89
Dachau concentration camp
Dachau
FRITZ GERLICH BELIEVED MORE than anything in eternal Heaven. Which meant he also sincerely believed in an everlasting Hell. But he never thought he’d experience hell on earth like the concentration camp at Dachau.
The sun falling, the air cooling after a hot, humid day, Gerlich trudged along the path back to the Appellplatz, the site of the evening roll call, pausing every so often to readjust the glasses that slid down his nose.
The military march song “Fridericus Rex” blared over the loudspeakers, as if to lift their spirits, though the only thing prompting Gerlich to keep pace with his fellow prisoners was the punishment he would face if he fell behind.
Only yesterday, his bunkmate, Christian Grotewald, had collapsed on the return walk to camp.
They’d beaten him so severely he had to be carried on a stretcher by his fellow detainees.
Almost instinctively, like breathing or moving one foot before another, Gerlich patted his pockets. His rosary in the left one, the most recent letter from Sophie in his right. Despite his urging, his insistence that she flee the country, his wife had refused to leave without her husband.
“Gerlich.” One of the SS guards, holding a clipboard, waved him away from the crew line. “Follow me.”
What had he done? Gerlich had been quietly defiant, refusing to let them break his spirit, but he had complied with orders. Still, it took so little to warrant punishment.
They walked him out of the camp, through the huge wrought-iron gate bearing the words Arbeit macht frei—Work sets you free—to the woods. The sounds of the marching music from the loudspeakers faded as he left the camp and entered the dark, tree-shrouded path. Gerlich heard new music. Live music.
Music of the “Dachau Orchestra.”
Up ahead, torches rose along the path. He approached his fellow prisoners, the makeshift orchestra of detainees chosen from among the many artistic men in the camp.
Mostly violins, a few cellos, some horns, often ordered to play on the SS’s command.
It would not be unusual for drunken SS guards to rouse the detainee-musicians from sleep to play for them while they drank wine into the wee hours of the night.
Some guards would make the musicians perform cruelly buoyant, lively pieces while they dished out punishment behind Barrack F to other detainees—a flogging on the “whipping horse” to “Ode to Joy” from Beethoven’s Symphony No.
9, beatings on the knuckles with a cane while they played “Spring” from Vivaldi’s Four Seasons.
The detainee orchestra playing in the woods tonight was lined up in two rows, on one side the horns, the other the strings, creating a middle aisle down which Gerlich walked.
The musicians did not look at Gerlich, keeping their eyes down as they blared their horns or bowed their strings at gunpoint.
How many men had come before him down this aisle tonight?
Gerlich wondered. And how many more would come after him?
He had never known exactly when this day would come, only that it would.
Gerlich didn’t recognize the tune the orchestra played. It was a waltz, fanciful and upbeat, as if he might take Sophie’s hand and gleefully dance across a ballroom floor.
When Gerlich reached the middle of the aisle, his fellow prisoners on each side of him, the guard behind him ordered him to his knees. Gerlich mumbled a prayer as he landed on the dirt. His body shook, but he kept his head held high.
“O my Lord and Savior,” he whispered, “support me in my last hour in the strong arms of Thy sacraments and by the fresh fragrance of Thy consolations.”
They tossed a gun in front of him, a Walther pistol. He knew, without them saying, that it held a single bullet.
“I will not commit suicide,” he said. “I am a Catholic.”
The waltz the prisoners played reached a crescendo, the violins at a fever pitch. Gerlich felt the barrel of a gun against the back of his head.
“I will see you again, Sophie,” he whispered.