The Violinist of Auschwitz

by Ellie Midwood

The first long, tentative note probed the stillness of the descending night. It cut itself short, hesitated, then suddenly gained force and unraveled in a crescendo of runs and, all at once, the very name—Auschwitz—had ceased to exist for its victims.

for along with the pain, the hope had ignited in her once again—hope that perhaps nothing was yet lost if such beauty could still find its way even behind the Auschwitz walls.

Hatred aged them just as fast as suffering aged their victims. Alma thought it to be a form of poetic justice.

Here, she was not just a rightful ruler, but the Führer’s appointed God, with the right to decide who was to live and who was to die. A gun sat snuggly in its holster on her hip, for that very purpose. She had killed for less before, and still… …and still, Mandl dared not even raise her voice at this woman in front of her, for she would lose her position of superiority at once with a shout, no matter how contradictory that may have sounded.

Slaves themselves, they played for the enslaved people, in a world that must have gone completely mad if such concepts as music and unimaginable suffering could peacefully coexist in a hell like Auschwitz.

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.

A Rabbi, made to burn the memory of his people while the SS burned the people themselves in their industrial ovens. The camp was a ruthless teacher. There were only two choices—to adapt or to perish.

“When you have nothing to begin with, there’s little they can take away from you,”

Everything in them had been reduced to dog-like instincts and they gladly licked the hand that occasionally threw them one metaphorical bone or other and feared the boot that could kick them under the ribs at the same time…

“I’m giving it all because giving is what makes a human human. As long as I can give something, I feel I haven’t spent that day for nothing.

such an unexpected display of humanity in a place where that very humanity was slaughtered by the hundreds of thousands.

It was the world order that the SS man didn’t comprehend. Beauty was indestructible. It was the most powerful force on earth and would always be.