The True Story of Hansel and Gretel

  “You have to shut up, Gretel. You can’t make any noise unless I say you can. Come on.”

  She took his hand, and he led her back toward the hut. When they drew close, the smell of burning was heavy in the air. Hansel crept from tree to tree. Then he could see the place where the hut had been. There was a circle of burned wood, no flames now, but the pieces of charred wood glowed red and the circle smoked. The huge iron stove was the only thing left. It lay on its side where it had fallen when the floor under it had burned through.

  Magda had told him that he’d have to be the older one. He had to think now for both of them. He looked back. Gretel had stayed behind a tree and was invisible.

  “Gretel, you can come out now.”

  “I didn’t make any sound. We have to go home to Magda now.”

  “The stove is all that’s left.”

  “That’s not Magda’s hut.”

  “They burned it. They took Magda. We hid in the oven.” He was shouting.

  “I was in the oven. She wanted to cook us. Why did Magda do that?”

  “You’re talking crazy. Gretel, please don’t be—” Hansel sat down and moaned.

  “Don’t be sad. We’ll go home and Magda will have soup. We can’t sit here.”

  Gretel was right. They couldn’t sit there. The soldiers might come looking for them. He glanced back toward the creek. The food was at the hidey-hole, and Telek and Nelka would come looking for them soon. There was nothing here that they could use, but he pulled the brush away from a fallen log and uncovered a basket. He took out a small bottle, pulled the cork, and sniffed. It was empty, but it still smelled of raspberry syrup. He sniffed deeply, remembering Magda using the syrup for Gretel when she was sick. Then he put the cork back in and slid the bottle carefully into the pocket of his coat.

  “Come on, Gretel. Promise that you’ll do what I say.”

  Gretel stopped walking and stood thinking. She had promised something once, but she couldn’t remember what the promise had been. “I promise I’ll do what you say. Really.” This time she’d do it right. She had done it wrong before.

  Hansel led her along the creek through heavy mud. They took their shoes off and waded part of the way, gasping at the icy water, their feet almost blue when he let her step back onto the mud of the bank. It would hide their scent if they brought dogs. Then the river, the rock, turn south, and he found it. The hidey-hole.

  “There’s bread and potatoes inside.”

  Gretel waited expectantly while Hansel stared at the brush covering the boards.

  The three soldiers slipped from tree to tree. It hadn’t been difficult. The village girl’s directions were correct, and the two children hadn’t been able to hide all their footprints on the mud banks of the creek. It would have been harder if the snow hadn’t melted.

  Behind them, the Oberführer walked without deigning to hide. Halina trotted beside him, smothering her sobs with her hand pushed against her mouth. The soldiers stopped and gestured ahead toward the two saplings that stood apart from the larger trees. Jerking the girl’s arm, the Oberführer gestured and raised his eyebrows. Halina, a single sob wrenched out of her throat, nodded. The Oberführer dropped her hand and pushed her against a tree. He took out his pistol and gestured the soldiers forward.

  Two of the men tiptoed to the pile of brush. One of them removed the branches gently, almost tenderly, while the second soldier sought a grip on the boards. There was a moment’s pause. The first man took a grenade from his belt, pulled the pin, and nodded.

  The boards flew up, the grenade was lobbed into the dark hole, and both men ran to hide behind trees. Even the Oberführer stepped behind a tree and waited. Only Halina, frozen against the bark of an oak, watched as the ground moved and a shower of boards and earth rose into the air. The child slipped to the forest floor in a faint.

  Hansel lay with his hand over Gretel’s mouth about two hundred feet away. They lay concealed by leaves under a rotten tree, but he saw the explosion. Gretel tried to raise her head, but he pressed her down.

  She lay still, and Hansel watched as the men moved off into the woods toward the road. The SS man cursed the soldiers, and he slapped one of them. Halina lay limp on the ground.

  Hansel thought of going to Halina and telling her that he was all right, but he couldn’t trust anyone now. He made Gretel lie under the tree until Halina woke and ran away toward the village so quietly that he almost missed her going.

  “Where’s Magda, Hansel?”

  “We’ll find her soon,” he lied. He wished she would stop asking him about things.

  He turned and began to walk away from the village toward the east. They’d take the road in the other direction. They’d never been on that road. Everyone would expect them to go to places they knew. No one would think they’d go to a new place. They’d have to find a farm. Farms had barns and haystacks. You could hide in those and be warm.

  His stomach was beginning to ache. He hadn’t eaten since breakfast and they had no food. The panic rose in the boy and he moaned with each step.

  “Hansel?”

  He shut his mouth. He was the older one now. He took Gretel’s hand. They’d been hungry before, and then they had found food. That’s how it was sometimes. He walked faster, looking for any line of smoke rising in the sky that would show him where a farm was.

  They had been walking a couple of hours, and he heard the voices of the men before he saw them. Hansel pulled Gretel off the road and into the trees where they lay flat on the pine needles. He raised his head just a little so he could see.

  A group of men carrying guns moved at a fast trot down the road. They weren’t Germans, but they carried guns, and the boy lay still and watched. The men ran in a tight bunch, a moving clot of gray cloth and guns and beards.

  He tucked his head down and waited for them to pass. The men were heading toward the village. He didn’t see his father, fists clenched, in the middle of the group.

  “We have to go find Magda and the children.” They had hidden in the swamp for three days, and Nelka was restless and worried.

  Telek shook his head. They couldn’t travel safely with the baby. It could cry at any moment. It was hard to silence a baby without smothering it.

  “Then I’ll go alone. I have to find Magda.” Nelka began walking back in the direction of the hut. He knew she meant it.

  “The baby could give us away. I’ll go and tell you what I find. You have a baby, woman. Think of him.” Telek moved as fast as he could through the sandy swamp. Ignoring his fears she followed, and he didn’t modify his pace until he heard Nelka panting.

  When he got close to the hut, he circled the area like a noose drawing gradually tighter. He smelled it in the air, but she hadn’t noticed.

  “Sit and nurse him. I’ll see if it’s safe.” He gathered pine boughs and threw them in a pile where she would not be seen for the fallen trees. Nelka settled down on the boughs and he knew she was glad to rest. He moved carefully toward the hut, and when he got to the clearing, he stopped and stared.

  The circle of burned earth did not surprise Telek. Being in the woods for days had made him sensitive to the smell of smoke and burning things. He had smelled it long before he saw it. He looked at the blackened dirt and the ash and the stove lying on its side.

  Telek looped through the trees until he was sure that they hadn’t posted any soldier to guard the place. Then he squatted, still not going near the ashes, and thought. He was still thinking what to do when Nelka walked through the trees. She ignored him and went straight to the circle of burned ash. Her face was so white it was blue around her mouth, and she held the baby so tightly that it began to shriek.

  “Telek,” she called to him, “we should have taken them with us.”

  “Magda would have wanted us to run. She loved you.”

  “We have to find out. They may know where she is. She could be in the village jail.”

  “If we go in the village, any Germans left there will kill us.
”

  “Maybe she’s at the hidey-hole. You warned her to leave early. It’s my fault. Father Piotr killed to save my baby.”

  “He did it because of me. He didn’t want me to get killed or have the sin. He did it to save me.” The humiliation of it, having the old man kill when it was Telek’s job, his joy, to murder and save the baby for Nelka, the humiliation brought tears to Telek’s eyes.

  “He did it for me,” she said. “And we didn’t save Magda.”

  Nelka began to walk fast, and he saw that she was going toward the hidey-hole.

  “For God’s sake, don’t just walk in and get killed. They may know about it.”

  “I’m coming,” Nelka whispered. “I’m coming, Magda.”

  They found torn up trees and dirt and footprints of men in boots. Nelka lay on the ground and sobbed, lifting the dirt to her face and pressing it against her face. Telek looked for the smaller footprints of children, but the pine needles and leaves of the forest hid the prints.

  Nelka finally sat up and wiped her face. “Maybe they’re in the village.”

  Telek didn’t believe it. If Magda and the children had been taken to the village, why would the soldiers have come here? Unless it was to catch Nelka and the baby. And him. There could be traps set on the path to the village, waiting soldiers. But he had to do it or Nelka would do it alone.

  They slept in the clump of trees and walked to the village the next day. When they got near, Telek made Nelka hide with him in the bushes near the well and watch. It was quiet. There was not a single soldier in sight. They sat and waited for nearly an hour.

  Feliks walked toward the well, shouting over his shoulder: “You stupid shit! What’s the point of it?”

  “The point is Poland.” Jedrik trailed after Feliks.

  “Since when are you such a patriot? I didn’t see you helping the partisans.”

  “We have to get rid of all the trash and make Poland pure.”

  “Poland’s been raped for six years. She isn’t a virgin, you asshole. Not after the Russians and the Nazis.”

  “We will cleanse her.” Jedrik hesitated and then turned to look back toward the houses. He talked to himself in a mutter, and Feliks ignored the man and threw his bucket down the well. Jedrik moved on and Feliks was alone now. Telek waited until Feliks had drawn his water, and when he turned to go back to his house, Telek called out.

  “Feliks?”

  The man turned with no surprise. “It’s you, Telek.”

  “Father Piotr? What did they do to him?”

  “Shot him. Threw his body in a truck and took it with them. They wrapped the dead soldier and the SS bitch in blankets and put them in another truck. They’re gone. All of them.”

  “Do you know where Magda is?”

  “They burned her out and took her and the two little ones with them.”

  Nelka sobbed so hard that she had to put the baby on the ground or she would drop him.

  “You’re sure?”

  “Yes. Then a man came. With some Russians and partisans. He was looking for the children. A relative, I guess. He went to the hut and found nothing.”

  “Where did they take them?” Telek knew the answer.

  “The rail line. You know the rest.” Feliks nodded at Telek. The radio from London had warned them about the camps. The partisans had known for over a year. “You’d better keep moving, Telek. The Major and his boys are gone, but the Nazis are all over the roads. If they’re looking for you two, they’ll look here first.”

  Telek nodded. Nelka was crying with her mouth open and her nose watering, mixing with the tears. He had seen her cry like that when she was a child, when her mother had died.

  He sat and held her and wiped her face with the edge of his coat.

  “It wasn’t your fault.”

  “We have to go where the train takes them.”

  Telek said nothing. He knew about the camps. He had seen a few children pushed through tiny openings in the boxcars and thrown out into the snow. No one threw their children from a train in winter unless what lay ahead was worse.

  “My love.” He rocked her and stroked her hair. “My love.”

  “We have to try, Telek.”

  “They were dead as soon as they got to the camp, Nelka. They kill them quick. She was too old to work, and they were too young. They’re with God now.”

  She sobbed in his arms, and the baby slept beside them. Dredging up a memory from some church lesson, he went on. “Their souls are warmed in God’s hand and opening like flowers.”

  He was embarrassed at his own words, but they seemed to help Nelka. She stopped crying and grew quieter.

  “God will have to—” Telek stroked her hair with a suddenly awkward hand. “He’ll have to laugh when Magda walks into Heaven leading that mischievous boy, Hansel, and—” He couldn’t bear to say Gretel’s name.

  Nelka nodded again and lay still against his chest.

  Telek held her and tried not to think of Gretel. The way she had looked at the wild ponies with her mouth open in joy. The way she had offered him a piece of her magical orange. He shut his eyes and held Nelka tighter. It was over. He had no one in the village. Nelka and the baby had no one either. It was just the three of them.

  “We’re leaving this place.”

  “Where can we go?” She lifted her swollen face and he smiled at her.

  “Away from here. Away from Poland.”

  “Leave Poland?” Her eyes widened.

  “I won’t spend the rest of my life killing Russians.”

  “But they promised. After the Germans are beaten, Poland will be free.”

  “Promises are easy to make.”

  He looked at the baby sleeping in a patch of sun.

  “I don’t want to teach him how to slit a throat, and there’s no family for either of us here.”

  “If we have to go, I want to be where it’s warm. Where there isn’t any war.”

  “We’ll find it. If we have to cross oceans, we’ll find it.”

  “I don’t think there is a place like that.”

  He turned her head up and put his face close to hers. Moving his chapped lips against the salty moisture from Nelka’s tears that wet her mouth, he spoke slowly.

  “I will find it for you.”

  He kissed her deeply and then drew back and saw her face with her eyes shut and the skin flushed and the beautiful lips open, and he kissed her again and again for a long time. They sat like that until the baby woke and began to cry, and Nelka nursed him. Then the three of them, Telek with his arm around Nelka, who carried their son, walked down the road toward the west.

  “When the others come from Bialowieza, we march on.” The Russian was so restless that he had hardly slept for three nights in the village even though they were given food and beds. Three days in a village while the war was moving on. It was hard to obey other men’s orders again.

  The Mechanik sat on the steps beside the Russian and said nothing. The sun was warm, but he didn’t feel it.

  “We’ll join the main force again and march on to Berlin.” The Russian laughed. “Let the bastards see what it’s like fighting on their own soil.”

  He was so excited that he began to pace back and forth in front of the village store.

  “I have to look for my children.”

  “Listen, friend—” The Russian cuffed the Mechanik lightly on the shoulder. “You know what they say the camps are. It’s death in hours when you get there. Your children are gone, Mechanik.” It was a hard thing to say, but the man had to recover from this. “Going to the camps is a waste of time. We’re in the front line. We’ll be in Berlin before the men who’re coming up from the south. And what of the woman? What of your wife?”

  “They haven’t seen her here. She must be dead or she would have come back.”

  “You don’t know that. Maybe she had to lie low or join some other group. Think about it. You know her. If she’s alive, she won’t stop until she gets to Berlin and the Nazis
are beaten.”

  There was truth in this. The Mechanik had thought about what she would do. She would fight on and try to find him after the war was over.

  “If you want to find her, you have to keep marching on to the end of the war. That’s where she’ll be. Let the children go. Pray for their souls, my friend, but let them go and keep fighting.”

  The Russian knew that it was hard for the Jew to sit and think. But they needed to move on. He wanted this man beside him. The Mechanik knew machines, and soon they would be able to ride. Soon they would be firing their own rockets and setting off real bombs.

  “You’re a Comrade now. You have to fight with us,” he said over his shoulder.

  The Russian was still pacing when he saw a man watching them from across the square. He was fattish and one of his hands was behind his back. The other hand held a wooden club. There was something about the man that made the Russian pause.

  “What’s your name, friend?” the Russian asked as the man walked past him.

  “Jedrik.” He held the club in front of his body and walked toward the Mechanik.

  “What do you want?”

  Jedrik walked past the Russian without replying, and it happened too quickly for the Russian to draw his pistol or take his rifle off his back.

  “They say you’re a Jew,” Jedrik said.

  “I’m a Jew. I’ve fought in the woods since November with the partisans.”

  “The Russians are bringing Communist Jews to rule Poland.”

  The Mechanik realized his mistake. He shouldn’t have said he was a Jew. He had thought it was safe now. Jedrik pulled his hand out from behind his back. He held an ancient pistol.

  “That gun hasn’t been fired since the last war.” The Mechanik almost laughed, but his hair began to rise on the back of his neck.

  “Shoot my Comrade, and I kill you.” The Russian didn’t draw his pistol. He didn’t want to panic the man. Jedrik moved his eyes back and forth from the Russian to the Mechanik, and the old pistol swayed back and forth from one man to the other.