in the camp had come to seem equally illogical, equally quotidian, still Daniel had been astonished when he was suddenly ordered to make a violin: as well crafted “as if it were a Stradivarius,” the Untersturmführer had demanded. Even more astonishing were the tools, wood, and articles placed at his disposal. He thought at the time that the material must have been confiscated from the workshop of a Jewish luthier, German maybe, someone who might be dead, murdered. He didn’t recognize any of the material as coming from his own workshop in Krakow. It was a direct order from the Sturmbannführer, he was told, and he was forbidden to ask any questions, even if he meticulously adhered to formality.

“Number 389 respectfully requests permission to ask a question, sir,” he had stated after standing at attention and saluting.

“Permission denied.”

At least the words were not accompanied by a kick. The extended arm pointed toward the door to the carpenters’ shop. Daniel needed no urging; he entered immediately and was assigned a section of the room for him alone.

He labored in silence, closely scrutinized by a Ukrainian kapo, trying his best not to ponder the reasons that lay behind the violin, much less to comment on the work with his fellow inmates—he didn’t want to create any ill will. Daniel thought he might be able to glean some information from the Commander, but no opportunity presented itself.

Work advanced slowly the first days. Before he could even commence, he had to organize the confiscated material, select the wood he wanted, remove the chips adhered to it. Progress was also hindered because he was accustomed to
his
luthier knives,
his
gouge, plane, pliers. His own tools were wedded, so to speak, to the shape of his hands, all of them shiny and clean in his ground-floor workshop. Where had it all gone: the quiet, pleasant neatness of his workshop, the rows of violins hanging from the ceiling, the familiar warmth, his mother’s voice singing softly upstairs as she worked—his mother, who had died in the ghetto of tuberculosis or hunger.

He had not even been allowed to ask how long he had to finish the violin without being punished. He noticed, however, that after he had worked for several days, no one bothered him. The guard no longer beat him, he hadn’t been sent back to the confinement cell, Rascher hadn’t reappeared. He was whipped again one morning—everyone in the barracks was when officials discovered two hidden apples—but he was immediately sent back to work. As he labored over the violin, he began to grow more confident, despite the fact that morning was divorced from afternoon, as if the day were split in two by a sword. Daniel never found it difficult to become absorbed in his work or to store away in the attic of his brain all the fury and fog that surrounded him. That is, as long as no particular “incident” occurred during roll call, no dogs sank their teeth into a prisoner’s leg because of some innocent or suspicious movement, and only the usual insults were dispensed. Sometimes the fragment of a melody sprang to his lips, dying before it could find a voice, or snatches of old prayers hidden in the folds of his memory—
Jevarehehà Adonài
.

As he stood in line for his midday soup, Daniel was thinking that, despite the gnawing in his stomach, he felt almost happy while he labored over the belly of the violin. But—as was the case with most of the inmates—hunger evoked memories, fantasies of past meals. If he was forced to wait longer than usual, visions emerged of a well-laid table and the delicious kosher food his mother cooked. He would imagine the two holiday meals at Passover with all the relatives, uncles and cousins. The basket with the
haroseth
, the bitter herbs that would have tasted so good now, the hard-boiled eggs, the white silk cloth with blue stripes that covered them … What he would have given for a hard-boiled egg today! Or better still, a piece of lamb. He remembered the taste of the matzo—the unleavened bread—and the fun of searching for the hidden piece, the prize for the child who found it. He didn’t want to think about the songs or the three toasts. If he could just have a few spoonfuls of
cholent
—the terrine of rice, eggs, dried beans, and goose that had to be cooked all night in the community oven. As a young boy, he’d been sent more than once to fetch it.

His vision vanished cruelly when he was handed the soup, the same soup as every day, except Thursdays, when the potatoes were a bit more filling. He knew what awaited him. The five or six hours at the factory that afternoon with nothing in his stomach other than the watery soup would drive him, as it did every day, to the brink of exhaustion and desperation. He often thought that he wouldn’t be able to make the effort to rise the following morning. His day had come to resemble a face that has suffered an accident: beautiful on one side, burnt or scarred on the other.

He wasn’t always able to devote the entire morning to the violin; sometimes instruments were brought to him for repair. Strange as it may seem, the enemy had assembled a small orchestra in the camp, as they had in others. It had taken Daniel a long time to organize all the material he had been given. The day after it arrived he had been asked to choose the pieces he needed and set aside those he didn’t. He suspected that what he discarded would be sold. He was careful, in any case, to ensure that he would have extra wood and rough flitches in the event a plate cracked, or he needed to repair an instrument. He discovered a few ready-cut pieces of beautiful spruce and maple and some ebony end buttons. He kept two of the violin bows—one needed repairing, but the other looked brand new—some braided strings, also some sycamore and ebony for the purfling. He set aside a number of strips of wood that had been cut for ribs and kept all of the tools—he would need every one of them. He was relieved to find three sound posts that had already been crafted (better to have too many). They would likely save him some work. The jars and boxes with different kinds of gum and glue—liquid and granulated—kept him occupied for some time, but now they stood in a neat row, the name clearly marked on each. In the end, he discarded very little, but fortunately no one rebuked him. Daniel determined that all of the material must have come from the workshop of an excellent craftsman.

In the afternoon, he found it difficult to concentrate on the boring factory work. That morning he had finally been able to finish the top plate of the violin, and it was ready to be planed. He was becoming obsessed with his instrument. But he couldn’t let his mind wander, in part to keep from being reprimanded, in part to maintain the proper pace, to neither interfere with nor accelerate the work in his sector. The kapo—also a Ukrainian prisoner—wasn’t one of the cruelest, but when it was in his interest, he demanded that the established quota be met.

From time to time Sauckel himself or another commander made an appearance, and their visits rarely ended well. One terminated with the death of a prisoner accused of sabotage. Daniel always suspected that one of the men in his sector had pointed his finger at the disagreeable fitter—otherwise, why would they have gone straight to him? The officials didn’t want the commotion of a public execution, perhaps to avoid betraying the informer. The Commander rebuked the fitter and shouted an order at two of his aides, who then dragged the prisoner outside. No one ever saw him again.