Gertrud spits out some yellowish vomit on to the carpet and treads it in with the soles of her shoes.
Yesterday Friedrich Born handed over the German translation of the Auschwitz Protocol. I was told by him that on 7 April 1942 the camp’s resistance organization smuggled out two young Slovak Jews, Walter Rosenberger and Alfred Wetzler, who adopted the pseudo nyms of Rudolf Vrba and Josef Lanik. They presented evidence, plans of the camp and data about the mass killings and the use of Zyklon B, a hydrogen cyanide preparation. They had signalled that preparations were already under way to receive and destroy the Jews of Hungary. The Protocol took up thirty-eight pages and 1,130 typewritten lines in Hungarian. The camp’s location, its equipment, the guard system, the methods by which selections were carried out for the condemned to be gassed were set forth.
The Protocol is being circulated in a restricted circle in Hungary, writes Lutz.
I am given a copy in June. To the best of my knowledge Jewish organizations in Geneva received it at the same time and handed it on to the press; the press does not even communicate details. To the best of my knowledge the Vatican also received copies. In Hungary copies went to the papal nuncio, Angelo Rotta, to the Prince-Primate, Cardinal Jusztinián Serédi, to Bishop László Révész of the Reformed Church and to Regent Miklós Horthy.
The next bundle of papers is fastened with a large paper clip: a separate sheaf within the file.
Gertrud reads the top page then impatiently pulls off the clip so that she can turn the pages more easily. The movement causes the bundle to slip from her hands and — seemingly there is a draught in the room — the papers are blown around.
She gets up. First of all she wishes to establish which window or door could have opened, but she finds them all closed. She kneels down but feels giddy from making the movement. She clambers to her feet and sets off for the bathroom, not noticing that she is trampling on pages from the protocol. She washes her face with cold water. She thinks that perhaps her blood pressure has again dropped sharply, so she lies down on the bench for dirty linen and dangles her head down. She waits before going back to the room. She had read beforehand that the Auschwitz Protocol was thirty-eight pages long, but she does not dare bend down for the scattered pages for fear of another giddy spell. She slowly gets down on to her hands and knees and starts to collect the pages.
She has no notion of how long she had been reading, how long she spent in the bathroom or how long she has been collecting pages.
She goes to bring a jug of water but first gargles over the washbasin, using a mouth wash and a Swiss toothpaste, then dabs a few drops of Givenchy scent on her temples before resuming her seat in the armchair. It’s as if time were passing which is not her own but of which she is nevertheless a part. She is outside of this time yet unable to extricate herself from it; it is impossible to determine whether real time is the duration of reading or the time of what she is reading.
The prisoners’ actual living quarters … inside the camp proper covers an area of approximately 500 by 300 metres, surrounded by a double row of concrete posts about 3 metres high, which are connected (both inside and outside) with one another by a dense netting of high-tension wires fixed into the posts by insulators. Between these two rows of posts, at intervals of 150 metres, there are 5-metre-high watchtowers equipped with machine guns and searchlights.
At 2.15 a.m. she reads:
Twice weekly, Mondays and Thursdays, the camp doctor indicated the number of prisoners who were to be gassed and then burned.
For ten minutes she attempts to add up the total of those who were to be gassed from the numbers of incoming transports that are detailed, and the number is so large that she is unable to cope with this, and around three o’clock she reads:
At the end of February 1943 a new modern crematorium and gassing plant was inaugurated at Birkenau. The gassing and burning of the bodies in the birch forest was discontinued, the whole job being taken over by the four specially built crematoria, with the ashes being used as before for fertilizer at the farm labour camp of Hermannsee.
A huge chimney rises from the furnace room around which are grouped nine furnaces, each having four openings. Each opening can take three normal corpses at once, and after an hour and a half the bodies are completely burned. This corresponds to a daily capacity of about 2,000 bodies. At the inauguration of the first crematorium prominent guests from Berlin were present. The ‘programme’ consisted of the gassing and burning of 8,000 Krakow Jews. The guests … were extremely satisfied with the results, and the special peephole fitted into the door of the gas chamber was in constant use. They were lavish in their praise of this newly erected installation.
While she is reading she becomes very conscious of the fact that, just a few months ago, 400,000 people from the country in the capital city of which she is now reading had come to this very fate; she reflects that those who were made to line up just a few metres away in the Óbuda Brickworks and who marched along the road through the hills of Buda had, in all certainty, met that same end. At around half past three she stops reading, tries to fasten the pages of the protocol together with the unusually large paper clip, puts it back in the file, during which process one sheet drops out — it so happens right on to the section of carpet that is slippery from vomit. She picks it up, carefully mops it with a handkerchief, closes the file, notices the still-full glass of cognac, reaches for it but does not raise it to her lips, although that had been the intention and does not understand why, if she wants a drink, the hand holding the glass does not move towards her lips and squeezes the glass so tightly that it breaks. So she hurls it at one of the pieces of furniture. After the noise has died away she does not dare turn round in case she were to come eye to eye with Carl Lutz.
One of the secretaries is standing in the doorway in her dressing-gown. Can I be of assistance, madam? she asks. No, it’s nothing, says Gertrud. But your hand is bleeding, says the secretary and takes her to the washbasin, washes the hand that was cut by the shards of glass and bandages it with gauze. Gertrud gives her a kiss on the cheek and sends her back to bed, clutches the file and enters the office that is now being used as a bedroom. She switches on the standard lamp. Carl Lutz is lying there with his eyes open. Gertrud can see that he sees her putting the file back on the small table. Like a corpse, the thought runs through her mind. She switches the lamp off, takes off her dressing-gown and puts on a nightdress on top of her underwear before snuggling up to Lutz under the shared blanket. She feels closer to the man than she has ever felt before. She would like to embrace him but suspects that he would not welcome that, even if he knew that she did not want to make love.
They awaken at half past six and make breakfast together in the bedsitter kitchen.
They do no talk.
They walk to the sleeping area together.
Gertrud puts the file that was left on the small table into the bottom drawer of Carl Lutz’s desk.
Mother shows me the shot in which Gizi can be seen in Mihály Munkácsy Street. She told me, Mother says, that another one was also taken of her, but she would give me this one because you are in it, too, there at the end of the row.
Also visible behind those who have lined up, on the loggia of the house opposite, is the woman who is biting into her roll.