Auschwitz Violin (5 page)

In some cases when the prisoners hadn’t accomplished the assigned task, they were forced to begin half an hour earlier the following day and weren’t given any lunch. For all of these reasons, Daniel made an effort to work hard, always careful not to scrape his hands, so as not to affect his ability to craft the violin. He forced himself to wait until nighttime to think about his precious instrument.

Having been absorbed in his violin for so many weeks, he had only now realized that the days were less short, less cold; it was no longer dark when the prisoners assembled for the morning roll call. The dawn light now revealed the scandalous marks of their long slavery: Daniel could see the gaunt faces of the rows of men dressed in shabby clothes that bore the sinister colored rectangles—yellow ones, primarily—dark circles under their eyes, the signs of beatings and scars on some faces. Had he lost count of the time? The days were like years, the months like days, all of it muddled indistinguishably together.

Nothing existed other than the camp, other than this island, this monstrous archipelago of subcamps. He felt a gust of wind, and the air was less icy, more gentle. It was the first benevolent gesture in this land of hatred. The swallows would be nesting soon on the street where he had lived in Krakow. Spring, he told himself, would bloom brighter than ever. It would bloom over the bodies of the thousands of dead. It wasn’t a comforting thought, but it was true.

He found the coffee more bitter, the slice of bread punier, almost as if his thoughts had weighed it down, kept it from rising. A few moments later, as the inmates were heading to their work areas, he paused to glance at the sky—something he rarely did because he found it always shrouded in clouds or fog—and discovered large patches of blue. A harsh slap on his back forced him to march again. Yes, he thought again as he stifled a sob, spring is drawing near. Our dead will fertilize the earth and spring will return.

With this in mind, his shoulder still aching, Daniel trudged through the door of the carpenters’ shop. He shrugged the thought off and began to polish the edges of the top plate for the last time. He sniffed the wood as he picked up the mold that would cradle the belly and, using the tiny gouge, began to remove the extra wood from inside the plate. This required an art as subtle as that of the poets. The slap, the reminder of death, the expectation of long hours at the factory all vanished, as if the smell of the wood were a breeze that swept away the dark, threatening clouds. The guard who was watching him was distracted as he ate his lunch, and Daniel was able to rest a moment without endangering himself. He placed the minute finger planes—three different sizes—within arm’s reach so they would be ready for gouging the wood down to the appropriate delicate thickness.

After considerable thought, he had decided to leave the central part of the belly four and a half millimeters thick. He usually left it at five, but he had been ordered to craft an instrument “like the Stradivarius”; the edges he would plane down to three millimeters. Working under less than ideal conditions, he didn’t want to risk making the plates any thinner, but the sound would be full if he crafted the instrument in this manner, following the dictates of the school founded by Mateusz Dobrucki, who had been, like himself, a Krakow man. Daniel despised violins and violas with walls too thick, their sound flat and lifeless. He moved the gouge confidently, going against the grain of the wood, as his father—Peace be upon him—had taught him. Not a single long shaving appeared, as it should be. After all, he’d been in the profession since he was fourteen!

Daniel continued his work, surrounded by the smell of wood chips, the sounds of planing, the occasional hammer stroke. He stopped for a moment and checked the thickness again, clearly pleased with his skill. He had reached six millimeters. It was time to switch to the finger plane, which would help his task considerably; he had never had any problem planing the arches.

The days were growing brighter. Judging by the light and the amount of work he had accomplished, Daniel calculated that it was almost noon. As he was thinking this, he heard the door of the workshop abruptly swing open. He didn’t turn around. Whoever it was—inspectors or visitors—it was essential that they find the inmates absorbed in their tasks. Suddenly Daniel’s plane refused to budge. He didn’t look up, he didn’t have to. Please, God, keep me from being paralyzed, don’t let me ruin the violin, he implored. Above the usual din of the workshop—sounds he always enjoyed—he recognized two unmistakable voices, branded into his brain by fear. The louder, deeper voice belonged to Sauckel, the other to Rascher.

Daniel felt as if everyone could hear his heart pounding, but his mind worked fast. The two men were standing near the other prisoners, some distance from his section of the shop. He gently placed the belly of the violin on the table he used for the most delicate tasks, strolled over to his carpenter’s bench, and picked up the piece of maple that he had cut to size for the neck of the violin. Admiring the beautiful flames that ran the length of the wood, he began to plane one edge. It had occurred to him in a flash that he could do this job by instinct, even with Rascher’s cold eyes fixed on him. The rhythm of the plane calmed him. Then the two men stood before him.

“How is the violin coming along?”

To his surprise, the Commander’s voice showed no ridicule or insult. It seemed to express the natural curiosity of a client. Daniel managed to respond with a clear voice: “It’s going quite well, sir, without a problem.”

He continued to work as he spoke. He had learned always to question official reactions. He had been thrashed for not standing at attention when addressed; he had been thrashed when he stopped work to stand at attention. There was no thrashing this time. As he planed, he could see the men out of the corner of his eye. They watched with curiosity when Daniel picked up the carpenter’s square and ruler to measure the exact size of the neck. They seemed pleased with the beautiful grain of the wood. Aren’t these bastards ever going to leave? Daniel wondered.

Daniel was a skilled craftsman and worked fast. He was ready now to scribe the pattern for the neck, the rounded head, everything that had to be marked—including the holes to indicate the shape the spiral would take, the elegant curve of the scroll. He could not do it calmly with those four eyes trained on his hands. Finally, he heard the visitors depart, and an almost violent sense of relief raced through his body, like a fever leaving a sick man. The excruciating tension began to subside, and he placed the neck of the violin on the workbench and wiped the sweat from his brow.

As he walked back to his worktable, Daniel’s knees buckled, and he realized how great his fear had been. He ran his tongue over his lips; they were dry, his throat too. He leaned briefly against the bench and took a deep breath. He needed air but didn’t want to ask permission to step outside; he might run across the two officers. Their visit had seemed so long that he calculated it was almost time for the midday siren. He needed to get back to work; it wouldn’t do to attract the guard’s attention by resting too long.

Daniel concluded that the visit hadn’t brought any particularly bad consequences; nobody in the workshop had been hit or punished. The thought helped calm him. He was less agitated when he picked up the compass and the tiny millimeter tape to measure the thickness of the arch. After that, he continued working with the smallest of the planes. Fortunately, Father—May his memory be for a blessing—taught me well! Daniel thought. He gazed with satisfaction at the morning’s work, the results of an eventful session. The following morning he would begin by reinforcing the joints of the two plates with tiny, paper-thin wedges; then he would burnish the inside with sandpaper so the edges would be rounded.

He rubbed his hand along the smooth arch inside the belly of the violin; he trusted his sense of touch as much as he did the compass. He had never believed that any tool could be more precise than his fingertips. He noticed with justified apprehension that they were growing coarse, losing their sensitivity from working in the factory; he sensed the beginnings of a troublesome roughness. But not even this could discourage him as he caressed the two pieces of wood that formed the belly, recalling as he did how desperately he had held Eva during the incursions into the ghetto. The siren sounded abruptly, announcing the end of the shift.

Daniel realized that the inspection had not gone as well in other workshops. He caught sight of one of the Führers, followed by two kapos with a prisoner between them. A strange silence reigned in the camp, broken only by frightened murmurs as the inmates watched the prisoner being locked in a dark cell. The hunting expeditions never ended until the heroes had captured someone in their snares.

 

 

 

In exchange for a small bribe of cigarettes, the new, more venal kapo cautiously handed Daniel a jar of ointment that would—Daniel hoped—heal his hands. Freund had collected the cigarettes with relative ease from the chauffeurs at the vehicle repair shop, and the luthier had saved them, one by one, until he had enough. On the long day of the Commander and Rascher’s visit, exactly two weeks before, all the prisoners had been given a medical examination, perhaps a consequence of orders sent from higher up, by the cold-eyed doctor himself. The various Führers in charge of the camp—Freund always referred to them as Pigs—had baptized the medical routine with the name Spring Cleaning, perhaps because winter had taken its toll on the weak, had killed so many of them, thus sparing officials some of their work.

Daniel lay in his bunk that night, spreading a thick layer of ointment on his hands, thinking himself fortunate to have passed the checkup. This time it hadn’t been just the usual rapid once-over that was mandatory before a prisoner was whipped. The camp was small; it had been possible to examine all of the prisoners on the same day. Like the others, Daniel had stood naked as a skinned rabbit; he had been weighed, groped, obliged to bend over, his chest sounded. Finally, he had been considered fit for work rather than the slaughterhouse, the black-smoke Death Camp.

The “healthy” ones were shut in the barracks earlier than usual that night. Daniel lay awake until late—his fellow inmates asleep or pretending to sleep so they wouldn’t have to discuss the horrors of the selection. He thought he heard the sound of trucks returning, but it was too early! They must not have taken the others to another
lager;
they hadn’t had enough time to go to Auschwitz-Birkenau and back. The frail, sick prisoners must already be dead and buried—stripped of clothing, no shrouds, no farewells, lying in a clearing in the forest close to the Three Rivers Camp. The desperate shouts that had punctured the night, piercing the flimsy wooden walls, were proof that few had believed the story that they would be transferred to a hospital, not even when they were ordered to put their clothes on again. Daniel wanted to recite the prayer for the dead, but he couldn’t: the world had turned to ice when he witnessed the children selected to die. He shook Freund, who appeared to be sleeping.

“Do you hear the sound of engines? It’s the trucks, isn’t it?”

“Yes,” Freund confirmed in a wide-awake voice. “They were in a hurry! You didn’t wake me, I couldn’t sleep. The murdering bastards didn’t shoot them. I started to suspect what they’d do when they brought us two Saurer trucks to be repaired—faulty brakes. Damn them all, me too; I was forced to help with the repair.” His voice broke as he stifled a sob.

Daniel didn’t require more explanation, nor did words exist to console his friend. The two of them lay in silence. The rumor circulating through camp about the death trucks was true; no one knew how it started, but it had spread like an epidemic. So that was why the trucks broke down so often. They left the main highway and traveled over rough, muddy roads, never stopping because to do so might provoke a rebellion or escape attempts. Crushed together inside the truck, the prisoners were caught in a deadly mousetrap, their illnesses quickly cured when the driver—whose services were paid for with a double ration of alcohol—pulled the lever and they breathed the fumes from the diesel engine. The children too were released from the insidious snares of their childhood. Daniel would have smashed his hands in rage, but he couldn’t allow himself even that senseless gesture if he wanted to survive.

He felt as if he had just fallen asleep when the siren sounded, announcing that, despite everything, a new day was commencing. Roll call was shorter that morning, and some of the prisoners were counting their dead. The sun began shamelessly to unravel the fog, banishing it from the sky, and the names of the murdered were swept away by the wind, removed to nothingness.

Not everyone had forgotten them. The implacable camp organization that imprisoned and decimated them still functioned; the officials had taken careful count of the dead, and the report was filed. The prisoners confirmed that no extra slices of bread were available, and, as always, the coffee was thin as a fleeting thought. New lists were quickly drawn up, even as the camp awaited other ill-fated prisoners to fill the cavities left in bunks, in workshops, at roll call. Not all of those who were expected would finally arrive; news had reached the
lager
that many had chosen the path of rebellion or death and were fighting in the Warsaw ghetto.

With the same empty feeling in his stomach as every morning, but accompanied now by a deep bitterness, Freund returned to the repair shop, grumbling to himself, anticipating more work than ever. Daniel too was more despondent than usual as he entered his shop. He had lost his best co-worker, a carpenter who had been coughing for days. He was unable to throw off the deep oppression that gripped his chest. No relief came from glancing at
his
tools, at
his
violin that was now beginning to take shape. He felt his arms less strong, his hands more slow. Somehow I have to purge yesterday’s memories, he thought. I can’t allow myself the time to remember those who are no longer with us—unless I wish to join their company beneath the birch trees.

Little by little, he went through the motions of his usual tasks. Breathing in the fragrance of the wood, he regained a certain serenity, and the asphyxiating knot of remembrance was loosened. The previous day’s physical exertion, the thirty exercises, hadn’t been overly strenuous, but it had taken its toll on his weak body. His knees still hurt. The recent unexpected cold, the wind blowing from Russia, the long roll calls, had left his hands lacerated. But the ointment must be doing the trick, he thought; his hands were definitely better today, and that was essential for his work.

At present he lived with what he considered a reasonable expectation: that they would allow him to survive at least until the instrument was finished. He had learned that the Commander collected violins, so surely they wouldn’t send him to the quarry now that his specially crafted violin was partially completed. This was something exceptional for the camp, and Daniel found it flattering; it gave him a sense of pride. But he had to maintain his usual pace; if the idea ever crossed the Commander’s mind that he was dragging his feet, he would be whipped for working slowly—or for sabotage. Even Freund, whose work seemed indispensable to the camp, had been locked up for a week when he broke one of his tools!

Daniel attempted to maintain the same rhythm he had during the happy years in his own shop in Krakow. It was a miracle that he had been able to finish the belly and the beautiful neck of the violin. He was now carefully, very precisely, setting the bass bar. He wanted to finish that part this morning, so that he could relax on Sunday afternoon and wash some of his clothes. It was the only restful moment he had during the week. He checked the graining on the strip of spruce and set the bass bar so that the grain coincided exactly with that of the belly. He checked the position, assuring himself that it was slightly slanted and running in the same direction the strings would. He held the pieces up to look at them against the light, to be certain that the bass bar fit exactly into the contours of the arching. He knew now how he needed to glue it, where to put more pressure. He had at hand the felt-covered wooden tongs he would use to adjust the piece once it was glued. When the five clamps were in place, he allowed himself to rest a moment while the glue dried. He had removed the excess glue, but it was too late to begin working on a new piece.

The guard had constantly thrashed Daniel during his first few weeks in camp, but now he left him pretty much alone. The guard had even stopped insulting him and seemed satisfied with the luthier who labored in silence, rarely asked permission to use the latrine, didn’t cause problems or speak to other carpenters. Even so, it was better not to press his luck: Daniel decided to keep his hand on the violin top to give the appearance of working, but he was careful not to apply any pressure. He sat down on the stool he had made but continued to act as if it were necessary to hold the violin.

Not wanting to remember the terrible selection of the previous day, he tried to direct his thoughts—as if guiding a compliant tool—toward his niece Regina, the little blue-eyed doll he had held so often. His arms were strong then; he used to toss the laughing child high in the air and catch her. It comforted him to believe her safe, though he had had no further news of her. The family would never endanger themselves by contacting him. His cousin, of almost Aryan descent, had two sons who were adolescents now; they probably all doted on the little girl. He recalled that the grandfather kept bees and had a little vegetable garden, so they must have enough food. Surely, the dark circles and sunken eyes, the signs of hunger that had marked her cheeks, would have disappeared by now.

It was better not to think about the dead, but about Regina, and Eva, who was safe at the Tisch factory. Thank goodness his work could still calm him, but he had noticed that he was growing weaker, less sturdy. He could breathe more easily today, was grateful for the sympathetic sun that filtered through the transparent paper affixed to the paneless window. The guard was sitting at a distance, not watching, munching on a handful of nuts he’d managed to find, waiting for his midday meal. How Daniel longed for the almonds the guard was loudly crunching, probably on purpose to make the others envious. At least the guard was distracted; it allowed the prisoners a moment of rest and calm.

Daniel was fortunate, extremely fortunate. The carpenter whose bench was closest to his had slipped over to Daniel’s spot to wake him up. Daniel had never fallen asleep at work before, but he had hardly slept the previous night after the trucks returned. He was so exhausted that morning that he had rested his head on the bench, beside the violin, and had fallen asleep. Thank goodness no one else had noticed, or at least none of the other workers had ratted on him to the kapo, as they sometimes did to earn points.

I can never let this happen again, Daniel thought. He had learned in the last few days just how much could be at stake. He’d heard it from Bronislaw, the violinist who had befriended him after Daniel had tried to save him from being punished—as if both of them were not equally defenseless, equally unarmed. Bronislaw had been arrested, but he had been able to avoid the whippings and the Spring Cleaning. He had been assigned to work all day in the kitchen, except on the occasions when the Commander sent for him to play in the trio or the orchestra. Bronislaw’s well-trained ear caught every snatch of enemy conversation. It seemed that both men owed their lives to the kind-eyed guest, a friend of Tisch’s, a man by the name of Schindler, a benevolent
goy
. Unfortunately, the man had left and hadn’t returned, and his factory was far from there. In the meantime, although Rascher had been assigned to another
lager
, he was a frequent, more ominous visitor. The doctor had been heard bragging about the fact that Himmler, the SS Reichsführer, the Great Swine himself, had congratulated him on his terrible experiments with freezing prisoners.