He stood there gaping at her in stunned silence, which could be followed by a violent eruption any moment and Alma knew it. But still, this was the right thing to do; she felt it deeply inside, and the right thing was always worthy of risking one’s life for.
Inside the truck with the Red Cross on it, the women gradually quieted down. Alma’s violin roused something in them; something that the Nazis had tried to eliminate and erase from their very memories for all eternity—the national pride of the long-suffering people that had survived for thousands of years against all odds.
With resolute, noble dignity, they rested their shaved heads on each other’s shoulders and sang the song of the Promised Land with their eyes closed. Most cried silently without a single muscle on their faces moving; some regarded her with gratitude for bringing them peace during the last minutes of their lives.
Taking her violin off her shoulder, Alma saw that it, too, was wet with her own tears. She didn’t even realize that she had been crying this entire time.
When Alma turned to face the SS man, she noticed his truncheon hanging motionlessly by his side, as if he suddenly wasn’t sure of what to do with it.
“Herr Unterscharführer,” she addressed him softly and this time with a measure of respect in her voice. “Allow me please to go with them. They’ll go more peacefully if I keep playing for them—”
“No.” Recovering himself at last, he interrupted her with a categorical shake of his head. “That’s not allowed. Only the Sonderkommando are allowed inside the—” Stopping himself abruptly, he pursed his lips as if he had let on more than he was supposed to, put his cap back on and marched off. The doors to the truck were locked with an ominous clang, but this time not a sound could be heard from the inside. Soon, it drove off in the direction of the crematorium, leaving Alma alone in front of the deathly silent barrack.
Chapter 7
“You don’t have to go to the ramp,” Sofia said. By now, Alma was familiar with a camp slang the inmates and the SS used for the railroad unloading platform. “It’s just idiotic march music that they expect for us to play for the new arrivals while the SS doctors sort them out. I have just enough conductor’s talent to supply that.”
Sofia was standing on the threshold of Alma’s room, watching her struggling with the hairbrush. Alma’s hair was growing out and curling into short, silky ringlets that positively refused to be assembled into any sort of order. In the washed-out light of the morning, the violinist’s eyes shone brighter than usual—black, radiant, alert with intelligence. They were her most striking feature that commanded attention at once. She was painfully pallid; her cheekbones stood out far too much in her face and yet, those marvelous, liquid eyes of hers glowed with such hidden strength, it was impossible not to fall under the spell of their quiet power. Sofia found it amazing how, even in such horrid conditions, Alma managed to carry herself with the dignity of royalty, no less. It appeared as though she simply refused to be touched by the baseness of camp life and kept her head high and shoulders squared almost in defiance of the degradation they all had been forced to embrace.
It was a fortunate thing for the orchestra that Mandl had appointed Alma as a Kapo, Sofia thought without an ounce of resentment for the lost position. Alma was much stronger than her; she would teach the girls how to survive.
“I’ve heard that you-don’t-have-to-go-there song before.” Alma gave her a certain look. “Last time, it came from Zippy. I’m starting to fear you two are plotting against me in the hope to usurp my hard-earned Kapo’s power.”
In spite of herself, Sofia chuckled, grateful for the humor, gallows or not. “Even Zippy doesn’t go to the ramp if she can help it. Why would you want to?”
Having given up on the brush, Alma covered her head with a kerchief and gathered her violin case along with the conductor’s baton from the table. “I don’t want to, but I shall go all the same. If the entire orchestra is there, it’s only suitable for the conductor to be there as well.”
“Ramp is hell.”
“This entire place is hell, if that idea is new to you.”
“Some of its parts are more hellish than the others.”
“Perhaps so. Even more reason for us to go there and play music.”
“Dr. Mengele will be conducting selections. His presence alone would be enough of an incentive for me to stay away from the place.”
Herr Doktor’s reputation preceded him. The camp rumor was, compared to Dr. Mengele, Dr. Clauberg from the Auschwitz Experimental Block was a simple scoundrel. Unlike his colleague, Dr. Mengele’s imagination wasn’t limited to bloodless sterilization. Sterilization was, in fact, below him. Dr. Mengele had much grander ambitions than that—he was working on a paper on Aryan racial theory and thought it to be a marvelous idea to use Auschwitz inmates as guinea pigs to prove its thesis. He’d arrived in the camp only recently, after being injured on the Eastern front, but had already secured the entire compound of Birkenau experimental blocks for himself—separate barracks for twin boys and twin girls, a barrack for gypsies and dwarfs, a facility for inmates with deformities, whom, according to Zippy and the documents she was sometimes forced to type in the camp office, Herr Doktor dissected with envious regularity and the fanaticism of a mad scientist. Sometimes, he didn’t bother with the anesthesia. Sometimes, he put chemical dyes in children’s eyes in the hope to change their color. So far, he’d been unsuccessful, Zippy had told Sofia; Zippy knew it because it was her and Mala, her Jewish colleague from the camp office, who packed jars with those eyes swimming in them in different solutions, into boxes that bore “Handle with Care: War Material—Urgent” labels on them. All were shipped to the Institute of Biological, Racial and Evolutionary Research at Berlin-Dahlem.
Something clicked in Alma’s mind. She was still shaken after what had occurred in the sickbay and she had sworn to herself, as soon as they returned to the block, that she would do anything in her powers to prevent her girls from being thrown onto one of those trucks in such a despicable manner. And now, she stood before Sofia, thinking feverishly. It was something uttered by that SS man, just one phrase that kept working itself in circles in her mind—the SS medical office gave you an order to put seventy inmates on the list…
Alma’s head snapped up. She was looking at Sofia sharply, a beginning of a smile forming on her lips. “Is Dr. Mengele only in charge of the ramp selections?” Alma inquired with sudden interest when Sofia didn’t budge from her position in the door, as though physically blocking it with her body.
“No. He conducts them around the camp as well, whenever he’s bored. Which is almost every other day.”
“Can Mandl override him in his decisions?”
“He’s a medical doctor, so no. If he chooses to send someone to the gas, that inmate is licked. His authority is almost limitless when it comes to selections. Mandl can try and intervene, but he makes the ultimate decision.”
Alma stood and considered something for a moment, nodding to some thoughts of hers. Under her brow creased with utter concentration, two dark eyes shone, sharp and steady. “Then, he can grant pardons as well, I assume?” She glanced at Sofia, still calculating something in her mind.