Children of Nazis by Tania Crasnianski; Molly Grogan

Author:Tania Crasnianski; Molly Grogan [Grogan, Tania Crasnianski; Molly]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Arcade Publishing
Published: 2018-01-09T05:00:00+00:00

THE HÖSS CHILDREN

The Family of the Kommandant of Auschwitz

“Momma, Momma, come see!”

Brigitte pulls her mother’s hand insistently, although she is panting from having run at full speed.

“Come quick! I found strawberries, so many strawberries, in the garden. Hurry!”

The girl is thrilled by her discovery. Mother and child walk faster now in the direction of the strawberry patch.

“Look how big they are! Can I eat them?”

“No, no, not yet,” her mother warns her. “They must be thoroughly washed first.”

“But why? In Bavaria, we always ate strawberries wherever we found them. Are Polish strawberries dirty?”

“Yes! Can’t you see that they are covered in a black dust and smell like ashes? Look, even your fingers get dirty when you pick them!”

This dirt is not dust; it is the ashes from the crematoriums at Auschwitz.

Seated now on the front steps of her house, enjoying the washed berries, the little girl cannot help herself from looking around to see if anything appears to be burning. Some days, there is a horrible odor that stings her throat. Once, she heard the adults complaining about it. The word they used was “cremation,” but she does not know what that means. She also overheard her father say to one of his subordinates that they could not continue like this: on cloudy or windy days, you could smell burning skin for miles. All of their neighbors were talking about the Jews dying. Another time, her mother and father were discussing a conversation her father had with one of the party members. They were talking about an extermination plan whose pyres would be visible for miles.1 That was in 1942.

Since the age of one, Brigitte has lived near the concentration camps. Before the family moved to Auschwitz, they had lived at Dachau, near Munich, and before that at Sachsenhausen, fifteen miles north of Berlin. She knows her father is responsible for the prisoners. He was promoted—thanks to his exemplary conduct—to the post of Kommandant of Auschwitz in Poland.

These days, their home is a comfortable, well-appointed villa decorated by her mother. There are two floors, a dozen rooms, bathrooms, a kitchen, and a laundry. Her parents’ room is on the second floor, and from their window they can see the smokestack of the first crematorium. Brigitte’s room has twin wooden beds and a large armchair. The furniture is expensive, the linen of the best quality, and works of art hang on the walls. Her parents never owned paintings before, but since they moved to Auschwitz, they can help themselves to anything they want in the “Canada” shops, which are a veritable and frightening Ali Baba’s den of fine objects of all kinds, seized from the camp’s victims.2

They have servants here, too: men in striped uniforms with yellow stars or black triangles; they are prisoners under her papa’s command.3 The little girl thinks they are nice because they often play with her. Sometimes, they make wonderful wooden toys for the children. She thinks in particular of a plane that is big enough to sit on and that has wheels so it can be pulled around.

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