Auschwitz: January 18, 1945
For weeks now Méret and Magda had played only for each other. Every childhood piece they could think of, transposed for cello and trombone. They sounded like a musical interpretation of Laurel and Hardy.
Meanwhile, Block 12 filled up again. Women grateful for the warmth of the stove.
One morning in mid-January a boom like the gates of hell opening up ripped through the air, a cloud of dust swept past the window, and Magda came running in, wide-eyed and breathless.
“What was the bang?”
“The crem . . . they blew up the crematoria.”
“Blew them up? I don’t—”
“The lot. Boom!” Both hands in the air, fingers and thumbs pointing upward.
“Boom and they were gone—crems, gas chambers, the lot. They want to kill us now, they’ll have to shoot us.”
“Mind you,” she added. “They might just do that anyway.”
As dusk came they began to notice specks of red light around the compound and a change in the air—the smell of burning flesh overlain now with the smell of burning paper—grey flakes of it floating down like confetti.
“They’re burning the evidence,” said Magda.
“Aren’t we evidence?” said Méret.