Auschwitz Lullaby

by Mario Escobar

  We finished right before time for the evening meal. It was still daylight, but the shadows were starting to stretch across the road. We walked back to barrack 14 tired but as content as was possible in that place. The next day the paint and other supplies would start arriving, and before long the school would be up and running.

  For the first time since my arrival at Auschwitz, that night I felt the satisfied tiredness of having worked hard at a meaningful task. When we got to the doorway, the rest of the mothers gave us a hero’s welcome.

  The young Polish nurses had gone with Ludwika to sleep in the medical workers’ barrack. I wondered how long it had been since they had slept between moderately clean sheets with a mattress under them.

  Then we heard loud shouting from behind the barrack. Anna looked at me with her eyes popping in worry, and we all ran toward the commotion.

  We saw a group of children huddled together at the barbed-wire fence. They were all crying and screaming. We pulled them apart. Anna was still holding baby Ilse, but she handed the child to me when she saw the limp body of her grandson tangled in the fence. Smoke rose from beneath his ragged clothing. Anna began shrieking and pulling out her hair in desperation.

  The scene was horrific. We could not touch the child, who had surely been killed by the strong charge. For a few seconds I studied the horrified faces of my children. Emily, Ernest, and Adalia ran to me, their dirty cheeks streaked with tears. I thanked heaven they were safe, but my heart grew heavier as the moments passed. Anna would feel this deep hollowness in her heart the remainder of her days. Surely she had seen other loved ones pass away throughout her lifetime, but her young grandson had been one of the few joys she had left.

  “Fremont!” she cried out in anguish. She tried to go closer to the child, but two mothers held her arms to stop her.

  Two kapos and some guards came up. Without asking any questions, they immediately started hitting at the crowd with their nightsticks. It made no difference that there were pregnant mothers, children, and old women in our crowd. Most fled quickly, but Anna remained glued on her knees before the cadaver of the boy.

  Irma Grese brought her bludgeon down heavily on Anna. Blood gushed from her forehead. Anna turned, caught my eyes for a split second. The children had run back to the barrack with everyone else, but I had stayed near my friend. The guards did not touch me; I bore the protective aura of Dr. Mengele.

  “Leave her! Her grandson just died, and she can’t even hold him!” I shouted, tears springing to my eyes.

  “Shut your whore’s mouth,” Maria Mandel spit out at me.

  The kapos tried to lift Anna and draw her away, but she flung them off and lunged to hold her grandchild. Immediately the fence lights flickered with the electric shock that was discharged. Anna jerked and contorted then fell to the ground, still clinging to the boy’s body.

  “Anna!” I screamed, trying to reach her, but the kapos held me back.

  The two corpses lay there in an eternal embrace, united forever in love’s victory over the infernal reality of Auschwitz. They were finally free. Nothing and no one could hold them back any longer. The kapos dragged me through the mud to the main road, and I fleetingly longed to share my friend’s fate—to close my eyes and be forever free from life’s fatigue and heartaches; to cut loose from the invisible threads that bound me to this world. Maybe it was better to throw myself against the fence and let my soul fly free from the tyranny of the body, rising above the Polish sky to a better place where humans no longer hurt one another.

  Without Anna, I was alone again. Her sweet voice, her tiny eyes swimming in a sea of wrinkles, her pixie smile that captured her aged beauty: none of it existed any longer. Dust to dust and ashes to ashes. Death seemed like a gift from heaven, but I knew that it was not yet for me. I was an old ship in the middle of a storm, and my children anchored me to life. I had to keep fighting for them, trying to hold on to hope, looking each day in the face, praying for this nightmare to finally be over.

  NINE

  JUNE 1943

  AUSCHWITZ

  I had never seen Christmas come in June. Around ten o’clock in the morning, Dr. Mengele showed up in his convertible military car followed by four trucks. For once, their presence did not indicate a selection or a transfer. Instead, they were packed with school supplies, swings, toys, chairs, beds, and other items for the nursery and school. Everyone was up in arms. Half-dressed children ran after the trucks, many of the German kids singing a common school song as if they were trotting out to meet their teachers. The excitement spread among families who hitherto had experienced nothing but hardship, hunger, and death at the camp.

  Dr. Mengele parked in front of barrack 27, a big smile on his face. He stood and paused for a few seconds to study my team waiting at the bottom of the stairs and to look over the hundred-some-odd people, especially the children, patiently waiting for the supplies to be unloaded. He nonchalantly left the car and started fishing in his pockets. Then he handed a piece of candy to each of the children, smiling and tousling their hair.

  When he was almost in front of me, he blew on a little whistle, and some twenty prisoners started unloading all sorts of articles from the trucks and taking them into the first building. Some of the things I recognized and indicated they should go in the next building.

  “Frau Hannemann, I hope you’re happy. I’ve managed to acquire everything you requested plus more. This will be the finest kindergarten in the region,” the SS officer said with a verifiably childlike expression I had never observed in him before.

  “Thank you very much, Herr Doktor. It’s a fact that these children needed hope, and you have given it to them,” I said, not drawing out my answer. It was never a good idea to speak at length with an SS officer in the presence of other Germans.

  Irma Grese and Maria Mandel, the vicious female guards, flanked Dr. Mengele. Their severe frowns were a striking contrast to Mengele’s affable expression. The scenes from last night were still burned onto my mind’s eye, when they had commenced beating all the prisoners who had run to help the poor child electrocuted by the fence. They were very likely the last straw that made Anna decide to end her life. Did those women have no souls? I could not comprehend how they could resist a smile when seeing the joy of the children.

  Grese met my gaze steadily. Her look held a bottomless hatred, as if she were disgusted by all that the doctor was doing for us. But then she started shooing people away and soon left with Mandel. The Nazis did not want large groups of people gathering together. They did, however, allow the children to remain in the vicinity.

  One group of prisoners began putting together the swing set and the sandpit for the younger children. Another group started laying the wiring for electricity. We would not have running water, but Mengele had procured two large tanks that would help us store drinking water every day. This was a priceless luxury in a camp with infected, unsanitary water.

  While the prisoners kept working, my team and I began painting the walls with bright colors and laying out the rugs decorated with animals. We wanted to hold the grand opening of both the nursery and the school the very next day. I took several colors of paint and a brush and went to work on a sign at the front of the barrack. The doctor was still outside the building supervising the progress of the men who, emaciated beneath their striped uniforms, tried to show no signs of weakness or exhaustion.

  I painted each letter in a different color while Mengele looked on in silence. It was not his habit to spend so much time outside the hospital or the laboratory he had improvised in the sauna. I can only suppose he wanted to enjoy this moment.

  From behind me, he asked, “Do you think everything will be ready by tomorrow?”

  I did not bother to turn around for an immediate answer. I took my time finishing the g. Then, still holding the paint can in one hand and the brush in the other, I replied, “That’s my hope. I want the children to get to use the place as soon as possible.” I went on with the a.

 
; “Excellent!” he exclaimed. “Tomorrow a commission from Berlin is arriving, and I wanted to show them what we are doing here.”

  Though I had presumed that the children’s school was part of the Nazi propaganda machine, it seemed a bit early for them to showcase us to the world. One of the last times Johann and I had gone to the movie theater, before the movie they showed a short documentary on Theresienstadt, a camp in Bohemia where thousands of Jews had been deported yet were allowed to live an apparently normal life. The video showed bunk beds with curtains for privacy, nurses, people sitting at tables while reading, sewing, or chatting. Now I knew that it was all a lie, one of the Nazi-manipulated realities. In some way, the nursery at Auschwitz would play a hand in furthering the farce of a fake world in which the SS treated even their enemies well.

  “What are you thinking about?” Mengele had come close and rested his hand lightly on my right shoulder. The gesture of proximity shook me. I preferred to see the Nazis as inhuman monsters. The more human they acted, the more horrifying they became, as it meant any and all of us were capable of becoming as despicable as they were. Evil was given free rein between the fences of that ghastly nightmare.

  “Everything will be ready,” I managed to say at last. I wanted to end the conversation and think no more about how the Nazis managed to use us all and turn us into what we despised.

  “Wonderful! Excellent work, Frau Hannemann!” the doctor exclaimed. He removed his hat and quickly ran his fingers through his dark hair, parted on the side.

  I heard boots walking away on the strips of wood. I turned and watched him saunter down the main road, children swarming behind him. No one had told them that man was their jailer. Now the children were fond of him, and he knew how to draw out their smiles and affection.

  I finished the sign and studied it for a moment. Then a very different voice behind me asked, “Is the doctor a good guy or a bad guy, Mom?”

  I turned to find Otis, who was already outgrowing his clothes. His lower legs were bare, covered in bruises and scratches. In that, at least, he was like most other children still living free on the other side of the barbed-wire fence. I did not know how to answer his question. There was no doubt that Mengele was a criminal like everyone who held us at Auschwitz against our will. He may have acted nicer than some of the soldiers or guards, but that did not change the fact that he was one more executioner. I hesitated in my answer because I needed to warn my son not to get too close to the doctor without having him run around telling everyone in the camp that I was speaking out against Mengele.

  “The people who are keeping us locked up here are not our friends. I don’t want you to hate them, but keep your distance. Does that make sense?” I kept it short and simple.

  Otis went back to playing his games, and then Blaz came up with a bucket of paint and said quietly, “The soldiers pay some of the girls to sleep with them. Some of the kapos and one of the old men organize it all. A teenager named Otto told me; he has to clean up their rooms afterward. Some of the girls are forced to go, and others volunteer in exchange for food.”

  I was horrified that my son knew all of this. He was having to grow up very quickly and was not ready to understand the crude realities of life.

  “Stay away from them!” The anger rang out in my words. I was afraid these people would destroy more than the bodies of my children.

  Kasandra and Maja came out of the barrack, saw my angry expression, and then hurried back inside, their heads lowered.

  “I’m sorry, sweetie, but I just don’t want anything to happen to you. From here on out I don’t want you going too far from the nursery barracks. Do you understand?”

  Now Blaz lowered his head. “Yes, Mother.”

  When I went back inside the barrack and saw how everything was coming along, I started to calm down. The colorful walls made the place special, a kind of oasis in this desolate desert in the middle of Poland.

  Zelma’s eyes were glowing. “It’s just lovely!” she said. She was so encouraged that I tried to perk up. After all, the place was a ray of hope in the midst of the darkness.

  After several hours of preparing our area, I called everyone together to eat and talk about how to organize the work. Taking care of dozens of children would not be easy. We needed to be prepared and well organized. After we ate, Ludwika stopped in and helped translate for the two Polish nurses who understood hardly any German.

  “We need to let mothers know that the nursery and school will be open tomorrow. We don’t know how many children are here at the camp. It could be up to a hundred. A few days ago they brought at least forty from the orphanage in Stuttgart. Not all of them are young, but a good number are,” I said, putting some folders in order.

  Maja asked, “What hours will we be open?”

  “I think it’s reasonable to go from 8 a.m. to 2 p.m.,” I answered.

  The other Jewish nurse, Kasandra, said, “But it’s too many children for the number of caretakers.”

  “You’re right.” I nodded. This had also concerned me. The youngest children would need constant supervision, especially the babies.

  “What if we ask three more mothers to help us? They could be Gypsy mothers who know other languages spoken here at the camp,” Ludwika suggested. From the start, she had wanted to be involved in the center’s activities.

  I jotted down everything we were talking about to be able to run all the details by Mengele. We needed his approval for the center to work well.

  “Do you think it will be hard to convince the mothers to leave their children with us?” I asked Zelma, still worried about that thought.

  “Some Gypsy mothers, myself included, are very jealous over their children. But I think we all realize that our kids will receive things here that they can’t get in the barracks. Most of the children are wasting away.”

  “You’re right. Our mission this afternoon is to tell all the mothers at the camp. And the adults looking after orphans,” I said.

  “Don’t you feel a bit rushed to open tomorrow?” Ludwika asked, puzzled by my haste.

  “Well,” I said, sighing, “it seems that visitors are coming to the camp tomorrow, and Dr. Mengele wants the children’s center to be in full swing.”

  Ludwika shook her head. It was not the first time the Nazis had organized a guided tour for the higher-ups from Berlin. It made us feel like animals in a zoo, on display for the enjoyment and mockery of our executioners. I tried to change the subject and encourage my team.

  “We’ve got school supplies, little smocks, tables, chairs, two chalkboards, chalk, trash cans; the stoves are working, even though we don’t need them right now. The movie projector is working, and we have five animated films. They’ve put in electricity and, most important of all, we have food! Milk, bread, some vegetables, some sausages, and some nonperishables like powdered milk, cans of meat and fish, baby food, and basic medicines for fevers or common infections.” I could not help smiling.

  The women burst out in applause at the joy of that day. Such effusive demonstrations of contentment were so rare that we all looked around to see if anyone had heard us. The only ones who came up at the sound of our celebration were my children. They had been playing in the small room we had outfitted for us to live in.

  Adalia came out with a milk mustache above her smiling mouth. For the first time since we had arrived, she looked fully awake and aware. Our poor nutrition had weakened the children’s bodies and dampened their spirits, but they perked up quickly with real food in their stomachs. The twins were playing with some of the new toys, and the older two were holding notebooks and pencils.

  “Go back to playing. Nothing’s wrong,” I said. They all smiled and went back to our new room.

  “They look so good!” Ludwika exclaimed.

  “Yes, thank God.” I could not help smiling with relief. I no longer felt completely like a prisoner. The fences had grown almost transparent to my eyes. My soul itself felt free. Those violent murderers could never own it.
I knew that happiness for us was, to a large degree, unhappiness for them. They ate better than we did, went out on the weekends, and slept with whomever they wanted to. They themselves were hardly more than ruthless animals or heartless children playing with us as with broken toys, except that their wanton choices meant life or death for hundreds of people.

  We continued to work awhile longer and then went out in pairs to talk with the camp’s mothers. We had to convince them all to have their children dressed and ready by eight o’clock the next morning. The four Gypsy mothers would walk by each barrack to collect the children.

  As I walked with Zelma, she brought up the subject of Anna.

  “Anna would have been glad to know what we’re doing right now.”

  “Yes, but she’s in a better place now. It seems like dying is the only way to leave Auschwitz.”

  “I know a couple of Gypsies who managed to escape. They were in the group that built this camp, but now the security is much tighter.”

  We walked nearly to the end of the camp toward the bathrooms. It was the free hour, and we figured several mothers would be washing their children. As we passed the last barrack I caught sight of one of the trains. A huge crowd was scrambling to grab hold of their belongings while the selection took place. I had nearly forgotten that a few weeks ago I had arrived on one of those horrible transport cars. I thought again of Johann, of how I still knew nothing about him after all this time. I had to find time tomorrow to ask Elisabeth Guttenberger.

  “What’s on your mind? You’re rather quiet all of a sudden,” Zelma said.

  “I was thinking about our hellish trip from Berlin,” I answered.

  “I came from the Lodz ghetto. For some reason all the Gypsies were to be sent here. I’d been in that hellhole since 1941, and that’s where my daughter was born. My son had already been born. It was extremely difficult to find food, and the Jews discriminated against us, which made it even harder to find work. The only people making any money at all in the ghetto worked in the industries in the surrounding areas. Finally, my husband managed to get a job in a tire factory, and things weren’t quite as abysmal.” Zelma’s eyes were half-closed and her voice low as she spoke through the painful recollections.