The Secret Holocaust Diaries: The Untold Story of Nonna Bannister (3 page)

Translating from my own notes and diaries, I find myself in a great state of confusion, because it is difficult for me—after so many years—to understand my own writing, especially since the languages it was all written in became somewhat estranged to me. However, with extra time and much effort, it finally comes to me, and I am able to put it into English so that at least I can understand the meaning of my own thoughts during those troubled times. When I wrote some of my poems, I wrote them under the influence of grief, which was still with me after losing my entire family. It was so recent, and I was still in shock from the whole ordeal.

My age has become a hindrance to me in remembering some of the events that took place during the very early part of my childhood. But it seems that I manage to block out the sad times in my memory and to concentrate only on the happy ones. Little by little, all of it comes back to me as though by chain reaction. It may take me some time to put it all together, but I am so inspired to write that I don’t think anything can prevent or discourage me from writing my true life story now. I only wish that I had some education in writing stories, even if it is the story of my own life.

Perhaps someday I will be able to put it all in proper perspective, but right now I only want to get it out of my head and just write it down the best I know how. What I write is all true, and I have witnessed all of it. Most of all, I like to write about things that I learned from my grandmother and my loving parents.

Nonna L. Bannister

Prologue

Henry Bannister met Nonna Lisowskaja in 1951. He knew little about her when she agreed to marry him. She was a mysterious woman with a painful secret—a secret she hid from him for more than forty years of marriage.

A decade before Nonna died, she took him by the hand and led him to the attic of their small house in Memphis, Tennessee.

“It’s time,” she said.

Henry had waited a long while for those words. He didn’t know what secrets the attic held, but he had watched his wife climb those stairs many times, disappearing into the night for some unknown reason. He never asked why she went or what she did up there, knowing that she could not speak about it and deeply respecting her privacy.

He also never inquired about the black-and-white-striped ticking pillow Nonna held to her heart each night at bedtime. He just knew she couldn’t sleep without it.

Nor did Henry ask Nonna about her family back in Germany or Russia, or wherever she had come from. He knew she’d tell him when she was ready. So he waited.

Only once did Nonna give Henry a glimpse into her painful past. They and their three young children attended a church service at Central Baptist Church in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, at which the guest speaker told of his harrowing Holocaust experiences at the hands of German Nazis. Nonna shocked Henry by jumping up from the pew and running out of the sanctuary, crying. He quietly gathered the children and took Nonna home. She immediately went to bed—and stayed there for several weeks. Henry didn’t know how to help her.

“What’s wrong, Mama?” their younger son, John, asked again and again. “Mama, what’s wrong?” John received a mother’s embrace, but no answer to his question.

Again, Henry didn’t pry into Nonna’s past. He simply took care of the house and children, and he waited for her to get up from her bed, to reveal what had so disturbed her.

Many years later, he was still waiting. The children had grown up, married, and built lives of their own. Nonna suffered with her health—her heart and her back—and underwent several surgeries. Her fingers knotted with painful arthritis, Henry’s eyesight dimmed, and together they grew old. Then one day, out of the blue, she spoke the words he longed to hear: “Henry, it’s time.”

They climbed the attic stairs and sat down beside the old heavy wooden trunk Nonna had painted lime-green—the color of living things. She picked up a worn key and turned the metal lock. She showed Henry old photographs, introducing him one by one to her family: grandmother, aunts and uncles, mother and father, cousins, friends—all of them dead, long buried a world away in unmarked graves. The last photograph Nonna pulled from the trunk was one of her only sibling, Anatoly.

“He’d be almost seventy years old now,” she said.

Nonna reached into the trunk. She took from it a fragile, hand-sewn diary, its pages filled with writing in Russian.

“My childhood diary,” she said. “Papa gave it to me on my ninth birthday.”

Then she put into Henry’s hands a small pad of paper—diaries she had written immediately after the war, each page covered with microscopic pencil marks.

He held the small pad of paper up to the attic’s ceiling bulb and tried to read the faded words.

“My eyes are too weak to read them, Nonna. What do they say?”

“They’re hard to read, Henry. I wrote in such tiny print.”

“How am I to learn your secrets, Nonna, if I can’t read your diaries?”

Nonna smiled. Then, from the trunk she pulled a thick stack of legal pads, each long yellow page filled with hand-penned words.

“The translations of my diaries, and my story,” she said. “In English.”

Then Nonna climbed down the attic stairs, and Henry began to read.

Train to Agony

1: Boarding the Train

August 7, 1942—Konstantinowka, Ukraine

It is fourteen hours and fifteen minutes (2:15 p.m.), and we were just loaded on the train! My God—this is not what we thought it would be like to make this journey! We are packed like sardines in a can into the cattle cars of the train. The German soldiers with their rifles are with us and Mama is scared. (I know that she is.) Mama still thinks we can get off the train and leave our luggage behind and walk home. There is Grandmother standing about twenty feet away, looking so shocked and in dismay—she is crying—with the tears running down her face as she waves good-bye. Somehow, I know that we will never see her again.

As the train starts to move, Mama and I just look at Grandmother until she is out of sight. At the hour of 1600 (4:00 p.m.) everyone inside our car is very quiet and nobody is talking. Some are crying quietly—and I am glad that I have my diary and two pencils.

I got into the corner as far as I could so I would have some room to write. Now the door of our car is open, but I can hear some noises from the top of the roof. The German soldiers had positioned themselves on the top of the train, and they are talking and singing—I think they are drinking—they sound drunk to me.

It is almost midnight—the moon is so full—and we are crossing large fields. I need to get closer to the door so I can get some fresh air. As I approach the open door, I see a pair of legs in black boots dangling right above the door—then this face leans down and the soldier yells, “Hi, pretty one!” and I get away from the door very quickly. Mama pulls me closer to herself, and I think I am getting sleepy.

August 8, 1942

When we wake up, we can look into the horizon and see the sun rising from the edges of the biggest fields that I have ever seen—it is a beautiful sunrise! Where are we? How close are we to Kiev? The train is slowing down, and it looks as though we will stop moving.

August 9, 1942

We are in Kiev, but the train stopped at least a block away from the large train station. The Germans jumped down, and I could see how many of them there were—we were surrounded. They were telling us to get out—“
Raus, raus.
” We saw trucks approaching the train, loaded with German soldiers and German shepherd dogs (lots of dogs). There was a truck loaded with food (soup made with cabbage and potatoes, and there was black bread). They passed out some bowls to us, and as we walked to the food truck, I looked to the back of the train and I saw two cars loaded with Jews. They were not allowed to get out—the doors of their cars were barred with heavy metal bars, and the German soldiers were guarding them. I saw old men, women, children, and even some babies. They were begging us to give them some of our bread with their thin (almost skeletonlike) hands stuck out through the bars. I started to go there with my food, but just as I got close to them, a German soldier shouted at me and commanded me to get back or he would shoot me if I dared come any closer.

SEPARATE CARS •
The Jewish prisoners, headed for concentration “death” camps, were in the same transport but rode in separate train cars from the Russian women, who were headed for the labor camps. The Nazis allowed the Russian women to leave their cars, go into the woods to relieve themselves, and eat. But they allowed no such privileges to the Jews.

August 9, 1942—late evening

When we got back into the car of the train (Car 8) and the train started to move, we thought that we were on the way again. But in fifteen minutes, our train came to a stop. Three trucks loaded with Jews approached our train, and the Germans loaded them into the first two cars of our train. It was close enough for us to hear the screams of the children, the wailings and moaning of the women. There were shots fired frequently. Oh! Those screams and cries! And the dogs—there were so many of them. It was mass confusion, and I became aware that we, too, were prisoners and that there was absolutely no way to escape as Mama had planned to do when we got to Kiev.

August 10, 1942

We are leaving the Ukraine now, and the train is moving fast. I will never forget the sight of the last sunset as we were leaving Kiev. The sun looked like a huge ball of red and orange fire, and it was moving down slowly against the horizon at the end of the endless fields. Almost it was as though the sun were saying, “Farewell, my dear—we shall never meet on this soil again!” As I stood there near the door of our train car, I kept looking at the sun until it had completely disappeared. Then I suddenly felt very sad and lonely. It was a “farewell” that made me feel that a part of me had died. Many sunsets and sunrises were thereafter, but never was one so beautiful as the sunset that I saw at Kiev.