Magda thought she would faint. Her heart beat so unsteadily, she had to gasp for air. Looking out the partly cracked door, Magda saw them coming through the trees. German soldiers, the SS officer with them. It was only a little after eight, but they had come already.
She looked at the floorboards where she had hidden her food, but she had taken the boards up. They lay loose on the floor. There wasn’t time for the children to crawl down and then replace all the boards perfectly. She looked desperately around the hut. Hansel had not been dreaming. Her mind moved in jerks and she couldn’t think what to do. She stared at Hansel, who wrung his hands over and over.
The boy suddenly leaped toward the oven. He opened the door and stared at Magda.
“It can hold both of you. Quick, my darlings, do what I say. Inside. Both of you. Curl up.”
“It’s hot.” Gretel frowned.
“It’s hot, but you can do this.” Magda took off her coat and put it on the oven’s floor.
“Get in, lie still and for God’s sake, whatever you hear, don’t make a noise.”
“But you, Magda? Where will you hide?”
“Hush, my little boy. Obey me.”
“I won’t go without you.”
Magda slapped his cheek so gently, it was like a kiss. “Obey me, boy.”
Gretel climbed inside. The boy followed her, giving a single dry sob, and they curled up in tight balls.
“Don’t move an inch, Hansel. If the door latches shut, you can’t open it from inside.”
“It’s hot. I can’t breathe—” Gretel began.
“Silence.” Magda’s voice was harsh.
Hansel wanted to put his hand over Gretel’s mouth, but he couldn’t reach her. The metal was hot, and he tried to keep his back from pressing on it. The fire was out, but the metal still burned his back. He bit his lip hard so he wouldn’t scream.
The door banged open.
“Take her,” the Oberführer shouted. The soldiers grabbed Magda. One of them went to the boards lifted from the floor. He lay on his belly and looked under the hut.
“Where are the children?” The Oberführer spoke such thickly accented Polish, and his voice was so choked with rage, that Magda couldn’t understand at first.
“Their mother came a week ago. She took them with her. She’s trying to stay in front of the Russians.” Magda looked him in the eye as she spoke. The lie was her death sentence, she knew it, but it didn’t matter anymore. The truth or a lie, they’d both kill her.
“You witch! You knew what your brother was planning, didn’t you?” The Oberführer slapped Magda. One of the soldiers threw a board and it hit the oven with a hard clang. Magda stared. The oven door had latched shut.
Magda collapsed on the floor as if she were too weak to stand. She crawled toward the oven.
“Get the woman. Put her in the truck.”
Magda reached the oven and pulled herself up on it. As the soldier grabbed her shoulder, she slipped the latch up and pulled. The door came free as the soldiers dragged her outside.
“Search the woods.”
The SS man was screaming at the soldiers, but he didn’t panic Rahn, the stolid Unterfeldwebel. Sergeant Rahn stood and thought. They had to meet the others. If the caravan of trucks from the village left them behind, they were only a handful of soldiers on the road with two trucks, a bunch of Jews, and a dead priest. They’d be easy targets.
“We can’t risk it.” He spoke very respectfully but firmly. “The children are gone. If they’re in the woods, we could hunt for days and not find them.”
“Do what I said!” The SS man didn’t shout, but he moved as if he’d hit the soldier.
“The Russians could be here in hours, sir. If they catch an SS officer—” Sergeant Rahn waited. The man was a fool. He hadn’t even shot the boar when he had the best gun in the forest.
The Oberführer paused. The soldier was right. The Russians wouldn’t let him die quickly if they caught him. He’d be sent back to Moscow and then on to Siberia. He couldn’t starve to death in Siberia. He was destined to carry the truth on for the next generation.
“Torch the hut. Throw the old woman in the truck. There is one more chance. The child Halina may know where the children are.”
He watched while one of the soldiers stepped to the side of the hut and emptied a tin of kerosene on the bale of straw piled to keep the cold out. He threw a match on it and it exploded into flame. The sun-warmed wood of the boards caught, and the man lifted a burning stick from the wood piled next to the straw and threw it on the roof. The soldiers watched for a minute while the roof began to catch. They ran back to the road, dragging Magda between two of them.
Zanna stood beside the truck. She couldn’t bear to look at Magda. She crossed herself with a slight gesture hoping that the soldiers wouldn’t see. “God forgive me,” she whispered.
The Oberführer stared at the woods. The smoke rose in a plume. They had the woman. If Halina couldn’t lead them to the children, they would probably die on the road anyway. Maybe he would even see them walking with their mother. He could watch for them. Nelka and the baby had slipped through his fingers, but he had more important things to think about.
He had to survive the war. Some men who understood the principles, the philosophy, had to survive so the next generation could be taught. Even if these incompetent fools lost the war, the ideas would live. He suddenly remembered the peasant woman standing beside the truck.
“The woman who showed us the hut,” he said to the Sergeant in German. “Take her in the woods and kill her.”
Sergeant Rahn was flustered for the first time that day. “The Major said we were to leave no bodies, sir. We’ll have to put her body in the truck.”
Color began to climb up the Oberführer’s neck. The flush spread to his cheeks. It was probably better if this war was lost. The German people weren’t ready for glory. They still did not obey instantly with the joy that the new world order demanded. The Sergeant was German, but he wasn’t much better than the Poles. He stepped forward and slapped the Sergeant so hard it made him stagger. When the man regained his balance, the SS man slapped him again.
“Take her in the woods. Shoot her. Then we’ll go. Those are my orders. If I wanted her body in the truck, I would have said so. You have disobeyed my order. I will have you court-martialed when we are in Germany.” He drew his pistol. The rage he had felt at Nelka in the office came back to him, and he nearly shot the Sergeant.
The Unterfeldwebel saw the look in the officer’s eyes, and he saluted smartly.
“Heil Hitler, Oberführer. It will be done.”
He turned and grabbed the woman’s arm. Zanna didn’t resist, but she began to pray under her breath. She didn’t understand German, but this couldn’t be good to be taken into the woods.
The Sergeant dragged her through the towering trees until they were out of sight of the truck. Sergeant Rahn’s face was grim. He had only said to the Oberführer what the Major had said. The orders had come from Berlin. No bodies left for the Russians to find.
“The Major was a hero on the Russian front,” the Sergeant muttered. “That SS bastard never fought in his life. Fucking athletic medals. He might just fall off the truck before we get back to Germany. God knows, he won’t help with the fighting when we get there.”
Zanna stared at him in terror. They stopped finally, both of them out of breath. He turned to the woman and took his pistol from the holster. Zanna didn’t cry but fell on her knees before him. She thought of the child inside her, the new one she carried. She tried to raise her skirt and expose the round of flesh that was beginning to show. She said nothing but struggled with her coat and skirt and kept gesturing to her belly.
He ignored her and pointed the gun. Unterfeldwebel Rahn fired twice. The bullets went into the earth beside her knee. She froze in terror and stared up at him. He pushed her down on her side and put his finger to his lips. Then he holstered his gun, turned, and ran back to the truck.
Zanna lay on the forest floor until she heard the truck engines start and move off. She began to crawl when the noise grew faint. She struggled to a bush and lay under it until she could control her breathing. Then she staggered to her feet and ran in a clumsy lope toward the village. She turned her head and tried to see the hut. There was only a line of smoke in the sky and the smell of burning wood.
She didn’t understand why he hadn’t killed her. She would never understand until she died, but she would pray for him forever, she vowed. Even though he was a Nazi. He had spared her and the child, so she would pray for him.
The Sergeant saluted the SS man again. “It’s done, sir.”
“One bullet is all a Pole is worth, Sergeant. Never forget that.”
“Yes, sir.” The man stood at attention while the SS man smiled at him for the first time. If the woman screamed or cried out, the Oberführer would shoot him for disobeying.
The Oberführer climbed into the cab of the truck, and the Sergeant got into the driver’s side. Sergeant Rahn glanced at the SS man beside him. His chest was full of medals.
The Sergeant touched the rag of ribbon in his second buttonhole. It was all he needed. He felt warm when he thought that he had obeyed the Major. The Major was a soldier. If the SS bastard insisted on questioning the child in the village, it could be done quickly. Then they’d move to their rendezvous. It was the twenty-first of March. They were heading west now, away from the cold, godforsaken east. Germany was waiting for them.
Hansel heard the flames before he smelled the smoke. It covered the noise of the voices, and that was frightening. There was no way to tell if anyone was watching the hut burn.
What if they’re waiting to see if anyone crawls out? Like they did in the ghetto. Setting fires and then waiting for people to jump out of windows. But his back was in such pain from the metal, he had to move his legs spasmodically, and the door of the oven flew open.
He crawled out. The pain of his burned skin made him gasp, whimpering, as he backed into the room. “Gretel,” he whispered. “Come on.”
“The witch was going to cook us, Hansel.”
The girl’s pupils were dilated and she panted through her mouth. Hansel took her hand. “Magda didn’t want to hurt us.”
The side of the hut was burning, and the roof was beginning to roar with the flames eating at the wooden shingles. “Not the door,” he whispered, and the words were lost in the sound of shingles catching fire. He pulled Gretel over and pushed her down under the floor.
“Quick. Crawl out the back. Maybe they won’t see us.”
She dropped below the floor. Hansel was sobbing now and he wrung his hands over and over as she moved slowly out of his way so he could crawl under too. His chin was bloody from where he had bitten his lip. Finally she was out of the way, and he crawled beneath the floor. They scuttled toward the side farthest from the burning straw, and together they pushed more straw away so they could see out.
Hansel saw no soldiers, but they could be hiding in the trees to trick them. He heard the fire roaring louder. It didn’t matter about the soldiers. They had to get out from under the hut.
“Quick, Gretel.”
They crawled through the mud until they could stand, and then they ran, staggering, toward the woods. Hansel waited for the shouted order to halt, for the bullets that would knock him down, but nothing happened. They ran until they got to the creek, running between the trees, and then they stopped and listened. They heard the trucks moving off on the road. They stood until the sound died out, and then only the calls of ravens in the trees above them broke the silence. The roar of the hut burning behind them was faint and then died away.
Hansel stood and listened to the beaks of the birds clacking in protest at their presence. He looked at the water and waited, but they were alone.
“Magda,” he whispered. He knew they should go into the forest and hide, but his legs wouldn’t move. He fell down on the ground on his back and felt the wet mud seep through his shirt and cool the burning of his skin.
“It’s almost spring, Hansel. Magda said her bones won’t ache when it gets warm. My leg hurts where it was hot in the oven. Poor Magda. She was so hungry. She wanted to cook us.”
Gretel lifted her skirt and stroked the cold, wet mud onto the red patch of skin.
“Oh, Magda,” Hansel whispered again. He stared up at the branches of the trees and saw that the straight lines of the twigs had new swellings on them. Soon the buds would turn red against the black of the bark.
“Magda,” he said a last time and then shut his eyes and lay still for nearly an hour until he fell asleep right on the muddy ground, Gretel singing softly beside him, while the ravens clacked their hard beaks overhead and the creek’s cold water poured over the rocks.
It was late afternoon on the twenty-first of March, and the sun was almost setting. The Mechanik had run the last mile toward the village, and the Russian and Lydka and several soldiers had run with him, catching his excitement like a fever. The people of the village were quiet, talking softly, when the ragged soldiers trotted breathless down the street.
“We are partisans and friends, people of Piaski,” the Russian called to them. “The Russian people extend their hands in friendship and ask your help in killing the Nazis and driving them from Poland. We come in friendship.”
The Mechanik turned to the first woman he saw. “Two children? Last November? A girl eleven and a boy seven? They were both small. The girl is blond.”
The woman stared at him. He looked like a scarecrow. Ragged coat. Long beard. His eyes glittering like coal.
“A woman,” he began again. “My age with white streaks in her hair. She would have come here not long ago. Have you seen her?”
“I never saw the woman, but there were two children. Magda took them in.”
“Where is this Magda?” He didn’t smile. He couldn’t hope. Not yet.
The woman looked at the ground.
“Where?” He was begging her.
“Her hut was in the woods. A mile from the village. Back the way you came. Turn into the woods by the big rock and the bend in the road.”
He turned and began to run east toward the pounding of the guns that never stopped now but made a steady sound like the beating of an insane drummer.
“They won’t be there,” she called after him. “They killed the priest and went to get Magda. You won’t find them. They killed them. We saw the smoke when they burned the hut.”
She didn’t shout too loudly. Maybe the children were still there. Maybe she was wrong. Maybe the Nazis had pity and only took the old woman. The man was too far away now anyway, running like a crazy person.
The Mechanik saw the bend in the road. He turned when he got to the large boulder beside the ditch and loped into the woods. He stared around, looking for the hut and smelled it before he saw it. Burnt wood. The pungent stink of smoke.
The blackened circle of ash was barely warm now. The lump of the huge stove, a stove surely too large for the size of this hut, lay on its side in the ash. The Mechanik walked to the circle and stood in the middle, ignoring the smell and the dust from the ash that covered his boots. He stared out at the enormous trees encircling where the hut had been. The forest was silent.
He opened his mouth to call, but stopped. The children would be afraid to come out if he called their Jewish names. His wife had named them, given them names that were safe, and the children had probably answered to those names since November.
“Hansel? Gretel? Hansel? Greteeeeel?”
The Mechanik shouted until his throat was torn and he was hoarse and then he knelt in the ash and lifted the soft stuff in his hands and poured it on his head. He rubbed the gray powder on his face until he was blackened. He had lost them. By a few hours, he had lost them. His wife must be dead, and his children dead too. He was an afternoon too late.
The Oven
Magda gasped in pain. She knew that a rib had been broken when they knocked her down. She
was cold without her coat. The young woman beside Magda had circles around her eyes so dark it was as if her eyes had been put in her head with a sooty finger.
“I’m Rachele.”
“Magda.”
Magda turned her head and looked at the soldier sitting on the narrow bench that ran along the inside of the truck. His pot of a helmet hid his face until he turned. His unlined face and young eyes saw Magda staring, and he kicked out with his boot. The kick glanced off her leg, and she gasped in pain. The rib was going to cause her trouble. She hoped it wouldn’t keep her from working. They said the camps were for work.
Magda didn’t want to ask Rachele, but she suddenly had to know.
“Jew?” she whispered.
Rachele couldn’t hear the old woman’s whisper over the roar of the truck’s engine, but she saw the lips form the word. She nodded.
Magda looked down and saw a body shoved under the narrow seat. It was strange they had bothered to take a dead man with them. She stared at the body, and her mind suddenly cleared. It was the patch on the back that she had sewn with her own hands. She recognized the gray tweed against the black of the coat. Magda tried to crawl to the body, but the woman held her back.
“He was the priest,” Magda said. “Did they kill the priest?”
Rachele nodded. “He killed some German woman and a soldier.”
Magda couldn’t speak for a while. Then she thought of Nelka and the baby. If her brother was killed, and they came to get her and the children—
“Did they kill a young woman? Blond? She had a baby? A man with her too?”
“They asked if anyone knew where a woman was. They said she was related to the priest. They said her baby had disappeared too.”
Magda began to be happy. Her brother had killed the Brown Sister and the guard who held the baby. Nelka and the baby had fled. If Nelka fled, Telek must have fled too. It puzzled her that her brother had done the murders. It was something she thought Telek would have done. Nelka and the baby could go to the hidey-hole and stay until the Germans were gone. Hansel would take Gretel there when they escaped the oven and the hut. She knew they would crawl out.
The True Story of Hansel and Gretel Page 25