* * *
The nuns were like angels sent from heaven to save Mama and me from the terrible things that we had been through. We were happy, yet there was always the cloud of uncertainty (maybe even fear) that seemed to occupy our thoughts. Mama always tried to keep a smile and reassure me that we would be all right, that the war would soon be over and she and I could make a life of our own and fulfill some of the dreams that Papa had shared with us. However, we felt a great deal of security with the Catholic nuns and priests taking care of us and shielding us from the unrelenting terror that the Nazis had unleashed against so many innocent people.
* * *
“ANGELS SENT FROM HEAVEN” • Nonna believed that the Catholic nuns at Marienkrankenhaus actually saved her life. She later credited them with hiding her from her enemies and protecting her from danger.
Nonna doesn’t specifically acknowledge the generous amount of freedom she and Mama had at Marienkrankenhaus—even though they were prisoners there. But a photograph of Kaiser Wilhelm’s Schloss (castle) in Kassel, Germany, and its caption show that the two women must have enjoyed free time through the kindness of the nuns, even though they were officially incarcerated at the Catholic hospital by the Nazi government. The caption reads, “Kaiser Wilhelm’s Schloss. Mama and I visited frequently while we were employed in Marienkrankenhaus.”
A second photograph shows part of the castle grounds: a peaceful valley, graced by a white gazebo and a small pond. Beneath that photograph Nonna wrote, “My little gazebo! This is where I would go and spend many hours reading books, writing in my diary, and just think! This was located behind the castle (seen in the background). I would watch the swans swim on the lake.”
* * *
June 1943
Tomorrow is Dr. Hoffman’s wedding. He and Hilga are finally getting married. (Perhaps I should have been born ten years sooner!) Just one of my stupid thoughts! I really like them both very much. Hilga has been a good friend to me, and I have learned so much from Dr. Hoffman—even stitching wounds. The wedding will take place in the chapel of the hospital. (How sad that it has to be celebrated in such a small way.) Mama will play the organ, and Dr. Ingrid Nubel will sing. Father Antonius will do “his thing”—he is so fat and funny! I wonder: if Hilga has children, what will they look like? Dr. Hoffman is so tall and has black hair, and Hilga is so short and has flaming red hair. If they have a baby girl, she may look tall and have red hair. I hope that I don’t think about it during the ceremony. I might laugh and get into trouble with the ushers!
Wedding Day: Liebes Gott! I hate this dress Sister Blonda wants me to wear—it is ugly and stiff. The only good thing is that it is blue. Maybe I will hide behind Sister Maria (ha ha) when they take pictures. I’ll be glad to get out of this dress. Why do they all want me to look like them—when I am not? They (the sisters) won’t let me wear my hair down, tied with a bow—these braids, how I hate them! I look like a German maiden who just came from Sudetenland and am waiting to become a nun (ha ha)—I might just as well laugh about it all. If I ever get out of this place, I will cut my hair short. Hope it is soon. Well, I am really happy for Hilga and Dr. Hoffman and will miss them for the next two weeks.
36: Loss of Mama
September 1943
It was early in September, and my most important birthday was approaching—“Sweet Sixteen.” I was very excited and was cautiously thinking about the life that was ahead of us. Mama and I had made plans to celebrate my birthday—she was going to arrange for a birthday cake, and we were going to have a party with our friends at the hospital.
When I woke up on the morning of my birthday (September 22), Mama was already getting ready and told me that she had to make a little trip. I was unaware that the Gestapo had sent her a letter telling her to report to the Gestapo headquarters for some document verification. I was upset because Mama and I had made plans to spend some time together on my birthday, and then there was the party that we had planned. I begged Mama not to go on my birthday, to wait until the next day to make the trip. However, she explained to me that this matter could not be put off.
We met briefly at breakfast time and spoke again before we said our good-byes at the hospital entrance. We were both in a cheerful mood. She had promised that she would return in a couple of hours, and then we would celebrate my birthday.
After six or seven hours, I was concerned because Mama had not returned, and I didn’t know what had happened to her. In desperation, I went to the Oberschwester and begged her to call the place where Mama went to find out if she was still there. However, she (Schwester Blonda) was very hesitant to make that phone call for me—for the first time I was told that the place where Mama had to appear was the headquarters of the Gestapo in Kassel to report for document verification. Mama had not told me where she was going to keep me from worrying.
A feeling of terror struck me then, since I had heard stories about how the Gestapo operated. I had been told how people would go there, and no one would ever see them again. It usually happened to the Jews, and I was quite confused at that time as to what reason they would even have to call my mama.
The Mother Superior (Schwester Blonda) very reluctantly made one phone call to the Gestapo headquarters and asked about my mother. They gave no explanations, and when she tried to ask questions, she was told to never call that number again and they hung up. Schwester Blonda was somewhat terrified, and she told me that it was not safe, or even a good idea, to try to reason with the Gestapo, and she told me that we would just have to wait and see if Mama would return. It was two or three days later when the Mother Superior told me that the Gestapo had made a written request for them to turn me over to them voluntarily. Thinking that I would see my mama there, I was only happy to report to the Gestapo.
I was escorted by one of the hospital’s employees, and we got on the streetcar and headed toward the Gestapo building. I could see fear in my companion’s eyes as we entered the door to the building, but I could not fear anything that I was not fully aware of. I was only sixteen years old, but since I was so small and thin, many people thought I was only ten or eleven years old. There were times when I had to use my intelligence and cleverness to escape—yes, even tell a lie.
Two uniformed SS men came out and led me into a large room where there was one desk sitting in the middle of the room. There was a picture of Hitler on the wall, and next to the portrait, there was a flag with a huge swastika on it. There I stood in front of the desk looking at the SS man sitting behind the desk, and I was wondering what was going to happen next. For perhaps five or six minutes, the SS man stared at me with those bottomless gray eyes, and it was difficult to read any kind of expression in them. It was almost as though his eyes were looking through my whole little body without meeting my eyes. If I live to be a hundred years old, I could never erase the feeling that his stare gave me.
I started to tremble, not with fear but from being uncomfortable. He never said one word, and I decided that I had to say something first. The first thing that entered my mind was Mama, and before I realized it, I was saying, “What have you done with my mother?”
As I spoke these words, the SS man who was standing by the door approached me and hit me on the side of my head with the butt of his pistol. He then pressed the barrel of the pistol against my head, and it felt so very cold. He said, “So you are Russian. Maybe you would like to play Russian roulette?”
Suddenly I realized what was happening to me and the danger that I was in, but for some unknown reason, I didn’t panic, and suddenly I no longer cared what would happen to me. So I smiled right into the eyes of the SS man who was sitting behind the desk. He shrugged as though he was surprised at my bravery, and he ordered the SS man (who looked no older than twenty-two or twenty-three years old) to put his pistol away and get back to the door, severely reprimanding the young SS man for his actions.
Then he began to ask me some questions. The first question was, “How old are you?”
At this time
, I knew that somehow he knew my real age and only wanted to hear what my answer would be and perhaps catch me in a lie. So, looking him straight in the eyes, I told him the truth, which was that my birth certificate was changed prior to deportation from the Ukraine so that Mama and I could travel to Germany together and would not be separated.
I guess my answer surprised him, and he gave me a long, searching look, saying, “Why do you think that telling the truth now would make a difference for you? It’s already too late for your mother. I could not possibly arrange for her return. Besides, her birth certificate was not the only reason that she was shipped out.”
This was precisely how he put it, and then he proceeded with more questions. When he came to the story of how Mama had tried to save the baby Jewish girl, he demanded that I tell him how it really happened, since he already knew the facts from the other witnesses that were there. The only thing I could tell him was the truth, that neither my mother nor I knew that the baby was Jewish and that Mama was still in mourning from losing her own baby, that it was purely an emotional act to grab the baby and try to save it.
I was almost shocked as he listened to my story because for a brief moment he looked as if there was a flicker of compassion in his eyes. Then he said, “Very well, you are just a child, and I am going to let you go back to your nuns. I am impressed with your truthfulness, but don’t be surprised if you are called back in a few days. I have not decided how to deal with sixteen-year-old girls.”
* * *
THE JEWISH BABY • Evidently, when Anna had caught the baby that was suddenly thrown at her, she did not yet understand that the baby was Jewish. Yet from Nonna’s account of her interview at Gestapo headquarters, it seems as if this earliest of Anna’s experiences in captivity—briefly caring for the baby and being accused by Dunja of intentional treachery—served to determine her last.
* * *
When I walked out of that building, I felt absolutely nothing; there was no fear, resentment, or anything. I felt absolutely nothing. I felt like a zombie that was moving, and that was about all. I don’t remember anything about how I got back to the hospital.
* * *
BOMBING • About a month after Nonna’s meeting with the Gestapo, on the night of October 22, 1943, several hundred British bombers attacked Kassel. They destroyed 90 percent of the city—leaving 10,000 people dead and 150,000 homeless—all in less than half an hour. Here Nonna gives the time span as fifteen minutes; later, she gives it as twenty-five (see Chronology). Nonna lived through the bombing of Kassel, but the hospital where she worked was severely damaged. Nonna wrote that the Gestapo building was destroyed. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kassel, accessed January 26, 2009.]
* * *
The bombing started at 7:45 p.m. and lasted fifteen minutes. By the end of those fifteen minutes, there was not much left of that big city except for thousands of bodies scattered around the city and near the bunker where I was. The bunker was adjacent to the main hospital itself. The main building of the hospital was burning, as were the homes around it. People were moaning and screaming for help, and the sky was red for many days to come. There was mass confusion for a long time. For me, I was so busy helping out in the bunker hospital working with the nuns and nurses treating those injured people who were not killed in the bombing that I lost track of time.
Several days later, when things had quieted down a bit, I remembered that I was supposed to be called back by the Gestapo. I was very concerned about what had happened, so a young girl who worked with me and I decided to walk outside and see what was left of the city. We walked over to where the Gestapo building had been and saw that there was nothing left of that wretched place. As I looked at the destruction around me, I thought that God had sent those planes to save me and that he had other plans for my life, so I managed to survive, alone.
* * *
POSTCARDS • Several photographs and postcards remain from Nonna’s collection during this time. These are her captions to two of them, written after the war.
* * *
A village near Switzerland where the nuns and priest were trying to find a way to send Mama and me to live. However, it was not meant to be. The Gestapo took Mama before we were able to move here.
Kings Theater, where the Gestapo forced Mama to perform concerts on the piano and the violin. They would take her from the concentration camp to perform and would take her back to the camp after her performances. This was all destroyed by bombs in 1943!
* * *
MEMORIES • Following are miscellaneous recollections and poems of Nonna’s.
* * *
The nuns arranged for me to attend a parochial school (behind the cathedral) to complete my high school education. Mama and I sang in the church every Sunday, but this was all destroyed by the bombings in 1943.
* * *
I get homesick for my home, which long ago ceased to exist but will always remain in my memories. My young childhood years were very beautiful, and those memories that still live with me, and will live with me until death, have given me much comfort through the many years, especially when I feel sad or depressed.
* * *
I can hear my grandmother’s command, which had a sound of love in it!
I see it all as though it were only yesterday—it is all around me when I am alone!
I can live a life of fifteen years in only fifteen minutes.
I shudder with some of the sad memories (such as the death of my baby sister Taissia). I shall dwell only on happy memories and relive them sweetly over and over again.
To me, it was a dream so sweet, yet a nightmare so horrible, which will be with me always!
* * *
“WHERE ARE YOU NOW?” • Nonna had no idea what had happened to her mother. She just knew that on September 22, 1943, the Gestapo sent Anna away. In April 1947, Nonna wrote a poem to her mother. Following that are miscellaneous musings, from varying time periods.
* * *
TO MOTHER
O, Mother dear, where are you now?
Which road should I take, and where should I turn?
Am I the one to finish the journey
To freedom which we all have so yearned?
You gave me life and a happy childhood,
Though it only lasted for a while.
The memories will stay forever
Of those whom I so loved as a child.
As one by one they have been taken
From us by the terrors of war,
You have remained still so unshaken,
So brave and strong, though full of woe.
And as we almost reached the freedom
That we could see so clear by then,
They snatched you quite without reason,
And threw you into a lions’ den.
I’ve mourned and cried while seeking answers
To what I could not understand,
Though we have suffered on this planet,
We shall embrace in Heaven’s land.
* * *
MY MOTHER AND I
There are no words that can describe my beautiful, loving, and so talented mother, who gave me so many sweet memories that will last me a lifetime. She taught me how to love, to care, to be generous and forgiving, and many other qualities that build character.
[. . .] Unfortunately, since we both had traveled a long and painful journey through the times during World War II and the Holocaust, Mama was snatched by the Nazi Gestapo at the age of 36 (still so beautiful and sweet) and thrown into a concentration camp. There she was destroyed—dying a horrible death—and leaving me to be the lone survivor of my entire family.
[. . .] I am 70 years old, and I have tried to follow all the teachings of my dear mother to be a strong and caring person. I have a beautiful daughter of my own now, and I only hope that I can leave her as much as my mother left me.
When I was a very young child (4–5 years old), I learned to recognize my mother’s footsteps when she came home from where
ver she had been. I remember the sweet smell when she was around and the very gentle touches and embraces that would give me such a sweet feeling of security and love. I have been missing these for so many years since I lost her. However, those memories are with me always.
[. . .] My mother was indeed a lady of strength and a lot of courage, and also of many talents: playing the piano and violin, painting, and other things. But most of all she was very kind, forgiving, and generous to all those around her.
* * *
OBSERVATIONS
More and more, I am inclined to believe that the end is approaching, finally and irrevocably, though I am not sure how to explain this feeling, whether by my own approaching death or by the shadow of the future over our world in recent times. But whatever the future holds, I only hope that I do not live to see the final end with these mortal eyes.
The Secret Holocaust Diaries: The Untold Story of Nonna Bannister Page 17