Playing for Time (22 page)

I’d had plenty of time to think about this and other things too as, behind Alma, we waited at attention while the SS sat down and gave the order to play. Did they notice that we were standing up? Would they take any notice of a troop of monkeys presenting arms? That was about it, though of course monkeys would be more amusing.

For the moment, contrary to custom—generally they didn’t tarry in our parts—they sat around as though waiting for someone. Mandel gave each of us a brief inspection, and we were seized with anguish: were our shoes clean, our dresses decent? Who was coming?

Sharply, Mandel ordered Alma: “You’ll do the duet from
Butterfly,
Schumann’s
Reverie, Mattinata,
and The Charge of the Light Brigade.” Oberarzt Dr. Mengele is coming to hear the orchestra.“

After a perfectly calculated pause the head surgeon made his entry. He was handsome. Goodness, he was handsome. So handsome that the girls instinctively rediscovered the forgotten motions of another world, running dampened fingers through their lashes to make them shine, biting their lips, swelling their mouths, pulling at their skirts and tops. Under the gaze of this man one felt oneself become a woman again. The elegance of Graf Bobby in comparison seemed affected. Dr. Mengele wore his uniform with incomparable ease and style, like a sort of Charles Boyer. A smile played over his lips. Insouciantly he laughed and joked, conscious of his charm. He was even civilized enough to fall silent when Lotte-Suzuki and I-Butterfly started our duet, and he showed even greater consideration in omitting to laugh at the unusual couple we made, she so enormous and I so minute. Actually it didn’t seem to worry anyone, and particularly not Irma Grese, who rested her blue gaze on me and, in the way one might say of a monkey, “what’s more, it talks,” commented in surprise, “How come she’s got such a good voice, being Jewish?”

The doctor didn’t appear to like “The Charge of the Light Brigade,” because he left the room almost at the first bar, followed by Graf Bobby. Alma blanched. Had she failed to please? Kramer got up in his turn and ordered
“Schluss!”
The SS filed out; the last to go through the door was the interpreter, and it seemed to me that she hesitated for a split second before going out. Who was she?

Alma could rage away, hector us, throw her baton at our heads, trample on it if she liked; the orchestra didn’t care, because now one name was going the rounds, holding us all in thrall: that of the interpreter, Mala.

More than a name, she was already a legend, even for me who was not very well informed. Little Irene filled me in:

“Mala is our hope of salvation. She was in the Belgian Resistance and arrived from Brussels with one of the earliest transports. Immediately, with five of her friends, she was selected. That evening the crematoria couldn’t take any more. For several days the men had been shovelling corpses in but the mound never seemed to get any smaller. Mala and her friends were locked in Block Twenty-five. No one had ever come out of there alive. The internees whose huts open onto the courtyard of Block Twenty-five tell horrible stories; they say that you can see a succession of women staring at you madly from behind the bars, that it’s unbearable. Naked too—why go to the expense of clothes, since they’re going to die?—they’re thrown down in the stinking straw. The SS toss them something to eat when they remember; they may be there days, weeks, or a few hours. You couldn’t even call it hell, there’s no name for it. When the truck stops and the door opens, the living set off for the gas chambers, the dead for the crematorium. One night Mala and the five girls managed to escape by climbing through an air vent. They ran towards the camp entrance, went out of it, and found themselves in the place we call
Vorne,
near the houses of the SS who live outside the camp. They were sitting in front of their doors, smoking and chatting; one was even playing the harmonica. The evening was sharp but fine. Commandant Hoss was talking with his officers when suddenly these naked girls appeared before him; they were so surprised they burst out laughing. Hoss asked them where they came from and who they were. Mala, as cool as if she’d been fully clothed, answered: ”From Block Twenty-five, Herr Kommandant.“ The SS looked at one another in amazement. Her courage impressed them and the interrogation continued:

“What’s your name?”

“Mala.”

“Where are you from?”

“Belgium.”

“Have you a profession?”

“No, but I can speak French, German, and Polish.”

“How old are you?”

“Nineteen.”

“Silence. The commandant paused for reflection, then gave the order to have them dressed. ”Find them some work. This one“— he indicated Mala with the tip of his stick—‘shall be an interpreter.” That was no sinecure; Mala immediately realized that she would be able to use this position to help others. Soon she was occupying a post of some importance in the camp and became chief interpreter. For some reason the SS trusted her without her having to give the kind of pledges they usually understood: denunciations, zeal during selections, etc. Perhaps it was because she’s brave, silent, calm, efficient. In fact, without their realizing it, she controls them, impresses them. The internees respect and love her. We all have total faith in her. It’s got around that Mala omits a name on a list whenever the circumstances of selection allow it. When they have difficulties, the deportees go to her. Despite the fact that she’s Jewish, even the Aryans respect her and don’t dare mock or insult her. And that’s not all. Mala has a lover: Edek, a handsome lad in the Polish Resistance. They are able to arrange meetings because they both hold positions which allow them to go out, even when the camp is confined to quarters. He’s an administrative assistant. I don’t know anything else about them, but people who’ve seen them together say there’s no doubt about it, they love one another.“

Outside it was pouring; the rain bounced on the roof as hard as hail, struck the window aggressively. The stove was glowing red, the wind’s whisper had become a roar. Most of the girls, the Poles, Germans, and Russians, were already in bed, but our little group, seated round the stove, was prolonging the evening.

Little Irene concluded: “I’ve never talked to her, I’ve just seen her walking through the camp, head high, looking aloof; but one senses that she’s burning inside, and today, at last, she came here. Perhaps she’ll come back.”

I felt a desperate desire to see her, to talk to her; she struck me as a classical heroine, a living archetype.

“Well, we certainly can’t count on it,” Anny remarked more calmly. “Anyhow, what could she do for us?”

Mala

The following days, Mala did come back to see us. Not out of love of music—there was room in her life for two sorts of love only: love of freedom and love of Edek. They sometimes met in our block and each time it was a unique moment. She would come in, a few moments later he would enter, they would look at one another but keep their distance, and this distance seemed to unite them; they didn’t touch one another or speak, yet around them the air would begin to hum. They looked at one another and everything caught fire. For a moment their love recaptured the beauty of the world for us.

This evening, at the end of a particularly long
Blocksperre,
Mala appeared, looking drawn. The circles around her lovely eyes looked dark in her pale face, like a tragic mask. Little Irene and Ewa asked: “What’s the matter? Are you ill?”

“Yes. After a selection I’m always ill, ill with disgust, rage… it’s got to end! I can’t take it any longer. We must do something, the world must know, it must put an end to this horror.”

Nervously, I asked: “But how? What will you do?”

“I don’t know yet, but Edek will find a way!”

There was such faith in her eyes that I too believed her. If anyone were to succeed, it would be she, they.

“We shall tell men the truth and they will believe us!”

We were all staring at her now. It was so glaringly simple: if the outside world knew what was going on here, they’d stop it. It was so obvious that we agreed: “Yes, they’ll believe you!” How could anyone not believe her?

We began to ramble: if the camps still existed it must be because no one had managed to escape and inform the world of the truth! Someone even claimed that when the pope learnt of our existence, he would mobilize all Christendom in an unprecedented crusade. It was all becoming so definite that we asked Mala, “How will you do it?”

“I don’t know, but I shall!”

That was enough for us. Everything was settled now.

One morning there were rumours of an Allied landing, apparently in France. Florette and Jenny shrugged. “Just another fairy tale!”

“No, this time it’s Mala who says so.”

It was she who fed us news; we awaited her arrival feverishly. Her position as interpreter enabled her not only to move around freely, but also to glean information of all kinds from the SS, since she was constantly in their company. We didn’t dare rejoice yet, but we all observed the Germans closely. It might be our imagination, but they seemed more jumpy than usual, more tense.

A few days later, Mala confirmed the information. Our group stayed up late into the night. In the morning we scanned the sky, looking towards the Carpathians. Sometimes, wind permitting, when the crematoria were less busy, we could see those mountains where the Polish Resistance had their hideouts, and we were certain they would bring us freedom.

But days passed, our impatience gave way to somewhat disenchanted resignation; it was a long business.

One morning there was an interminable roll call. The orchestra had been waiting for an hour for it to end in order to go out and play, but no whistle had yet been blown. The SS were counting and recounting the women, sirens were lowing, soldiers rushing about. There had been an escape. Time passed, a rumour went round: Mala had escaped, and probably Edek too, because the deportees in the men’s camp had also been standing at roll call for hours.

When the whistle finally blew, emotions had reached an unbearable pitch of intensity. Everyone knew the truth, or was prepared to invent it. One thing was certain: Mala and Edek had escaped. That evening we brought together everything we knew and managed to reconstruct the escape in a way which turned out later to be accurate. Thanks to the complicity of some German and Rumanian SS whom Edek had bribed—stolen “organized” gold circulated in all the camps—Edek had obtained some men’s clothing for Mala and an SS uniform for himself, and false papers for both of them. Mala, wearing men’s overalls over trousers and sweater, carrying a stoneware washbasin on her head, had gone out escorted by Edek in SS uniform, revolver at his belt. He was supposedly accompanying a workman to another camp. Since his pass appeared to be in order—the names had been scratched out and replaced—they had both set off towards freedom as they’d sworn.

We were insanely gleeful. Our reasoning was oversimple but heartening: “Since they’re out, we’ll be freed!” We were beside ourselves, but on our guard. The SS fury could redouble, indeed there was nothing to prevent them from gassing the whole camp if they felt like it.

So we behaved discreetly, nurturing our hope in whispers. No one slept. In each barracks, on each tier of the
cojas,
everyone waited for a miracle. Days passed; sometimes we pricked up our ears when we thought we heard strange noises, cannon fire, rifle shots. Our imagination ran riot: we could already see Mala and Edek returning at the head of millions of soldiers, who would enter the camp and put out the SS men’s eyes, bayonet them in the stomach. We were drunk with images of gory revenge. For the first time since our internment we lived and breathed hope. We’d never sung or played with a lighter heart. Furthermore, we were singing and playing for ourselves; the “ladies and gentlemen” had other things to think about. Morning and evening, when the girls played
Josef, Josef,
the women in the work detachments gave them a wink of complicity; a different wind was blowing over the camp. The crematoria were pouring out their black smoke and masking the approach of summer, but we didn’t care: summer with its harvest of victory was already singing in our hearts.

Rumours pullulated: there were vicious searches throughout the camps, interrogations in the SS building, accomplices were sought. But everyone claimed ignorance, and it was true. When you made a plan to escape you didn’t confide in just anyone. The cold eye of the SS was inquisitorial, they observed us and each other. There were two or three traitors among them, perhaps more.

Early one morning, furtive and rapid, the news spread through the camp: Mala was back.

With bellowings, whistle blasts, and baton blows, the SS,
kapos,
and blockowas drove the women furiously out of the barracks, even us. Thousands of prisoners were out on the central square, in the alleyways, motionless, holding their breath. In the middle, on her own, was Mala, half naked and covered in blood; we learnt that she’d been tortured and hadn’t talked. Standing, head proudly high, she looked at us and smiled. Tears came to our eyes, tears of love and gratitude. She was what we would wish to be: pride and courage personified.

An SS officer addressed her in the habitual ringing tones; I could hear every word and I would never forget them:

“You see, Mala, no one escapes from here. We are the stronger and you’re going to pay for it.”

He took out his revolver, loaded it and said:

“I’m going to shoot you as a reward for your exploits.”

“No!” shrieked Mala. “I want to be gassed like my parents and like thousands of other innocent people. I want to die like them. But where we’ve failed, others will succeed, and you’ll pay, you’ll pay-”

The SS cut her off with a slap. I was standing about thirty feet from Mala and I saw something shining in her hand—a razor blade, with which she slashed her wrist.

The SS rushed forward, threw her down, trampled on her, put on a tourniquet; they wanted her alive. They tied her hands behind her back and dragged her off; she stumbled, picked herself up, and shouted to us: “Revolt! Rise up! There are thousands of you. Attack them—they’re cowards, and even if you’re killed, anything’s better than this, at least you’ll die free! Revolt!”