The Librarian of Auschwitz

“Adults wear themselves out pointlessly searching for a joy they never find, but in children it bursts out of every pore.” 

At 14, Dita has her first kiss, and even a year later, when she is at Auschwitz, she remembers that day with joy. She also thinks about how hard her father takes the rapid change in the family’s life and the development of her mother’s neutral expression as she greets their hardship. Dita realizes how hard it must be for her parents, but she pities them, too, and all adults who don’t cultivate an attitude of finding a spark of happiness in each day.

“Our strength isn’t in uniforms—it’s in faith, pride and determination.” 

When Fredy Hirsch speaks about Aliyah, meaning Jews emigrating to what was then called Palestine (Israel), he speaks to the teens with passion. Dita admires Fredy for what she sees as his integrity and his faith. Dita is not yet a Zionist, but she is drawn to the concept and listens intently to Fredy discussing the value and impact of making a homeland. The appeal for the teens in the class, including Dita, is the reference to faith, pride, and determination. These values stand in contrast to the brutality of war as represented by the reference to uniforms.

“Dita felt the thrill of discovery, of knowing that it didn’t matter how many hurdles all the Reichs in the world put in her way, she’d be able to jump over all of them by opening a book.” 

On her 12th birthday, Dita asks her mother if she can read a grownup book. Later that night, her mother leaves The Citadel for her to read. Dita loves the book. She believes that she can defeat her adversary with her imagination as brought to her by books, but more than that, it is what she can learn from books that empowers her. 

“It’s better not to prepare for some things. Sometimes you have to act impulsively.” 

When Rudi brings the pencils to his beloved Alice, he watches for the guard and in a flash; when the guard looks away, he shoves the pencils through the electrical fence. Alice is surprised. Rudi implies, by saying this, that sometimes planning slows a person down. In order to get things done—in order sometimes to live—it’s best just to do it and not think. This quote foreshadows Rudi’s almost impulsive move to escape. 

“She wants to find out the truth that words don’t reveal. Suspicion is like an itch that is barely felt at the start. But when you become aware of it, you can’t stop scratching.” 

When Dita catches Hirsch talking to a German, she immediately grows suspicious by what he says. The next morning, she tries to imagine what it is that Hirsch is afraid of, and though in the beginning she had reasonable answers that pointed to innocence, as she thought more and more about it, her suspicion grew. Now, as the quote implies, it has become a compulsion for Dita to find the truth. When she speaks about the truth that words don’t expose, she is invoking an idea that comes from perusing books; reading between the lines. She is learning that not all is black and white.

“The age when you think that just wanting something is enough to make it happen is slipping away from them.”

Dita’s father becomes deathly ill. She listens to Margit assure her that he will be fine. When Dita asks her how she knows this, Margit tells her it is just something she wants to believe. When Dita thinks about it, she realizes that magical thinking is for children. As a person matures, you can’t just wish for something to go your way. The quote is a nod to the awareness of powerlessness that comes with maturity.

“How can something that no longer exists be so heavy? How can emptiness have weight?” 

After her father dies, Dita feels the weight of her grief. It is unbearable. Dita must experience, for the first time like an adult, the tragic loss of a loved one. The weight she speaks of is made worse by the truth: the Nazis really killed her father. He would not have died of typhus if they hadn’t taken everything from him; his home, his work, and his dignity.

“The most beautiful flowers emerge from the foulest dung heap.” 

Dita is contemplating the existence of God and what it means to have a god when there’s an Auschwitz. She things of Alice and Rudi’s love and wonders how it is possible to love someone from the other side of a fence. She is engaging with her doubts about a just and righteous God, but she begins to see that the love between Alice and Rudi was beautiful, like the flower from the dung heap. She decides that God must be like a gardener. 

“The war is our scalpel, and we have to handle it with precision. If you handle it like a madman, you might end up sticking it into yourself.” 

Mengele converses with Schwarzhuber in the mess hall. Schwarzhuber thinks Mengele is a condescending jerk. What Mengele means by the war being a scalpel is that the war is the device by which they can excise the cancer. The cancer is the racially impure Jews. He also understands how bad it can get, and how one wrong move and the German Nazis, will fall. This quote foreshadows the end of the war, when the Germans run for the lives as the allied forces move in. 

“Everyone is concerned about what’s going to happen to the September transport people.” 

Dita realizes that whatever happens to the September transport people may be exactly what happens to her and the people on her December transport. By everyone, she literally means everyone; both the September transport people because they are worried they are about to die, and the rest because their fate may be the same. It’s a sober moment for her as she watches the people, many who’ve become her friends, begin to gather and wait for their deaths. 

“The library has now become her first aid kit, and she’s going to give the children a little of the medicine that helped her recover her smile when she thought she’d lost it forever.” 

After the people from the September transport are killed and their ashes begin to rain down, everyone at the school grows upset. There is a lot of running around and crying and hysteria. The children can’t focus on their work, so Dita picks up her favorite book and begins to read. At first, no one listens, but soon, they are all listening, and the book helps explain the ludicrous and bizarre nature of war. It is this book that offers the balm they are all looking for. As medicine, it distracts them from their pain and offers everyone a moment of reprieve. When they laugh at the antics of Švejk, the relief spreads throughout the room. Books, Dita knows, are medicine.

“Truth is the first casualty of war.” 

Dita tries to find an answer for why Hirsch died. She can’t believe he killed himself unless she changes her view of him. She can’t accept that he would end on a coward’s note. She finally begins to realize that since this war is based on a lie, it can’t ever reveal the truth about anything. Dita is determined, however, to keep searching for the reason he died because she seeks out truth; it is in her nature not to give up.

“Can you really choose, or do the blows dealt to you by fate change you no matter what, in the same way that the blow of an ax converts a living tree into firewood?” 

As the war continues marching forward and the brutalities increase, especially when the Germans realize they are losing, Dita grows more philosophical. She often questions issues of a spiritual nature: the existence of God, the Jewish faith, and now the question of choice over fate. Unlike some of the questions she asks of herself, this particular question is not meant to be rhetorical. She isn’t sure there’s an answer. The example of the tree cut by an ax into firewood is a harsh one. Dita’s world view is colored by violence and brutality. In a world of such violence, she wonders if choice remains, or if fate lights one’s path.

“Dita suddenly sees fear as a type of rust that undermines even the strongest convictions. It corrodes everything; it destroys all.” 

After Dita asks a resistance fighter what he thinks happened with Hirsch, he tells her that Hirsch simply grew frightened. She doesn’t want to believe that Hirsch took the coward’s way out and killed himself in order not to face making a decision. Though her conviction tells her that Hirsch would never kill himself, fear has her in its grip, and it erodes her beliefs. She can’t trust herself to know the truth. 

“Truth is put together by destiny; it’s nothing more than a whim of fate. A lie on the other hand is more human; it’s created by mankind and tailor made to purpose.”

Dita contemplates the reality that family camp is not real and has been created to show the Red Cross how compassionate the Nazis are with their prisoners. Earlier, she questioned the notions of fate and choice. This quote shows that now she has found part of the answer; she equates fate with truth. Destiny is what determines the truth. Lies are made by humans, by choice. The contrast helps Dita understand the natural, organic ways of fate, while choice leads human beings lie. It is a fatalistic perspective about human beings, but here she is obliquely referring to the Nazis, who time and time again she asserts are not humans, but monsters. Her life—her fate—has not been determined by natural forces, but by the lies of others.

“Life, any life, is very short. But if you’ve managed to be happy for at least an instant, it will have been worth living.” 

Miriam gives voice to the meaning of life after Dita seeks out her council about the reality of family camp. Dita increasingly turns to Miriam for advice and for an explanation. The world in which she lives seems to have no logic. It appears to be ruled by chaos. So, Dita struggles with the idea that family camp is a ruse and acknowledges that, if this is the case, the deaths of the children are likely. Here, Miriam helps Dita put life into perspective, allowing Dita a moment’s reprieve from the pain of her realization by pointing out to Dita that they have made the children happy, even if only fleetingly. They have made the lives of the children meaningful.

“…no matter how much they take away from us, they can’t remove our hope.” 

Dita struggles to understand her situation; the situation for all of her fellow Jews. She cannot comprehend the evil, and she is looking for an answer to her questions about why Jews are being killed. Dita needs Miriam to help her deal with what feels inevitable—their deaths. Once again, Miriam reminds Dita that there are aspects of life that the Nazis cannot take from them. They can take all the material goods, including their lives, but the spirit within each Jewish child, man, or woman, won’t allow for the absence of hope. Miriam attempts to teach Dita that it is not what she owns or collects or has that make a person; it is hope. 

“He was possessed by a feverish desire to shout at a world deafened by the bombs of war that an even dirtier and more terrible war was happening within Europe’s borders behind closed doors.”

Rudi attempts to convince the world—most especially the Hungarian Jewish Council—that the world does not know what’s really going on. This moment shows how effective the Nazis were at hiding what they were really doing. When the Hungarian disbelieved him, Rudi saw the willingness people have to shut their eyes to reality. The truth was so absurd, that others simply couldn’t believe it. Rudi wants to shout at the world because people are deafened, it seems, only by bombs and not what those bombs are hiding; the systematic killing of Jews.

“War is like an overflowing river: it’s hard to control, and if you put up a small barrier, it only gets swept along in its path.” 

This simile, importantly, points to the nature of war. It’s tidal, it moves without compunction, and small gestures can’t help. The operative word here is “small.” One voice can’t change a tidal flood. What Rudi discovers during freedom is that small attempts to enlighten the world about what was happening with the Jews did nothing. It took the world to stop Hitler. 

“The worst thing is Dita is beginning not to care. Apathy is the worst possible symptom.” 

In Bergen-Belsen people are dying. Everyone is developing symptoms of typhoid or cholera. Illness is killing them. For Dita, who is physically well, the fear is that giving up may actually be what kills her. The metaphor of apathy as a symptom equates the notion that losing the will to live is as deadly as typhoid.

“She pinches her arm until something hurts…She needs life to hurt. When something pains you, it is because that something is important to you.” 

Dita needs to stay awake in the sense of finding a reason to continue living. If it comes down to just a sense of pain, this quote implies, then that is enough to keep her going. The irony is that the logic seems backwards; that pain is actually what can wipe you out over time. Dita, having suffered as much as she has, knows that pain has taught her to be strong and to survive.

“She has the appearance of someone who’s been to an expensive salon and then rolled around in a barn.”

Elisabeth Volkenrath is a cruel and sadistic guard who saunters around Bergen-Belsen with an ostentatious blonde bun on top of her head. This quote is from Dita’s point of view. The description of Volkenrath shows that no matter how much money you spend on your looks, if you’re a barn animal underneath, no amount of exterior improvement will change that. The underlying symbolism of this metaphor is that evil can’t be disguised, not even by good hair. 

“Dita’s feebleness extends to her mind. Moments, places and people she has known in her real life, get mixed up with others she has met in books, and Dita is unable to distinguish the real from the imagined.”

Just before the British show up and rescue those Jews who remain alive, Dita begins to lose hope entirely. She drifts into a hallucinogenic state. Typical of that, she can’t tell the difference between what’s real and unreal. What’s notable about Dita’s state is that she drifts between reality and the stories in the books that have kept her alive for so long. The implication is that one more time, the books will help her stay alive, or if they must, they will gently help her pass into death. Shortly after she reaches this state, she is rescued.