The Librarian of Auschwitz

If Dita embodies hope, Fredy embodies Jewish Pride and Zionism. He is a patriot to his origins, and in some ways, he’s part politician, part rabbi. Though he doesn’t speak of the Torah directly, Fredy’s discussion of aliyah and the Jewish duty to settle in the homeland of Palestine takes on both a political and spiritual undertone.

Like everyone else who has a secret, Fredy’s terrible secret threatens to undo him. Hitler doesn’t just hate Jews. Among many others, he also believes that homosexuals are an aberration and must be killed. This conflict drives Fredy nearly to despair, but like his fellow prisoners, Rudi and Dita, as well as Viktor, who falls in love with Renee, Fredy gravitates toward love and the comfort of sex. These aspirations toward what is good in the world while keeping the secret of who he really is, threatens to destroy him as he negotiates his choices: to stay with his Nazi lover or give him up. The stakes are high and, in the end, Fredy chooses his people and his survival over his pleasure. Despite this choice, Fredy’s character denotes the torturous nature of living a life with so many conflicting attributes and personal qualities.

In Fredy’s character, though complexity abounds, readers also begin to understand how difficult it is to practice fidelity to one’s political and religious identity. The deliberately ambiguous ending to his life speaks to all of his ambivalence as a Jew, a Zionist and a gay man living at a time when all of these things were punishable by death. Existing between these worlds, Fredy’s uncertain death remains a symbol for the difficulty of living in the gray areas. 

Mengele appears in the opening pages when he is at Block 31 to inspect the school. He is described first by the tune he whistles—Beethoven—and by the shuddering and fear of the prisoners. Mengele is a character not to be trifled with. He is the embodiment of evil; able to trick the children into loving him with little gifts of candy and warm pats on the head, but their parents, and the other prisoners, know him for what he is. When he walks near the crowds of prisoners, they part and scatter. He is defined mainly by the fear and trembling he evokes in the Jews.

The prisoners cringe when he whistles the beautiful classical music. It is almost impossible to hear such gorgeous music coming from the mouth of a Nazi devil. This irony is the defining characteristic of Mengele. Each time he appears in the novel, it is always to the accompaniment of his whistling classical music. Mengele is portrayed as brilliant and malevolent; he has used his intelligence for evil. The author often describes him as having no expression in his eyes. If the eyes are the windows to the soul, then the author suggests that Mengele is soulless and without humanity. This becomes abundantly clear by the way he speaks to Dita and how he does his selections with little to no emotion. When Dita tells him that she is a painter, she is not sure if she has opened a Pandora’s box of evil or provoked him into sending her to the right side of the line. No one wants to watch as Mengele stops to think because the prisoners have learned that when Mengele stops to think, it is often to their detriment.

As readers learn in the afterward, Mengele manages to evade capture. The author does not comment on Mengele’s end; he leaves it up to the reader to contemplate the way Mengele escaped retribution and the way he lied to his son. 

The character of Viktor is an anomaly among a cast of predictable SS guards, officers, and others. The hatred and violence ascribed to the Germans is pervasive, but Viktor suffers a conflict about being in charge of gassing the Jews. The conflict is precipitated by the love he suddenly and irrevocably experiences when he sees Renee.

At first, his motivations do not appear trustworthy. Certainly, as shown, Renee is extremely reticent to give herself over to him, but it becomes clear that Viktor represents a character who has had an ideological conversion. This is most evident when he realizes that his first gift to Renee—a music box—though beautiful, is completely useless to a starving Jewish girl. She is bold enough to tell him you can’t eat a music box, and Viktor is ashamed. His psychic change becomes trustworthy. All he wants is to be with Renee. He risks, and ultimately loses, his life for her, which is a selfless act.

Viktor is an example of the main theme that love rises in the cesspool of the camps. His love for Renee is enough to bring on a radical change of heart, so Viktor is a character that furthers the theme about love. His purpose in the story is to demonstrate the power that love and connection have in order to change one’s life; Loving Renee transforms him.