The Secret Holocaust Diaries: The Untold Story of Nonna Bannister (26 page)

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.

M
Y
M
OTHER 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 wherever 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.

O
BSERVATIONS

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.

In these days, the sense of approaching doom has spread down to the great mass of people. This is not only because of the brilliant way in which science has demonstrated its capabilities. I sometimes feel that science only provides a rationale for people’s natural sense of dread at the work of their own hands, as witnessed by the sterile upsurge of philosophical pessimism that overcame the West after the second world war.

People sense it with all the pores and fibers of their body and soul, the feeling that the end is not far off. The miserable wretches cannot wait to let themselves go: murdering thousands of ordinary people would give them the feeling of strength so coveted by the weak in spirit. They know that an executioner feels superior to his victim, gloating at the fear-dazed eyes and the trousers slipping down because his belt has been taken away.

The well-fed brute also likes to starve his prisoner. Nothing lowers the will to resist more than hunger. But when, in accordance with the law by which evil destroys itself, the executioners begin to murder their own kind, who until recently have interrogated, tormented, and killed “alien elements” (or sanctioned their killing “for the good of the cause”), then yesterday’s “good comrades” suddenly disintegrate and, with cries of dismay, rush to prove themselves purer than the driven snow.

October 11, 1943

I remember Papa’s words, which he frequently used at the beginning of World War II:

“When you are surrounded by enemies, it is through them that you have to seek refuge.”

“When the friends are no longer there, we are forced to find refuge through the enemies.”

“It is the enemies who are standing in our way, and it is the enemies who can show the way to refuge.”

I believe that Papa was referring to some of the works of Leo Tolstoy. He read the works of this great Russian poet—especially during the years of 1939–41.

37: Survival to the End

The walls of the hospital had been blown away. When I climbed up to look at where my room had been, I could look out into space. I moved to the bunker hospital—along with all the nuns, doctors, and patients—where the hospital continued to function. I was allowed to find a room along with the other employees on the upper floors of the bunker. There were quarters for the doctors and nurses and a cloister for the nuns, where there was a large Catholic chapel. Since there were no elevators, we all had to use the stairs to commute down to the bunker where we worked. There was a series of tunnels that had been built in a zigzag pattern to cut down on air pressure in the event of a direct bomb hit; these tunnels led us down to the hospital. I continued to work and live there until I started to develop health problems.

My first sickness started with a large swelling that developed on the left side of my neck—from my left ear to the middle of my chin. There was no pain associated with the knot, but I did run a low-grade fever and was very tired most of the time. However, I continued my education while working in the hospital. I was concerned about the way that I looked, and I tried to always wear a high collar to hide the knot.

As I was playing around with some friends, I jumped off of a table to the floor and heard something “pop” in my right side. It was so painful that I went down to my knees, and my friends rushed me to the doctor. He diagnosed it as a ruptured appendix, and I was immediately taken to surgery where Herr Dr. Hoffman removed my appendix. He installed drains in my side to let the infection come out through these drain tubes.

As a result of the ruptured appendix, I developed peritonitis and became a patient in the hospital where I worked. My friends and the nuns were very good to me and provided everything that I needed, including moral support.

All of this happened shortly after the Gestapo had taken my mother, so I was still very worried and concerned about Mama. I would watch the door and expect Mama to walk in at any time.

About four weeks after Mama had disappeared, I received a card of notification from the Gestapo that my mother was a prisoner; the card had been mailed from Concentration Camp Ravensbrück, located in Fürstenberg.

RAVENSBRÜCK •
Located fifty miles north of Berlin, this concentration camp for women opened May 15, 1939. The overcrowded camp housed Jews, Gypsies, Poles, Russians, Ukrainians, and other political prisoners, including Germans. Records show that some 132,000 women entered Ravensbrück between 1939 and 1945, with 50,000 women dying there. Nazis exacted slave labor, inflicting strict rules and grave punishment, even death. The Soviets liberated Ravensbrück on April 29–30, 1945. [Information from: http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/Holocaust/Ravensbruck.html, accessed July 10, 2008.] Particularly given the Nazis’ knowledge of the Jewish baby incident, Anna surely suffered severely at Ravensbrück.

This confirmed my worst nightmares that my mother was a prisoner, and there was no way I could help her. The postcard was very official, and it was mailed in October 1943. The card had my mother’s prisoner number on the front—her number was 23893. These numbers were tattooed on the prisoners’ arms, so there was no way out for her now that she was a marked woman. I cried my heart out, but my friends and the nuns were very supportive of me. They would encourage me to get well because that’s what Mama would have wanted. After the initial shock had worn off and reality set in, I got mad and decided that I was going to get well and look for my mother.

TATTOO •
Nonna might have been under a misconception, either at the time of the incident or when she recorded her memories. Bodily tattooing of prisoner numbers took place only at Auschwitz. [Laurence Rees,
Auschwitz:
A New History
(New York: PublicAffairs, 2005), 65.]

I then developed rheumatic fever and became very sick. My joints swelled and were so painful that I could not even hold a pencil. I lost a lot of weight and became bedridden with the rheumatic fever. Within three or four weeks, I developed angina pectoris: the doctors diagnosed it as myocarditis, which had damaged the muscle in my heart. I was very sick for about two years, and when I recovered, I had to learn to walk again.

It was while I was sick and was a patient that I decided to continue my education, and I studied to become a nurse. The nuns were tutoring me as well as the doctors: Dr. Rudolph Hoffman; Dr. Zahn, my cardiologist; and a young doctor named Ingrid Nubel. She became a dear friend to me—later her parents came from Düsseldorf and offered to adopt me.