For some time, the three women observed each other silently. Karla was the first one to clear her throat.
“Frau Rosé, I know you’re from Austria… We’re neighbors. I’m from Germany. Your family is well-known there, too, among artistic circles. What great philanthropists your father and your uncles have always been…” Her voice trailed off. She was watching for Alma’s reaction, almost with desperation.
“What does my family have to do with anything?” Alma exhaled, growing tired of the conversation.
Family. The word had long lost its original sense. The Nazis came to her native Vienna and took it all from them; scattered the Rosé clan all over the world. Some fled, including Alma’s brother Alfred and his wife. Some stayed, hoping for that collective madness to pass, her elderly father among them. But the madness was only gaining force; every day, some new anti-Semitic law was added to the endless list, and soon, old friends could no longer visit the Rosé house and Alma’s father, Arnold Rosé, the former venerable concertmaster expelled from the Philharmonic, was now prohibited to play music written by German composers under his own roof. Alma was almost relieved that her mother had passed away and was no longer around to see it all. Her heart would have most certainly broken at all the inhumanity and terror Hitler’s Brownshirts were unleashing on the population.
Family. In the end, it was only two of them left, Alma and Arnold—her beloved Vati, who had turned from a celebrated musician into an old broken man before her own eyes in the course of only a few months. Only when he realized that there was no place for him anymore in his own country did he allow Alma to take him away, to the safety of London.
Family, Alma thought, and suddenly felt profoundly miserable.
For a moment, Karla appeared to search for the right words. “Perhaps, if not for yourself—trust me, I understand your sentiments perfectly well—but for the others, for us, would you consider…”
Another uncomfortable pause.
Alma’s brows knitted together.
At last, Karla’s fellow bandmate released an exasperated sigh. “What she’s trying to say is that if you play for them, along with us, they will give the entire band extra rations. As we’ve already told you, we’re not particularly good at what we do, so we need someone… with education.”
“Yes, with education and experience—” Karla added.
“And talent—”
“Yes, definitely, talent.”
Hilde continued, “What we’re saying is that when we play well, they give us extra bread and sometimes even sausage. And we could definitely use some bread and sausage.”
Alma’s features softened. A faint smile appeared on her lips. “That’s the entire trouble? You should have just said so from the very beginning. I have never refused a charity concert in my life.”
“You shall play then?” Karla’s entire face lit up, as she clasped her hands in front of her chest.
“Yes, only…” With a disgusted grin, Alma pulled her nightgown—the Experimental Block’s uniform—away from her body. “I can’t very well perform in this, as you can well imagine.”
“We’ll get you a dress from the Kanada, right this instant! You’ll look like a princess tonight.”
“What’s a Kanada?” Alma asked.
“The Kanada is… ahh… heaven on earth.” Dreamily, Karla drew her eyes to the ceiling. “A place where anything can be had.”
“It’s a Birkenau work detail, the most kosher in the entire camp,” Hilde clarified, seeing Alma’s confusion. “The set of barracks where they sort the clothes and personal belongings of the new arrivals. Sort, disinfect, and ship them to Germany, for the Aryan folk to wear. If you ever need to ‘organize’ something, the Kanada is the place to go.”
Back then, Alma didn’t realize just how prophetic those words would be.
They indeed managed to get her an evening gown in under two hours. It smelled faintly of someone else’s perfume and was a size too big, but Alma couldn’t care less about appearances. Never before did she dress with such reluctance; never before was she overcome with such profound loathing for her audience. But the girls from the orchestra were hungry and so Alma swallowed her feelings and followed them into the night.
Inside the block she was taken to, a few lone bulbs provided the light for the plywood stage. It creaked, even under Alma’s slight frame, as she stepped before her audience, violin in hand. It wasn’t a Guadagnini by any stretch of imagination, but it was tuned just fine and had all of its strings about it and, to Alma, that was all that mattered. “Any instrument is good enough in skilled hands,” her father used to say.
As she brought the violin to her shoulder, Alma wondered how her Vati was faring there, in England. She had left him in the safety of London and herself, against everyone’s advice, traveled to Holland, where work could still be found for Jewish musicians. Despite the threat of the German army digging its claws into war-ravaged Europe, Alma had played tirelessly at every venue that booked her for a few precious months and sent her father the proceeds from her little concerts. But then Germany had invaded Holland, just weeks before her planned return to London, and all the communications were suddenly cut off between father and daughter. Raising her bow now in Auschwitz, Alma imagined him drinking his tea somewhere, in a quiet English village, away from the bombs and all this “scientific antisemitism”—safe, untouched by this filth.
She would play for him tonight. Not for this motley crew of elegant, gray uniforms of the SS and civilian attires of the Kapos, but for him. She’d play as beautifully as she could, not to please these lowly creatures she despised with great passion, but to make him proud.
She played all of his favorite pieces that night. All of them, from her memory, loudly and defiantly, and also braved the Jewish composers as well. For the dessert, she served them Tchaikovsky, “The Seasons. December; Christmas,” just to mock them with the reminder of the nation to which they were presently losing the war. Almost to her disappointment, the SS wardens didn’t recognize the joke and broke into tumultuous applause instead.
For the first time in her entire career, Alma didn’t bow to her audience.
After the performance, there was indeed extra bread and a piece of moldy sausage. Alma gave hers away to the other girls.
Inside the Lagerführerin’s quarters, to which Alma had been summoned by one of the wardens a few days after the concert, the faint aroma of lilacs lingered. As Alma sat across the desk from Maria Mandl, the head of the Birkenau women’s camp, an inmate was arranging the fresh flowers in a vase under Mandl’s annoyed look. It appeared to Alma that if it weren’t for her presence in the room, Mandl would long ago have shouted at the woman. However, the Lagerführerin just sat and stared pointedly at the scrawny figure instead. Only after the inmate had left did she shift her gaze to Alma.
Alma guessed her to be in her early thirties, just a couple of years younger than her; though, it was difficult to correctly identify the wardens’ ages here, just as it was difficult to identify the inmates’ ages. But whereas the inmates aged much too quickly due to starvation, exhaustion, and disease, the wardens’ otherwise beautiful faces were marred by the harsh, premature lines from their constant shouting that distorted their mouths and left severe creases between their neatly plucked brows. Hatred aged them just as fast as suffering aged their victims. Alma thought it to be a form of poetic justice.