One of them tries to stop her by grabbing her arm, but she avoids him and continues with her dash. “What are you doing? Are you crazy?” teachers shout at her. She launches herself into a noisy run between the clusters of stools. The groups are in their places, singing softly as they wait for the guards to arrive, but one girl disrupts the harmony. ![]() Books are extremely dangerous they make people think. Throughout history, all dictators, tyrants, and oppressors, whatever their ideology-whether Aryan, African, Asian, Arab, Slav, or any other racial background whether defenders of popular revolutions, or the privileges of the upper classes, or God’s mandate, or martial law-have had one thing in common: the vicious persecution of the written word. These items, which the relentless guards of the Reich fear so much, are nothing more than books: old, unbound, with missing pages, and in tatters. These items, so dangerous that their mere possession is a death sentence, cannot be fired, nor do they have a sharp point, a blade, or a heavy end. They are holding something that’s absolutely forbidden in Auschwitz. “Anything! For heaven’s sake, child, anything!” “Come on, come on! Juda! Yes, you! Say ‘I spy. That’s their name for one of the SS noncommissioned officers, a sergeant who always walks with his hands tucked into the sleeves of his military greatcoat as if he were a priest, though the only religion he practices is cruelty. Someone whispers, “The Priest!” and a murmur of dismay breaks out. Even the youngest children understand more than their snot-covered little faces might suggest. Sometimes the youngest children are interrogated, the guards hoping to take advantage of their innocence to pry information out of them. Lines must be formed, and searches are carried out. Inspections are another matter altogether. But Jakoubek adds another note to the customary alert: Normally, the two-soldier patrol barely enters the barrack, casting a routine glance over the children, occasionally clap- ping along with a song or stroking the head of one of the little ones before continuing their rounds. ![]() The lessons come to a halt and are replaced by silly little German songs and guessing games, to give the impression that all is in order. He doesn’t need to say a word to his assistants or his teachers, whose eyes are locked on him. It’s code for the imminent arrival of SS guards at Block 31. From her corner, Dita Adler stares, mesmerized by the tiny spots of mud, as Jakoubek calls out: His clogs leave a trail of moist camp earth across the floor, and the bubble of calm serenity in Block 31 bursts. The barrack door is flung open, and Jakoubek, the lookout, races toward the cubicle of Blockältester Hirsch, the head of Block 31. They are so close together that classes are whispered to prevent the story of the ten plagues of Egypt from getting mixed up with the rhythm of a times table. There are about twenty clusters of children, each with its own teacher. The teachers trace isosceles triangles, letters of the alphabet, and even the routes of the rivers of Europe with their hands in the air. Walls are nonexistent blackboards are invisible. Inside the wooden hut, the classrooms are nothing more than stools, tightly packed into groups. He managed to convince the German camp authorities that keeping the children entertained in a hut would make it easier for their parents to do their work in camp BIIb, the one known as “the family camp.” The camp high command agreed, but on the condition that it would be for games and activities only: School was banned. ![]() He used to be a youth sports instructor, but is now an athlete himself, competing against the biggest steamroller of humans in history. In this life-destroying factory that is Auschwitz–Birkenau, where the ovens burn corpses day and night, Block 31 is atypical, an anomaly. Each time someone stops to tell a story and children listen, a school has been established. It doesn’t matter how many schools the Nazis close, he would say to them. He was always smiling enigmatically, as if he knew something that no one else did. They thought Hirsch was crazy, or naïve: How could you teach children in this brutal extermination camp where everything is forbidden? But Hirsch would smile. Some inmates didn’t believe it was possible. They don’t know it, and it’s essential that they should not know it. The officers have no idea that in the family camp in Auschwitz, on top of the dark mud into which everything sinks, Alfred Hirsch has established a school. Death has become an industry that is profitable only if it’s done wholesale. It’s cost-effective, killing hundreds of people with just one tank. In Auschwitz, there are communal chambers where they administer Zyklon gas. In Auschwitz, human life has so little value that no one is shot anymore a bullet is more valuable than a human being. They look at death with the indifference of a gravedigger.
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