The Secret Holocaust Diaries: The Untold Story of Nonna Bannister (2 page)

Nonna L. Bannister

TO THE PAST

To the past, the way has been barred,

And what do I need the past for now?

What is there? Bloodied flagstone—

Or a bricked-up door—or an echo

That still cannot die away . . .

However much I beg.

Nonna L. Bannister

Preface

This is the true story of a Russian-American woman named Nonna Lisowskaja Bannister.

The material within these pages comes from the private, handwritten transcripts that Nonna made of her diaries from childhood, World War II, and the years immediately following the war. She expanded and compiled them during the late 1980s, with further commentary based on her memory of events. Translating into English from her original documents, which were written in five languages, Nonna wrote her life story on yellow legal pads and kept them hidden from everyone, including her husband, Henry.

In the 1990s, after decades of marriage, Nonna finally told Henry about her secret past. She also made him promise that he wouldn’t share any of her hidden material until after her death. Henry kept his promise to Nonna, only now making her writings public after her death in 2004.

Nonna had kept a lifetime of secret diaries. She began writing as a young girl and received a diary of her own from her father when she was nine years old. In this childhood diary she described her life, her family, and her dreams, and she included some of her poetry. She also kept a formal diary during the latter years of World War II, when Catholic nuns at a German hospital hid her from the Nazis and nursed her back to health. She continued this diary in the years immediately following the war.

During World War II, when Nonna left the Ukraine and traveled to Nazi Germany, she kept a pillow made of black and white ticking tied around her waist. In this small pillow, she kept her thin childhood diary, various bundles of paper scraps on which she kept notes of her wartime experiences, and several photographs and family documents. In addition to the written record that Nonna left of her memories—transcribed onto pads of paper and then typed by Henry Bannister—the Bannister family has in its possession one of Nonna’s diaries, dated 1947–48; postcards from Nonna’s mother, dated 1944–45; and many other personal documents and photographs from the Word War II era.

Fluent in at least seven languages, Nonna did the translation work herself. She transcribed her diaries from the various languages in which she had written them into English, one of the last languages she learned—which may account for some of the awkwardness of English grammar and sentence construction in her memoir. Also, transcribing the diaries years after the events described in them and adding her own present-day commentary in places, she did not always adhere to a linear progression. Thus, though translation was not necessary, some minor editing was. Efforts were also made to bring Nonna’s family names to a consistent spelling, though it was not possible to maintain any one style of transliteration.

The editors have in some cases combined into one place events that Nonna recorded in different places in her transcripts, as well as giving explanation to the historical chronology in the appendix. Throughout her text, editorial comments have been added where an explanation seemed helpful for better understanding of the transcripts, the historical settings, and Nonna’s family. Some of this commentary comes from Henry Bannister’s remembrances of Nonna’s stories.

Though similar to other memoirs of the war and the Holocaust years, Nonna’s account provides a rare glimpse into the life of a girl who was born to a wealthy family in the Ukraine, experienced great suffering in Stalin’s Soviet Union, and eventually lost her family and her own freedom at the hands of Nazi Germany. It is a story with unusual significance as one of the few firsthand accounts of a girl from a once-privileged family, who fell into the ranks of the
Ostarbeiter
—the primarily Ukrainian “Eastern laborers” transported to Germany during the war as slave labor under Adolf Hitler’s regime. The fact that she not only survived such turmoil and tragedy but also moved on through faith in God to forgive those who took away so much makes her story all the more remarkable.

Carolyn Tomlin

Jackson, Tennessee

Denise George

Birmingham, Alabama

Summer 2008

Introduction

I have now decided that the time has come when I must share my life story—not only with my loving family, but perhaps with all those who are interested to know what life was like for many of us on the other side of the world before and during World War II. I wish to speak the truth and nothing but the truth—but some things I shall keep to myself—nobody needs them but me. I doubt that anyone reveals the whole truth about oneself, even in confession. There are things in everyone’s life that are known only to oneself and our almighty Father God.

The events described in the following pages were written from my diaries and notes that were transcribed from the four to six languages in which I had written them—starting when I was nine years old. I have translated the poems and thoughts and scripts into English. I have worked on keeping these all together since 1942, when Mama and I left our homeland and were sent to Germany, where we were to be slave labor. In these notes, I kept a record of all the terrors, atrocities, and the new life into which we were thrown. Throughout these ordeals, I never forgot my grandmother and the rest of my family, which had been torn apart and ultimately destroyed—when I would hear a train whistle in the distance, I would immediately think that my dear brother, Anatoly, would be on that train and on his way back to us. This work is an effort to tell the truth about what took place during World War II under the direction of Hitler and his Gestapo troops.

There are not many of us remaining that lived through those very difficult and troubled times and are now free to tell the true stories of life. Many, including my own family, perished before having a chance to reach freedom. I am compelled to write this story because I was a witness to many events that took place then and because I am the only survivor of my entire family.

I do regret that I did not write this story sooner. But when I came to America in June of 1950, I was overwhelmed by my new life. I wanted so much to forget the unhappiness of the past and to make a new and happy life for myself that I actually shut the door to the past and had no desire to dwell on it. And a happy life I have made for myself by falling in love with the most kind and wonderful man and marrying him on June 23, 1951.

When my first son, “Hank,” was born on October 30, 1953, there was just no end to my happiness. I engrossed myself completely in motherhood, and I loved my husband and my son too much to ever even think of my sad past. So I became a wife and a mother full time. Then my daughter, Elizabeth, was born on July 11, 1957, and my happiness and duties as a full-time mother increased. My youngest son, John, was born on March 27, 1959, which happened to be on Good Friday of that year. My family became my only concern, and my entire interest was now directed exclusively to my husband and my children. I was filled with love and the responsibilities of taking care of them and loving them with all my heart and mind.

There were times when I would think about my family that I had lost, and I would think about how close and loving we had been. However, I just could not bring myself to inflict my sad memories on my husband and my still-young children. I did not want anything to interfere with the happiness that we had, and certainly when the children were growing up, my only concern was to protect them from anything that would leave them with depressing impressions. I wanted so very much to create a healthy and happy environment for all of them.

Now that the children have grown up and are well-adjusted and intelligent human beings, I feel that they should know more about their ancestors from my side of the family—that my children must know how they lived and how they died. I also feel that by telling my true life story, I may be revealing some facts from the past that could make a contribution, however small it may be, to the history of mankind.

It is very difficult for me to relive that part of my life even through the memories that are still with me—so precise and vivid. However, I have an uncontrollable desire to write about those years of my life, which were filled not only with sad events but also with happy times when I was growing up and still had all my family. It took great effort to put my story together, but I have had tremendous support from my loving husband. I feel very fortunate to have had him by my side and to have his encouragement. Without this encouragement, it would have been very difficult to go through with it.

When I left Russia, I took with me a passionate love for my homeland the way it was before the Bolshevik Revolution—the Russia I knew from the stories that were told to me by my dear grandmother and my loving parents. My hope and desire is to live long enough to see my homeland, the country so dear to me, become free again as it was before I was born. The hope that I live with and my prayers to God are that I will see—or at least my children and grandchildren will see—Russia become the “Old Mother
Rossija
” as it used to be—to see Russia return to its beauty and magnificence.

Is it really possible for this to ever happen again? “The Rossija shall become free again”—those were the words of my dear grandmother. It was a promise that she made to us, her grandchildren, as well as to her children. The beautiful land where creativity, art, and music would flourish again someday, free and independent. The land where the Russian people would be able to exercise their talents freely.

I get furiously angry at the thought of what has been done to my ancestors and to the land I love so much. But I do feel very fortunate to have at least some knowledge, which was passed on to me by my own family before I lost them. I shall try to pass this on to my own children so that they will know the truth and be as proud of their roots as I am.

How can one tell the story, especially
write
the story, without knowledge of the writer? The story is so real and so full of horrors. How can I describe the things that I have seen and felt and that made me the sole survivor of my family—all the troubled times and horrors and terror that surrounded all of us? It is difficult for me to put my thoughts into proper perspective, especially since my English vocabulary is somewhat limited.

Though I have lived in America for forty-seven years, I still find it difficult to express my thoughts properly. I have yet another problem, which is that I have allowed myself to forget the languages I knew so well when I came to this country. I spoke six languages very well, and most of my notes and some of my poems, which I wrote between nine years old and nineteen years old, were written in the Russian, Ukrainian, Polish, Latvian, and German languages.

I kept diaries during those years, and even as I lay in the hospital stricken with rheumatic fever and the ensuing heart problems, I continued to write in my diary for some time before I left Germany. My diary was written in several languages, but it was written with the deep feelings of one who had gone through a great deal of sad times. Most of my writings were about my mother, father, and my brother, Anatoly. I also became very close to God Himself, and my writings were full of expressed feelings toward faith in God and His mercy on me. I felt very close to God, and I felt that He had chosen to keep me alive for a very definite purpose. So I put into writing all my feelings—as best I could—and all that I had learned about God from my dear grandmother and my parents.