The Librarian of Auschwitz

by Antonio Iturbe

“And who was H. G. Wells?” “He was a freethinker and a socialist. But above all, he was a great novelist. Have you heard of The Invisible Man?” “Yes.” “Well, he wrote that novel. And The War of the Worlds, in which he talks about Martians landing on Earth. And The Island of Doctor Moreau, with that mad scientist who combines human and animal genes. Dr. Mengele would like him. But I think his best book is The Time Machine. To go back and forth in time…” He sounds pensive as he continues. “Can you picture it? Do you have any idea what it would mean to get inside that machine, fly back in time to 1924, and prevent Adolf Hitler from being released from jail?” “But all that business of the machine is made up, isn’t it?” “Sadly, yes. Novels add what’s missing to life.”

I read and have the book The Time Machine

And Dita is surprised to find that she’s laughing at the thought of the lieutenant’s expression. She immediately scolds herself. How can such a stupid character make her laugh? She even briefly questions whether it’s legitimate to laugh after everything that’s happened, and with everything that’s still going on. How can you laugh while people you love are dying?

“Edita, Edita … Blessed head count! Do you know why it takes so long?” “Well…” “Because we’re all still here. We haven’t lost a single child since September. Do you understand? More than five thousand people in the family camp have died from disease, starvation, or exhaustion since September.” Dita sadly nods her head. “But not a single child from Block Thirty-One! We’re succeeding, Edita. We’re doing it.” Dita gives him a sad smile of victory. If only her father were there so she could tell him.

But then she remembers what Professor Morgenstern taught her: Our hatred is a victory for them. And she nods in agreement. If Professor Morgenstern was mad, then lock me up with him.

“You’re free,” says the Pole by way of farewell. “No, we’re not,” answers Rudi. “We still have one duty to fulfill. The world must know what’s happening.” The Pole nods, and his bushy mustache moves up and down in agreement. “Thank you, thank you very much—you’ve saved our lives,” Rudi and Fred tell him. Stanis shrugs; there is nothing to say in reply.

Viktor Pestek is taken to the central quarters of the SS. They will torture him for days. They want to know why he came back to Auschwitz; they want information about the Resistance, but he knows nothing about them, and he says nothing about his relationship with Renée Neumann. He will remain in jail until he is executed on October 8, 1944.

The two sisters had arrived in Bergen-Belsen in October 1944, after they’d been deported from Amsterdam to Auschwitz. Their crime: being Jewish. Five months have been too many to avoid death in this wet hole. Typhus has no respect for youth. Anne dies alone in her bunk the day after her sister. Her remains will stay buried forever in Bergen-Belsen’s mass graves. But Anne has done something that will end up being a small miracle: Her memory and her sister’s memory will bring them back to life many years later. In the secret place in Amsterdam where the two girls and their family hid, she spent two years writing notes about her life in the “house at the back”—some rooms attached to her father’s office, which were closed off and converted into a hiding place. For two years, with the help of family friends who supplied provisions, the family lived there, together with the van Pels family and Fritz Pfeffer. Shortly after they moved into their hideout, they celebrated Anne’s birthday, and among the presents was a small notebook. Since she couldn’t have a close friend in the hideout with whom she could share her feelings, she shared them with that notebook, which she christened Kitty. It didn’t occur to her to give a title to this outline of her life in the “house at the back,” but posterity took care of that. It has become part of history as The Diary of a Young Girl.

“This camp has been liberated in the name of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and her allies. You are free!”

But there is one piece that doesn’t fit: Her mother isn’t improving. The days pass by, and Liesl keeps getting worse. The fever is taking its toll, and her body is becoming more and more transparent. The doctor in attendance doesn’t speak German, but he gesticulates in such a way that Dita knows perfectly how things are going—not very well.

The couple had three children and four grandchildren. Ota, the great storyteller from Block 31, wrote various books. One of them, The Painted Wall, fictionalized the lives of a series of people in the family camp, BIIb. Dita and Ota experienced life’s ups and downs together for fifty-five years. They never stopped loving and supporting each other. They shared books, an indestructible sense of humor, life in general. They grew old together. Only death could break the iron bond forged in the most terrible times anyone could experience.