The Auschwitz Violin Read online

  A guest with kind eyes, a man Daniel had never seen before, asked him: “You say you’re able to fix it? You mean the violinist wasn’t playing badly just to offend our ears?”

  As if taking a rose, Daniel gently removed the violin from the hands of the stupefied musician and showed the guest the tiny crack, forgetting for the moment that he was in the house of his enemy. He spoke of his musical vocation in Yiddish sprinkled with German, but with a self-assurance he had not felt for many months, not since he had been reduced to a subhuman prisoner.

  Then he stepped back. The conversation between the kind-eyed guest, the Commander, and Rascher continued in low voices, too low and too fast for him to understand. The other doctor and the girls said nothing. Daniel had the terrifying feeling that both his future and that of the reprimanded violinist were at stake. A girl poured white wine into everyone’s fine crystal glasses. Then Sauckel called an officer over, spoke to him as he pointed to Daniel, and scribbled something on a sheet of paper. He doesn’t want to lower himself to speak to me, the luthier thought, but he’s made a decision and no doubt I’ll be punished again.

  The SS officer dragged him from the room without explanation and opened the front door. Daniel rushed down the steps before he could be pushed. Once again he heard laughter and happy voices from the house; the musicians were still in the room. He glanced up, caught sight of the loathsome doctor’s face and saw an expression of cold disappointment. A good sign, Daniel thought.

  “You made a serious mistake, you bastard.” The officer spat at him once down the steps. “You entered the room and addressed Herr Sturmbannführer without permission.” After a pause to allow the gravity of the deed to sink in, he continued, “Showing great indulgence, he has decided not to punish you on one condition, that the violin is repaired by tomorrow morning.”

  “But how can I do that, sir?”

  Daniel hadn’t even noticed that the officer was carrying the violin!

  “Shut up and listen, you idiot! Follow me to the carpenters’ shop, you have all night to work. If the violin is not to his liking tomorrow, it’s confinement with aggravating circumstances for you, plus whippings before and after confinement. This is your second offense.”

  The officer was panting, as if out of breath after providing so many details. This was unusual: punishment was normally meted out with no explanation. Well, Daniel thought as he was being accompanied to the workshop, this means no supper for me. I’ll have to manage without, even though I’m starving. Thank goodness he had hidden a tiny piece of bread crust in his pocket that morning; he did this occasionally to help pass a long afternoon.

  The SS officer—still holding the violin—presented the paper to a surly, silent guard, who read it without comment but was clearly even more disgruntled. The officer led Daniel into the shop and handed him the violin. Once the two of them were alone, ignoring regulations, the officer lit a cigarette and blew the smoke in Daniel’s face. Seemingly satisfied when Daniel coughed, the officer settled into a chair and kept a sharp eye on the work, visibly skeptical of the luthier’s craftsmanship, but he soon stopped smoking and dozed off. The cigarette lay on the floor, snuffed out, but Daniel didn’t dare touch it.

  He had little company that night: the snores from the guard outside (a common prisoner with a green insignia on his clothes, the kind who’s often very cruel) and the occasional screeches of distant night birds down by the broad river beyond the camp, where trees grew, where colors other than gray and white existed. Daniel was familiar with the old name of the river, but not Aqueront, the strange name used by a fellow inmate—a professor from Krakow, imprisoned for being a socialist. The man had been saved from selection because he was listed as a baker. He was in fact the son of a baker and he knew how to knead dough and make bread.

  Daniel had to concentrate now on the violin. He hadn’t been overly optimistic; his calculations were correct: the crack wasn’t deep. The sides could be pressed together, no splinters were showing. Praise God! First, he cast about to see if any of his small carpentry wedges could be used. Fortunately, he always kept the workshop neat. He found two tiny, very smooth cylinders, just the right size—they wouldn’t even have to be planed. He didn’t have the right violin glue, of course, but he did have a reasonably good one, though lumpy, which he had saved for especially delicate jobs at the Tyrant’s pavilion. He lit the little burner and began heating the glue, being very careful not to let it thicken too much.

  He was himself once again, not a number, not an object of taunting ridicule. He was Daniel, a luthier by profession. At that moment he thought of nothing other than the job at hand and the pride he took in it. His eyes glistened with precise attention; even his hunger disappeared. With skillful fingers he slowly spread the glue around the crack, all along the edges of it, then forced it well inside. He observed the result with a trained eye and judged it to be good; after all, he had practically been born among violins. The graining matched, which meant that the tiny vertical crack would be well sealed. At least for a while. He located the round cramp in its proper place and set the two wedges beneath it, being careful no glue touched them, then tightened the cramp to the exact size.

  Daniel’s thoughts wandered as he wiped the sweat from his forehead and examined the work again. He had spilled a drop of glue on the top plate of the violin and couldn’t risk letting it dry. He heated some water, in which he dampened a very fine paintbrush and carefully removed the glue. It was a matter of waiting now. It had taken him a long time to perform the delicate task, and he knew the violin wouldn’t be dry for at least four hours, probably more with all the humidity. The officer escorting him was still asleep, wrapped in a wool cloak, and Daniel didn’t dare wake him for fear of reprisal. Nor could he leave the shop: he knew his furtive shadow would be a sure target for the guard’s machine gun. In that case, he thought, trying to comfort himself at the prospect of the dismal night ahead, I’ll stand over the violin to be sure nothing happens to it. Too much was at stake.

  He was hungry again and noticed that the officer had dropped a piece of apple that had rolled toward him. Using a piece of cloth, Daniel pulled it closer without making a sound and ate it hungrily. He would have to find a way to sleep some, or at least to rest. He warmed his hands at the burner before turning it off and stretched out on the floor, on top of some wood chips that protected him a bit. He tried to sleep but kept waking up. It had stopped raining, and the night was cold and quiet, his dreams anxious. With little conviction he murmured a prayer to his silent God, imploring that his work be approved.

  He awoke early and, not wishing to sleep any more, sat down on a stack of wood. He couldn’t be late to roll call or skip breakfast. He wasn’t scheduled for a shower today, so he washed with a bit of water from the faucet and went outdoors as soon as the siren sounded.

  When he returned to the shop, he showed the day guard the paper from the night before, but the guard clearly had already received instructions and muttered: “Get to work, fast. It’s still early; I’ll let you know when you have to appear before the Sturmbannführer.”

  At least he hadn’t hit him. Daniel set about his work, glancing often at his violin. A pleasant sensation was mixed with the usual fear when the guard looked at his watch and ordered Daniel to present himself at the Commander’s house. Daniel showed the paper and had no trouble getting in. This time Sauckel deigned to speak to Daniel directly, but immediately put him in his place.

  “Ja, our little carpenter!” he said as he petted his dog.

  All the prisoners stooped, but now Daniel instinctively straightened up. He was actually quite tall, but the Commander stood half a span taller. A long moment of uncertainty ensued as the instrument was carefully inspected. He doesn’t look like he’s in a very good mood, Daniel thought. His forehead’s furrowed and wrinkled; maybe he’s hungover. The Commander didn’t appear very interested in the violin, but he swept his bow across it and played some notes. His forehead cleared, and he smiled.

&
nbsp; “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.

  Mothers’ screams mount the silent steps And the golden hound of dawn seeks their sweet bones.

  —AGUSTÍ BARTRA, L’arbre de foc

  Report on Security Measures at the Auschwitz Concentration Camp—1944

  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 II
I 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.