The Storyteller

On arrival at Auschwitz, soldiers sort prisoners into two lines. Ania’s father is sorted to the left, but Ania is taken to the right. A soldier confiscates her boots with the Christian papers and money. Officers shave Minka’s head and brand her with a number: A14660. Desperate, she attempts to flee the camp, but is caught and thrown into a barracks by an officer, where a familiar voice chides her for her escape attempt. It’s Darija. Darija and Minka are crammed into a hut with five other women in various states of starvation and illness. Minka dubs the SS officer who oversees their block Herr Dybbuk, after the Jewish Dybbuk, an evil spirit which takes up residence in a living human body. Herr Dybbuk is “too weak to force out the evil that [has] taken up residence in him” (284). He has a brother, another SS officer with a shaky right hand. This brother is cruel, delighting in mistreating prisoners.

Minka is assigned to work at the crematorium, sorting through the belongings of the dead. One day, she finds her father’s suitcase in the pile and realizes that she is an orphan, her entire family now gone. Minka feels responsible for remembering the dead and starts taking photographs from the pile of belongings and bringing them home with her, memorizing the names of victims. When the other women in the hut need distraction from their surroundings, Minka tells them her Ania story. She also writes the story down for the first time, hoping to leave a record of herself behind when she dies. During an inspection of the bunks, Minka’s photographs and story are found and confiscated. She is sent to the office of Herr Dybbuk and discovers that his name is Franz Hartmann. To Minka’s surprise, Franz is interested in her story. He asks her if she’s heard of a Donestre, a monster which cries over the severed heads of its victims. Minka replies that “perhaps some monsters…still have a conscience” (308). Rather than punishing her, Franz takes her on as his secretary. He gives her a black leather-bound journal and pen, advising her to deliver regular updates on her story.

Minka learns that Franz feels connected to the character of Aleks, a once-normal boy who became a bloodthirsty upiór through random circumstance. Through her job, Minka sees more of Auschwitz. She observes interactions between Franz and his brother, Reiner, surmising that Reiner is a violent alcoholic with none of Franz’s inclination toward mercy. She knows that Franz sees her story of two murderous brothers as an allegory for his relationship to Reiner. Franz reads the newest section of Minka’s story, in which Ania and Aleks sleep together. Afterward, Aleks describes his first kill and how he wept afterward, a reference to the Donestre. Aleks explains that the more he kills, the easier it gets, and admits that Ania can never be sure of her safety around him. Franz praises the snippet but offers one small correction. What Aleks says in the final paragraph is inaccurate; killing never gets easier, no matter how many times a person does it. One day Franz unexpectedly dismisses Minka from her position and sends her to the hospital. She is kept there all day before being abruptly recalled to his office. Minka later discovers that almost every Jew in a position of privilege within the camp was shot and killed that day. Franz saved her life.

Whenever Minka wants to see Darija, she types up a fake summons from Franz to have Darija brought to his office. As the days grow colder, she uses this tactic often to spare Darija from the freezing bunks. On one of these occasions, she brings Darija into the office only to find Reiner Hartmann stealing from his brother’s safe. When sees her, Minka realizes that he assumed she was already dead. Unwilling to have two witnesses to his crime, Reiner shoots and kills Darija. When Franz appears, summoned by the commotion, Reiner blames his theft on Minka and orders Franz to punish her, implying that he will kill her otherwise. Franz brutally beats Minka before sending her to a starvation cell. Drifting in and out of consciousness, she thinks of the two sides of Franz and feels naïve for believing his assertion that people can be both bad and good. The next day, she is deported to a new camp, Neusalz. Minka wonders if this is Franz’s way of saving her from Reiner’s retaliation. Her suspicions are confirmed when she finds a small note slipped into her mitten that reads: “WHAT HAPPENS NEXT?” (342)

Three days after Minka's arrival, Neusalz is evacuated and its prisoners forced to walk for days through the woods without sustenance in what soon becomes apparent is a death march. Minka is soon so hungry that she tries to pick up a discarded apple core and is immediately caught by guards and slated to be executed. As her would-be executioner approaches her, Minka distracts him by giving him the leather-bound story journal. She escapes to a farm, where she is fed and clothed for a week before the owners turn her back in to an officer. She is then taken to Bergen-Belsen. Almost everyone at Bergen-Belsen has typhus, and Minka soon contracts the disease. She is sure she will die there, but on April 15, 1945, British tanks arrive to liberate the prisoners. Minka is free.