Auschwitz Lullaby

by Mario Escobar

  The sergeant waved his men away from Johann. But then he barked, “The children are also coming with us.”

  Those words were the knife that shredded my insides. I doubled over in the throes of nausea, shaking my head to clear what I had certainly misheard. Where did they want to take my family?

  “The children are also Romani. The order includes them as well. Don’t worry, you yourself can stay,” the sergeant said, trying to explain the new situation to me. Surely my face finally registered the desperation that I had been feeling for many years now.

  I tried to argue. “But their mother is German.”

  “That makes no difference. There’s one child missing. My information says there are five children and one father.” The sergeant’s tone was serious.

  I could not respond. Fear had paralyzed me. I tried to swallow back my tears. The children had their eyes glued on me the whole time.

  “I’ll get them ready in a moment. We’ll all go with you. The youngest one is still in bed.” I was surprised to hear my voice. The words seemed to come out of some other woman’s lips.

  “You will not come, Frau Hannemann, only those with tzigane blood, Gypsies,” the sergeant said dryly.

  “Herr Polizei, I will go where my family goes. Please let me pack our bags and get my youngest daughter dressed.”

  The policeman frowned but waved me out of the room with the children. We went to the main bedroom, and, climbing on a chair, I took down the two large cardboard suitcases we kept on top of the wardrobe. I put them on the bed and started putting clothes inside. The children surrounded me in silence. They did not cry, though their anxious faces could not conceal their concern.

  “Where are we going, Mama?” asked Blaz, the oldest.

  “They’re taking us to something like a summer camp, like I showed you once when you were little. Do you remember?” I said, forcing a smile.

  “We’re going to camp?” Otis, the next oldest, asked. His voice had risen with confused excitement.

  “Yes, sweetie. We’ll spend some time there. Remember I told you a few years ago your cousins were taken away too? Maybe we’ll even see them,” I said, attempting an upbeat tone.

  The twins really did get excited then, as if my words made them forget everything they had just seen.

  “Can we bring the ball? And some skates and other toys?” Ernest asked. He was always ready to organize a plan for playing.

  “We’ll only take what we absolutely need. I’m sure there are plenty of things for children where we’re going.” I desperately wanted to believe it might be true.

  I knew the Nazis had dragged Jews away from their homes, as well as political dissidents and traitors. We had heard rumors that the Reich’s “enemies” were interned at concentration camps, but we posed no threat to the Nazis. Surely they would just require us to stay within the bounds of some sort of improvised camp until the war ended.

  Adalia woke up then and got scared when she saw the mess on the bed. I picked her up. She was a skinny little three-year-old, with soft features and very pale skin. She was very different from her older siblings, who looked more like their father.

  “It’s okay, nothing’s wrong, honey. We’re going on a trip,” I said, holding her tight against my chest.

  I felt a heavy lump in my throat, and the flood of worry washed over me again. I thought that I should call my parents, that they should at least know where we were being taken, but I doubted the police would let me make a call.

  After getting Adalia dressed, I finished with the suitcases and went to the kitchen. I packed a few tins, the little bit of milk we had left, some bread, the remaining scraps of cold cuts, and some crackers. I had no idea how long our journey would take, and I wanted to be prepared.

  Back in our tiny living room, I realized my husband was still in his pajamas. I put the two heavy suitcases down and went back to the room to find him some clothes. I picked out his best suit, a brown tie, a hat, and a coat. While he changed under the steely watch of the police, I returned to our room and took off my nurse’s uniform. The children were lined up against the door, not letting me out of their sight. I picked out a suit with a brown jacket and blue blouse and got dressed the best I could with the younger three all crowded around me. We went back to the living room, and I studied Johann for a moment. Dressed so elegantly, he looked like a Gypsy prince. He put his hat on when I entered the room, and the three policemen turned toward me.

  “There’s no need for you to come, Frau Hannemann,” the sergeant insisted.

  I looked straight into his eyes and asked, “Do you think a mother would leave her children in a situation like this?”

  “You’d be shocked if I told you all I’ve seen in the past few years,” he answered. “Very well, come with us to the station. We have to get them to the train before ten o’clock.”

  His comment made me think the trip would be longer than what I had first thought. My husband’s family had been deported somewhere to the north, but I presumed they would be taking us to the Gypsy internment camp they had built near Berlin.

  We went through the living room to the doorway. My husband went first with the suitcases, the two younger policemen on his heels. Then my two older sons, the twins clinging to my coat, and Adalia in my arms. When we stepped out the door onto the landing, I turned to look one last time at our home. I had woken up that morning with the unthinking confidence that we had a normal day ahead of us. Blaz had been a bit nervous about a test he had before recess; Otis had complained of a bad earache, a sure sign he was about to get sick; the twins were healthy as horses but had still grumbled about having to get up so early for school; Adalia was a little angel who always behaved well and tried her best to keep up with her siblings in their games. There had been no sign, no omen that all of this normalcy would amount to nothing a short time later.

  The stairwell was not well lit, but a faint glow of early morning sun reached us from the entryway below. For a second I had the stabbing pain of leaving my home, but no, that was not quite right; my home was my five children and Johann. I closed our apartment door and began to descend the stairs, humming the lullaby my children always requested when they were upset or had trouble sleeping. The unspoken words flooded the hollow of the stairwell and calmed the children’s hearts as we headed into the unknown.

  Guten Abend, gute Nacht,

  mit Rosen bedacht,

  mit Näglein besteckt,

  schlupf unter die Deck:

  Morgen früh, wenn Gott will,

  wirst du wieder geweckt,

  morgen früh, wenn Gott will,

  wirst du wieder geweckt.

  Guten Abend, gute Nacht,

  von Englein bewacht,

  die zeigen im Traum

  dir Christkindleins Baum:

  Schlaf nur selig und süß,

  schau im Traum’s Paradies,

  schlaf nur selig und süß,

  schau im Traum’s Paradies.

  TWO

  MAY 1943

  ROAD TO AUSCHWITZ

  Everything happened really fast. In the loading and unloading zone of the train station, hundreds of people were crammed onto the platforms. At first we were rather dazed. The police had left us with a group of SS soldiers, who in turn had pushed us inside the station. I was startled to see a dark-brown cattle car with its doors wide open, but it did not take me long to understand what was going on. I was still holding Adalia, but now with the other hand I grabbed the cold but sweaty hands of the twins. The older two were clinging to the suitcases Johann was gripping as tightly as he could. The soldiers started pushing us, and the platform slowly emptied as people struggled to get into the cattle cars. Johann set the suitcases down and helped Blaz and Otis get in. Then he lifted the twins into the car.

  Just then, the pressure from the crowd started to drive me forward. Johann had gotten into the car so I could hand Adalia up to him, but it was all I could do to stay within arm’s reach of the car door. Johann grabbed Adalia,
but I found myself farther and farther away. A human sea of men, women, and children was sweeping me toward other cars. With my heart heaving, I tried to fight my way back. I took hold of a metal bar on the car and jumped hard, suspended for a split second above the heads of the passing crowd, but a crack at my ribs caught me up short. I turned and saw an SS soldier trying to pry me away with his nightstick. My husband could see what was happening. He crept along the opening of the car to where I was holding my free arm out to him. Our eyes locked as a second blow almost knocked me back down into the crowd. I managed to reach Johann’s hand, and he pulled me into the car.

  I barely controlled the impulse to vomit as the nauseating stench of the car hit me. It was bad in there. We managed to carve out a space for the children to sit on the hay that reeked of urine and mold. Johann and I stood. With nearly a hundred people crammed inside the car, few could sit.

  The train lurched forward and started to advance slowly. The movement threw us off balance, but the huddle of bodies all around kept us from falling. The hellish journey had only begun.

  Everyone in the train was Gypsy like my husband. At first, people tried to remain calm. But as the hours passed, arguments and fights broke out. Four or five hours in, thirst became a serious issue. Babies were screaming inconsolably, children were hungry, and the elderly were starting to faint from exhaustion and the uncomfortable positions we all were forced to maintain. The train car never stopped lurching and clattering. Despite the fact that it was the beginning of May, it was cold. German afternoons are very cold, and we were headed away from the sun.

  By nightfall, panic was setting in until one of the older Gypsy men raised his voice above the din in his ancestral tongue. That managed to calm people down a bit. Johann and a few of the men helped organize the car and mark off one of the corners as a sort of latrine, with a bucket and a blanket hanging down from the ceiling to provide a modicum of privacy.

  I seized the moment to give my children a bit of food and a few sips of milk one at a time. The two older ones threw themselves back down on the hay, the twins curled up in the hollows at their feet, and Adalia slipped into the middle.

  There was no light, but none was needed to imagine the fear and sadness on all the travelers’ faces. The conditions in which we were transported allowed us no illusions about the kind of life we were being taken to. When Johann returned from setting up the latrine, I could not hold back any longer. I broke down on his shoulder. I tried to muffle my sobs in his jacket so the children would not wake. But tears brought no relief. The harder I cried, the more desperate I felt.

  “Don’t cry, sweetie. Things will surely get better when we get to the camp. In ’36 a lot of Gypsies were interned for the sake of the Olympics, but a few months later they were allowed to return home.” Johann’s tone was soothing. It was the first time we had spoken since that morning. I allowed myself to be relaxed by the timbre of his voice, as if nothing bad could happen if I stayed by his side.

  “I love you,” I said, hugging him. How many times since we first met had I told him how I felt. But to love him in that place, surrounded by a desperate horde, was the confirmation of all those years of uninterrupted fidelity.

  “The Roma have been persecuted for centuries, and we’ve always survived. We’ll find a way out of this,” Johann said, stroking my face.

  We had been together over twenty years. We met when we were young and his family showed up in Freital, the town outside of Dresden where I was born. My parents were active in our church’s outreach projects and helped the Gypsy children integrate into the community. As soon as they saw Johann, they knew he was special. My parents had to overcome the prejudices that have always existed against the Gypsies. Most of our neighbors thought Gypsies could never be trusted. At any moment they might be lying or trying to cheat you. My father got to be friends with Johann’s father. His family was mainly in the business of buying and selling horses, but they also sold all sorts of things. Sometimes Johann’s dad would come to our house to show us the latest things he had gotten ahold of: table linens hand-sewn in Portugal, sheets, fine towels . . . My mother distrustfully scrutinized the fabric but almost always ended up giving her approval. The two men would wrangle a few moments over the price and then seal the deal with a handshake.

  Meanwhile, my eyes were for the boy. With his pronounced cheekbones and square chin, he was every bit the Persian prince to me. Yet we hardly ever spoke. Sometimes we were allowed to play ball in the yard, but we would only look at each other and kick the ball back and forth. My parents took a liking to him. They got him into our elementary school and made sure he made it through high school; then they paid out of their own pocket for him to study at the conservatory.

  One morning Johann’s father brought an old pocket watch by our house and swore to my father that it was quartz with gold inlay. After haggling for a while, my father bought the watch. Within two weeks, it had stopped working, and the gold had turned to brass. The two men did not speak for quite some time, but my parents continued supporting Johann. Little by little, as we would walk together to the conservatory, my feelings for him started to grow. Johann did not propose until he had finished his degree. And it did not take him long to become one of the country’s finest violinists.

  When I told my parents I was in love with Johann, they warned me to think it over well before making a wrong move. We came from very different cultures. In the end, love overcame the obstacles and prejudices of the world around us. Naturally, we suffered a great deal after we married. The laws against Gypsies were very strict. And Gypsies did not like mixing their blood with non-Gypsies, even though they were a bit more lenient in the case of men. Johann had to swear to my parents that he would not be an itinerant Roma. When his family left our town, he came to live at our house.

  I remember the days leading up to the wedding. The entire town seemed to be on edge. One of the pastors from our church came to try to dissuade us from contracting what he considered an “unnatural union,” but even so, we were happy and went on with our plans. The morning we went to the office to register the marriage and request the civil ceremony, the office staff refused to give us the certificate. Only the intervention of a kind-faced, elderly judge restored the due process of law.

  Now all those memories and hardships seemed a million miles away, a mere drop in the bucket of the deep, terrifying abyss we were rattling into.

  The next morning we stopped for a few hours in Pruszków, which confirmed that we were in Poland. Thirst was starting to drive us mad. The stench of vomit, urine, and feces was everywhere, the air nearly unbreathable. Then we heard a rumor that an SS soldier was peering through the car’s one tiny window. People were begging him for water and food.

  Pointing his Luger through the window, he shouted, “Give me everything of value you’ve got!”

  Johann helped the other passengers gather up wristwatches, rings, and other jewelry so the soldier would give us fresh water. One pail, that was all. It was precious little for nearly one hundred people, barely a sip for each. People were panting and desperate, losing the manners they had tried so hard to maintain. When it was our turn, Adalia drank first, just a few tiny sips, then the twins and then Otis. Blaz looked at me, his lips dried. He handed me the pail without drinking. He understood there were sick people and babies who needed it more than he did. It brought tears to my eyes. His courage stunned me: he would deal with his own thirst so that others could satisfy theirs.

  By the afternoon of that second day, several children in the car had high fevers, and some of the older passengers seemed truly ill. We had now gone a day and a half with almost no food or water and hardly any sleep.

  The second night was even worse than the first. An old man named Roth had a heart attack and sank down right next to us. There was nothing we could do for him. The children were terrified, but we managed to get them to sleep.

  “How much longer will we be here?” I asked Johann, my head resting on his shoulder.
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br />   “I don’t think it will be much longer. The camp’s got to be in Poland. With the way the war is going, they must still have camps open there for prisoners,” Johann said.

  I hoped he was right. As a nurse, I knew that the children would start dying after two or three days without food or water, then the elderly and the weaker adults. We only had one more day to hold out in these appalling conditions.

  Our dire straits made me recall our first home. We moved into the house of Johann’s aunt and uncle on the outskirts of town. They let us sleep in a small, dank room, but the mere fact of being together made us happy enough that we spent most nights laughing under the sheets, trying not to bother the older adults. One time when I was home without Johann, his aunt started in on me, accusing me of thinking I was a big shot and of doing nothing to help around the house. She berated me with insults, then kicked me out. It was snowing like crazy outside. I sat on top of our suitcases, soaked and shivering and waiting for Johann to get home.

  As soon as he saw me, he hugged me and tried to pass me all his body heat. We spent that night in a hostel and the next day found a small house to rent with a kitchen and a tiny bathroom. Two weeks later, Johann got the position at the conservatory, and things started looking up. We no longer had to survive on canned food and fight to stretch our marks to the end of the month.

  The third day of our cattle-car journey began especially cold. We stopped once again, and the same soldier from the day before offered us a bit of water in exchange for more jewelry and valuable objects. The water calmed us down momentarily, but thirst reared up even more fiercely after the tempting dribble. Five people fainted on the journey, though the saddest part was when a baby died in the arms of his young Gypsy mother, Alice. Her family members begged her to put the child in the area where we had piled the other cadavers, but she clung to the lifeless body of her baby. I knew that within hours I would be in her shoes. My heart broke at the thought. I remembered all the nights of waiting up with my children, all the happy days we had spent together. I could not make sense of it. My children were completely innocent. Their one crime was having a Gypsy father. This war was driving the whole world crazy.