The Librarian of Auschwitz: Chapter 25–Epilogue

The newly appointed teachers standing in front of her are still bewildered by the inherent contradiction that arises in the discussion of the normal operation of a school inside the most abnormal place in the world.

Dita can’t see her, but Bohumila Kleinová has a pointed nose that turns up, making her look somewhat haughty, but her soft, swollen bruised eyelids spoil that impression.

“There are more lice since the May transports arrived.”
“It’s not their fault, Helga. There are more people, so there’s more of everything,” Margit replies in a conciliatory tone.

The officer in charge blows stridently on his whistle and shouts.

As he walks off, trying to stay calm, he curses the heavens: The Resistance is riddled with informers. Someone has betrayed them.

The girls’ conversation has tapered off. Their friendship has reached a point where moments of silence don’t bother them.

She’s never been able to forget that first spark, the frizzy hair of that sickly woman, her body suddenly turning black, the disagreeable smell of singed flesh, the wisps of smoke rising from the charred body.

She really dislikes approaching the fence, but hunger is like a worm that never stops gnawing your innards.

At this very moment Dita asks for something very small, a tiny concession—she begs that she won’t shake in her last moment, or wet herself.

But despite all this, she stands obstinately rooted to the spot.

The camp Kapo, a German with the triangle of a regular convict on his jacket, goes up and down the rows repeating that no defeatist or defamatory messages about the Third Reich are allowed; in such cases, the postcards will be destroyed and their authors severely punished.

Some people are surprised by this humanitarian gesture on the part of the Nazis, allowing them to contact their families and ask them to send food packages. But the veterans quickly explain to them that the Nazis are, first and foremost, pragmatic. It suits them to have packages sent to the camp; they’ll help themselves to the best items.

Others try subterfuges, too—some ingenious, others so metaphorical that no one will understand them—to hide their forbidden messages of genocide.

She regrets the fact that her daughter is so impulsive and so flighty, that she isn’t more discreet in weighing up the significance of things.

She hasn’t leafed through the atlas for days and feels immense pleasure as she retraces the sinuous outline of the coastlines, climbs up and down mountain ranges, whispers the names of cities like London, Montevideo, Ottawa, Lisbon, Peking.

Each time she picks up the handkerchief, she furtively lifts it to her face to wipe away her tears.

The bodies are squalid, their ribs are more curved than their hips...

The woman who was crying has been sent to the left with those whom the Reich deems weak and expendable.

Her very first trip was from Prague to Terezín. Then it was from Terezín to Auschwitz. Next, it was from Auschwitz to Hamburg. And now Dita no longer knows where this diaspora by train, which has derailed her youth, is taking her.

But these robust, well-fed, and well-dressed guards prove to be furious.

They taunt the prisoners, hit them in the ribs with their clubs, insult them with obscene phrases, and generally show themselves to be irascible toward these docile new arrivals.

Some of the old hands haven’t even got up from their blankets and stoically put up with the kicks without moving.

The huge grimace, which hides a bitter smile, is eloquent.

They hurry over to the corpse with unexpected enthusiasm, and each of them grabs a leg. They know they have to get hold of the right part: The legs of a corpse weigh less, and that end is sometimes less unpleasant. Rigor mortis has already dislocated the jaw, and the woman’s mouth and eyes are open excessively wide.

The mortality rate grows exponentially. Even without gas chambers, Bergen-Belsen becomes a killing machine.

Volkenrath is easily recognizable because of the ostentatious bun of hair on top of her head from which blond strands are always escaping. She has the appearance of someone who’s been to an expensive salon and then rolled around in a barn.

If anyone had insinuated that, some years down the track, Elisabeth Volkenrath might be a murderer, the entire community would have been outraged. Good old Beth? That woman wouldn't hurt a fly! they’d say indignantly. They’d demand that the author of the calumny retract it immediately.

Liesl’s eyes open wide, and she’s so taken aback by her daughter’s audacity that, for a few seconds, she doesn’t know what to do.

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.

But those high-pitched shrieks...they are too laden with emotion.

The English battalion has an office to deal with the repatriation of the prisoners, but it’s overwhelmed and the assignment of provisional papers is unbearably slow.

The English battalion has an office to deal with the repatriation of the prisoners, but it’s overwhelmed and the assignment of provisional papers is unbearably slow.

Hitler has committed suicide in his own bunker, and the SS officers have either become prisoners awaiting summary trial or they’ve gone into hiding.

One night, Liesl deteriorates: Her breathing is intermittent, and she flails around in the bed.

After the jubilation of victory and the celebrations marking the end of the war, after the dances organized by the Allied forces and the pompous speeches, postwar reality shows itself for what it is: mute, harsh, and without fanfare.

After the jubilation of victory and the celebrations marking the end of the war, after the dances organized by the Allied forces and the pompous speeches, postwar reality shows itself for what it is: mute, harsh, and without fanfare.

She has no parents or siblings, no home, no studies, no belongings apart from the clothes they gave her in the Civilian Assistance Society, and no way to survive beyond the little ration card she was able to get after a great deal of cumbersome paperwork.

There are also angry people, even more irate than those who waited in half a meter of snow for a watery bowl of soup or a piece of bread. Now those who wait are irritated by the delay or because they’ve been misinformed or because of the number of papers they need.

Teplice is an old spa city renowned for its waters.

He was a young man with a voracious curiosity; everything interested him.