The True Story of Hansel and Gretel Read online

  “I’m not a soldier. I’m a medical student. I’m not a soldier. I don’t have a gun.”

  “You understand this, Mechanik?”

  He nodded. “I’ll translate.”

  The Russian looked at the truck. Two of his men were searching the flatbed, opening the containers. “Any food in those boxes? Any guns? What’s our young dandy carrying in his truck?”

  One of the men leaned over the metal barrel and reached inside. He pulled out a round thing and held it up. It dripped liquid.

  “Blessed Virgin!” The Russian stepped back and crossed himself. “It’s a fucking head!”

  “There’re more of them. Packed in liquid and bags of bones. Human bones.”

  “I’m not a soldier. They ordered me to do it,” the German whispered.

  “Ask him what the fuck this is,” the Russian shouted. “Translate, damn it.”

  “It wasn’t my idea. I’m a doctor.” The young man scrabbled in his inside pocket and came out with a paper. The Mechanik read the paper out loud slowly in Polish.

  “SUBJECT: Securing skulls of Jewish Bolshevik Commissars for the purpose of scientific research at the Reichsuniversitaet, Strassburg. The war in the east presents us with the opportunity of overcoming the deficiency of Jewish and Russian race skulls in our collection. By procuring the skulls of the Jewish/Bolshevik/Communists who represent the prototype of the repulsive but characteristic subhuman, we now have the chance to obtain a palpable, scientific document.

  “Dr. Wolfric Rahn will be in charge of securing the material, can take measurements, photographs, and determine the background, age, and personal data of the prisoner.

  “Following the subsequent induced death of the Jew/ Russian, whose head should not be damaged, Dr. Berue will sever the head from the body and transport it in a hermetically sealed tin made for this purpose and filled with a preserving fluid. Skeletons should also be carefully harvested and cleaned of their flesh. They should be labeled and packed in separate bags.”

  The men stood silent until the Russian walked over to one of the dead soldiers and unbuttoned his pants. He urinated on the corpse and then buttoned his pants slowly. Then he lit a cigarette. It was one of the last ones from the farm. He had held it back for a special moment. He dragged deeply and passed it to the man next to him. They all stood and shared the cigarette, and looked at the truck and the tin boxes and the bags.

  “Bury them,” the Russian finally said. He turned to the young German who was shaking all over now. “Whose heads are in those boxes? Maybe my friends?”

  He hit the German and the man dropped like a sack of potatoes.

  They buried the heads under snow and piled logs and brush on them. The bones they were going to leave in the bags, but the Russian shook his head.

  “Bury their bones clean. Let the earth have them.”

  When they were done, they waited. The Russian was pacing, and his scarred neck and face were livid. They waited for him to say what to do next.

  “Now.” His voice was calm. “Strangle this bastard,” he said, and the oldest of the Poles fell upon the young German, and knocked him back down on the road, and clenched his chapped, rough hands on the slender neck. The German managed to batter the Pole’s face, but his throat broke and he flopped for a minute and then his tongue came out and he was dead.

  “Take all their clothes off. We can use the coats and pants.”

  The Russian stood and looked at the naked bodies. “I want you to cut their heads off and put the bodies in a line with the heads at their feet.”

  It took an ax to sever the spinal cord. The Mechanik had helped undress them, but he didn’t help with the cutting. They should move on. You couldn’t revenge yourself on dead men.

  The headless men lay in a row. The Russian stabbed the order from Himmler on the chest of one of the corpses with a German knife.

  They walked on down the road, listening for more trucks. It was too bad they had to leave the truck, but there was no petrol to run it. Looking back, the Mechanik squinted his eyes. It was hard to tell what the dark splotches on the road were from a distance. He wondered who would find the bodies. He hoped it wasn’t a child.

  “And that’s the difference between us—Poles and Russians and Jews—that’s the difference between us and the Nazis,” the Russian said that night as they all drank vodka a farmer had given them. “We have to get drunk after we do such things. Drunkenness is a good sign. It means you still have some feelings. That’s why the Russians are drunks. They feel too damn much.” He passed out before midnight and they covered him tenderly with blankets.

  “It was a Nazi idea to murder people for their skulls,” the oldest Pole said. His face sweated from the homemade vodka. “But it took a Russian to think of what we did on the road.”

  “It’s one or the other for Poland,” sighed one of the men.

  “Don’t think about it now. Think about it later.” Lydka’s face was red and his eyes were glazed from drink, but he spoke fiercely. “First kill the Germans. Then deal with the Russians.”

  They all slept deeply until noon the next day. They never spoke again of the truck and the thing they had done. The sun was shining, and they moved on down the road.

  Eindeutschung

  “It’s time to take back the baby. A storm is coming. Our tracks will be hidden.”

  “Can you hide the whole village, Telek? You’ll have to kill the guard, and the Major will retaliate. How many of this village will die so we can run free?”

  “Your husband is dead in Russia, and that baby’s all that’s left! Think of him.”

  They sat and Nelka stared at him, and he stared back until she leaned forward and lay her lips on his. He didn’t move, didn’t respond, but Nelka kept her lips on his and then, catlike, began to lick his lips slowly with her tongue.

  “He’s going to bleed you dry.”

  “We can’t have the death of the village on our heads. Why has the SS stayed so long?”

  “I don’t know, but I can guess.”

  “He wants my blood. That’s why he stays.”

  “No. He’s afraid of the Russians. They’re in Poland now, and he has to leave with the Major. The car would never get through the mud in March.”

  Nelka stretched out and turned so the fire heated her back and the round of her buttocks. Looking up, she saw his eyes. “Telek?”

  “They call it Eindeutschung—making things German. I’ve told you, Nelka. You have to believe me. They steal children that look German. They’ve stolen thousands, maybe twenty or thirty thousand. The underground says they give them new names, and tear up all the identification papers. They are culling out the Aryan-looking children before they put the rest of the Poles in camps and kill us—after we build their new cities.”

  “I was going to have the baptism before Easter.”

  “It might be better not to name him.”

  “That’s an evil thing to say. His name will be Janek.”

  Telek felt like he was torturing another child watching Nelka’s face. “The SS has a paper typed up that’ll be posted in the square tomorrow. They’re going to examine the children.” He didn’t care about the village. He would kill the soldier guarding Sister Rosa and the woman too if it came to it. They would run.

  “We can’t let Magda and Hansel and Gretel get killed.”

  “We’ll warn them. They can hide in the pig hole in the forest.”

  “Make love to me,” she whispered. “If you make love to me then it is two of us. There is just one of him when he takes my blood, but we are two.”

  “We are two and more than two,” he whispered in her ear, and then he lifted her and carried her to the bed.

  When the Major posted the command to bring the children to his office on the next day, Telek went to the hut and told Magda. Magda seldom prayed, but that night she prayed.

  “Oh Queen of Poland, dark Virgin Mary of Czestochowa, hear my prayer,” she whispered, kneeling near the oven where the warmth m
ade her joints ache less, and the coals of the firebox shone through the slits, reddening her face as if it were washed with blood.

  “Your son was taken into prison and beaten and tortured. You know what it is to love a child and watch men kill him. You had the strength to stand and let him know he was not alone when he was nailed to that tree. You didn’t cower at home and cry but stood before him and watched his death. You are no weakling.”

  Magda paused and thought.

  “These children are Jews—like you were—like your son was. If you’d been a Polish woman and pregnant with your son when this war started, you and he would have been shot and buried in the forest. Let the Germans pass over the two children. Let me take them to the village tomorrow and bring them home again. If Gretel acts crazy, they’ll shoot her, but if she acts normal, they’ll kidnap her. I’m an old, old woman. Take my soul and kill me instead of them.”

  She had done what she could. Magda got up slowly and felt all the pain in her hips and her knees and her wrists. She had little hope. Magda didn’t believe her prayers rose very high.

  “Next!” The soldier shouted although the women and children stood patiently in line.

  Magda went inside the Major’s office. Gretel was quiet today, not singing loudly and talking about oranges and such, but silence was no good. She had to be mad or they would take her. But not too mad.

  “Papers.” Wiktor examined Magda’s papers and the communion certificates of the children. He looked up at the Brown Sister who stood beside the desk. The Oberführer sat in the corner and watched. The Major leaned against the wall and smoked.

  “Strip. Both children. And step up on this stool, one at a time.” Sister Rosa spoke fluent Polish that was heavily accented with German. She held a notebook and a pair of calipers.

  “The girl is silly sometimes, sir and madam. She hasn’t—” Magda tried to speak.

  “We will decide.” Sister Rosa looked almost as gray-faced as Magda. It had been a long winter going from one godforsaken village to another. But it was a job that had to be done. The children with Aryan blood deserved the chance to return to the German people. Sister Rosa looked at the boy who stood on the stool.

  “Circumcised?” She spoke suddenly in German. “A Jew still left in Poland?”

  She sounds like a raven, Hansel thought, and before Magda could answer, he began to talk.

  “My mother was a Karaite. They believe that you have to be circumcised because Jesus was circumcised. So she had me cut.”

  “Ah. The Karaite story.” The Oberführer sighed.

  Wiktor almost smiled. His suspicions were correct. The Oberführer understood Polish.

  “You’d think half of Poland had become Karaites just before the Germans arrived.”

  “I remember it,” Hansel said.

  Oh God, Magda thought, he’s gone too far, and I can’t help him.

  “You remember? Tell me about it.” The Oberführer leaned forward.

  “They dressed me up, and I wore a long white robe and a crown.”

  “A crown?” Sister Rosa frowned.

  “A crown because I was going to be like Jesus.”

  Magda breathed shallowly. Her chest was tight. Where did the child dream up such a story?

  “Then what happened?” The Oberführer was watching Hansel, and Major Frankel stood leaning against the wall with no expression on his face at all.

  “They made me lie down on this big table, like in the church, and a man had a knife, and they cut my penis and threw away some skin and then I was like Jesus.”

  “Did you bleed?” The SS man smiled.

  “A whole lot.”

  “He cried. He screamed and screamed and screamed.” Gretel smiled at the Oberführer.

  “You remember this also?”

  “He shrieked until I had to cover my ears. And then they gave him wine, and I drank wine, and everyone was happy.”

  Let her stop, Magda thought. Let her stop.

  “What happened next?” The Oberführer moved closer and looked at the small penis.

  “We went to the church and ate the bread. Just like on Sunday.”

  “He doesn’t look like a Jew,” Sister Rosa spoke in German so the old woman wouldn’t understand. “His nose is almost perfectly Aryan, and his lips aren’t simian and thick.”

  “His eyes.” The Oberführer smiled, and now he spoke German also. “There is a touch of the Tartar who raped his great-grandmother in those eyes. I think we needn’t worry about Jews in this area. This last summer was the end of Jews in Poland. They’re gone.”

  Sister Rosa turned Hansel’s head. She nodded. “Do you want the measurements done?”

  “No. Send the little Karaite home. His eyes would have been all right three years ago, but the standards are constantly going up. In five more years, my brown eyes would disqualify me from being in the SS.”

  “A great loss for the Reich.” Sister Rosa took a paper and wrote on it. She handed it to Magda and spoke brusquely in Polish.

  “If he had been sick, we would have taken him to Germany for treatment. You’re lucky that the Reich cares so for your children.”

  Magda nodded. She took the paper, and Gretel pulled off her last shift and stepped naked onto the stool. Hansel tried not to look at Gretel. He tried not to think about her being crazy. He reached for Magda’s hand and held it tightly.

  “Very nice.” The Oberführer stepped forward and touched the child’s pale nipple.

  “A beautiful example of how the Aryan blood comes out even in the worst dung heap.” Sister Rosa took calipers and measured the width between Gretel’s pelvic bones.

  “Not very wide, but possibility for breeding potential.”

  She measured all of Gretel’s face, the length of her nose, the width from cheekbone to cheekbone. “We’ll take pictures of this one. She’s quite perfect.”

  Gretel stood still, but when Sister Rosa turned her and began running her thumb down Gretel’s spine, the child suddenly screamed. She didn’t move but the scream tore out of her lips.

  Sister Rosa jumped. Major Frankel cursed.

  Then Gretel began to sing. She sang of the flowers and of love and of standing under the lime trees in spring.

  Gretel smiled and held out her hand, the palm up, fingers cupped. Sister Rosa stared.

  “Her mind is disturbed sometimes since the rape,” Magda whispered.

  “She was raped?” The Oberführer made no pretense of not understanding Polish now.

  “Two men. They ran off, and the child came home bloody. Sometimes she isn’t right. But she is good for fetching wood. She’s harmless.” Magda waited.

  The Brown Sister took Gretel by the arm and led her off the stool and to the desk. She laid the girl across the desk and spread her legs. Gretel still sang.

  “The hymen is not intact. She could well have been raped. She’s quite perfect, but her mind is no good anymore. These Polish children don’t have the strength of German children. They break easily.” The Brown Sister shook her head and wrote in her notebook.

  “I will mark by her name that she must be sterilized at thirteen.”

  “She’s a good worker.” Magda waited. This was what being in Hell was, she thought.

  “Sterilization can be done, but it’s wasteful to let her live.” The SS man shook his head.

  “Why not let her live?” The Major spoke for the first time. The child reminded him of his sister at the same age when they swam secretly. The same skin. The same hair.

  The Oberführer shook his head. The mentally defective must be destroyed. The new world would be absolutely perfect when everyone had been sorted and the deficient culled.

  The Major watched the SS man’s face. The child stood again on the stool and hummed to herself. The Major saw that it was useless to object. The Oberführer would have the girl shot.

  “Oberführer.” The Major spoke quickly in German before the order to shoot the girl could be given. “The child is related to the woman Nelka, is
n’t that so?”

  The SS man hesitated. He didn’t know where the Major was going with this.

  “I mean, Nelka is her cousin or aunt or something.”

  “That’s correct,” Wiktor said. “You are right—Major,” he finished awkwardly.

  “Well then.” The Major paused and lit another cigarette from the butt end of his old one.

  Magda was panting. Her heart fibrillated in her chest.

  “Nelka has been useful to the Brown Sister, I believe. She spends time helping Sister Rosa? Sister Rosa is concerned for the baby?”

  “The baby stays with Sister Rosa.”

  “Of course”—Major Frankel blew the smoke out with a harsh sigh—“none of us want more contact with these Polish subhumans than we have to have for the sake of the war.”

  “Of course.”

  “Not only because of the illegality of contact, but because it would be disgusting.” Major Frankel looked at Gretel. She did look like his sister around the eyes and in the way she smiled. He turned his good eye and looked the SS man in the face. “I wonder if it’s wise to upset Nelka. Nelka is one of the few women in the village presentable enough to serve Sister Rosa, and killing this girl might drive the peasants into the forest.”

  Magda thought she would faint if the rattle of German didn’t stop.

  The Oberführer looked out the window as if he barely heard. He couldn’t tell if the man knew of the transfusions or if he was really concerned about Sister Rosa having a proper servant. The Major probably knew nothing, but taking blood from a Pole could be used against an SS officer in some quarters. And there was that information that Jedrik had hinted at last night. Jedrik’s information might complicate things.

  “If she’s useful, she can live. The children are not in need of medical treatment. We’ll leave them in the village.” The Oberführer handed Magda two white cards.

  They went outside, and Magda didn’t look at the other parents. Telek said that all the children who might have been chosen had been made imperfect. Except for Nelka’s baby, and it was so small. How would they keep it alive all the way to Germany?