200.000 children spent as prisoners their time in Auschwitz-Birkenau but just 50 returned home, alive. All the rest died along the way.
Now: I read wagons of material about people who survived the horror of Auschwitz, since I was little.
I had the pleasure, later, of interviewing a survivor of Auschwitz, Lee Staub, but I hadn't never read a book written with the purpose of giving to the reader the point of view of children internated in a camp, horrible, hopeless, like the one of Auschwitz-Birkenau was, where every human gesture was banned.
It is impressive La Stella di Andra e Tati The Star of Andra and Tati by Alessandra Viola and Rosalba Vitellaro published by DeAgostini italian publishing house.
Written superbly well, it is a shocking account of what it was not just being prisoners in a camp like that one, but how passive, resigned became these two children, protagonist of the story. They played while in the camp, they tried to stay cheerful but they forgot what it meant to be loved. It's a story of adaptability, mental flexibility this one that in children is incredibly elevated. They grew up for a while in the innaturality of hate and disdain; forgetting the beauty of the world because children forget; Andra and Tati forgot their past, people met along their way; they forget their mother, father, family, also, at some point, because they were not anymore important, their names.
Their normality was to playing, with, close to them corpses; it was the normality the grey ash of the corpses cremated. They didn't know what it was. They didn't like but there were these things in the camp. Not flowers, nor music, or books, not a good cup of tea with a slice of cake.
There was just this: horror.
Born in Fiume in 1937 and 1939, Tati and Andra Bucci were children of Giovanni Bucci, a catholic man and Mira Perlow, Jewish.
The sister of Mira married Eduardo De Simone and lived to Naples.
Fiume sounded pretty tolerant with Jewish, but after the armistice of Sept 8th 1943 the city decided of applying the Jewish laws wanted by Mussolini and deportations could start.
The cousin of Andra and Tati, Sergio, was with them and his mother, thinking that maybe they would have been more safe in Fiume. Not only it was not like that, but Sergio died with other children of a horrible death later.
But...Let's see the existence of these two children Andra and Tati of 4 and 6 years
I start to tell to my readers that I recognized most of the games I also played with when I was little.
These children loved dolls and diversified games; once they also searched with their dad in the sky a precise star to look at when daddy would have been absent from home because a sailor, so that they could have thought at him and viceversa.
They played outside with other children, they were happy and joyous, respected, loved by everyone; abruptly everything changed.
At the bakery store there was something written that their mother didn't like to read preferring not to buy the bread there; same was in other stores. Children didn't want to play with them anymore and when Andra and Tati asked why, children said them because they were Jewish and it could have been dangerous to play with them. Why that? What the hell meant that, thought these two children.
That Germans were ready to de-materialize and destroy under every sense the great dignity, culture, humanity of Jewish and other minorities, it was clear; they did it coldly, with a dishumanity that it was shocking.
When the entire family Bucci was captured, granny included, they then were forced to enter in a train but it wasn't a normal train, with chairs, with windows where it was possible to see the panorama, where people could talk.
These kids with their family and many other people entered in a suffocating place, without windows, without a bathroom, withouth any touch of that dignity that a person should have, because a person. There was just a very little window.
The trip was long, various days; in the while people urinated, defecated everywhere, started to be starved but mainly there was profound costernation, sadness, and desperation. Desperation because people knew: knew that this hate of Germans was horrible, immense and senseless.
Andra and Tati slept most of the time, shocked, devastated, starved.
Their arrival was tremendous. Icy. Germans didn't have any kind of human touch for anyone. Left, right, left right, it was what a german soldier, yes, Mengele, repeated continously to them. But that two simple destinations, that two simple words, that simple gesture meant life or death.
The granny of these two children immediately sent to the gas chambers.
Andra, Tati, Sergio, their mothers, saved.
Then they went in another place where they cut their hair, and once removed their clothes, shoes, Germans "presented" them the prisoner's uniform; then there was the tattoo. Andra was 76483 and Tatiana 76484.
They became numbers.
Then Tati, Andra and Sergio were divided from their mothers.
The sisters thought that these men were pretty rude: what the hell did they do to them for being so nasty?
Children stayed in areas called kinderblock dedicated to them, with a lady, heartless most of the time: the responsible of these children was called blokova. She offered them everyday a horrible soup and some hard bread.
At first Andra refused to eat the soup and children starved, ate it with a fury similar to the one of animals.
Starvation is not a joke. Old generations know it very well.
Children played with stones, with whatever they could find. Sometimes it was precious to find an object, but also dangerous, because if germans would have discovered that they had something, they would have killed them.
One day they met their mother. Mira reached them with great peril and although at first they didn't recognize her, then they did. Mira was so skinny now. She said them of not forget their names.
The kids would have later played at the game of: I am Tati Bucci and you? I am Andra Bucci. Glad to meet you. Do we want to be sisters?
Sergio in the while, if a wonderful character, positive, at home, plenty of creative games, always with the smile on his face became silent and didn't want to participate at their games when in the camp. He was missing his mom tremendously.
One day the blokova offered to Tati and Andra when there was a heavy snow something warm to wear. Risking a lot.
Another time she admonished them: "Don't say at the doctor in visit soon that you want to see you mother." It was a trap for experiments on children.
They shared this information with Sergio, their cousin, but Sergio preferred to go, and died in a devastating, horrible way.
The camp was set free by Russians and the kids destinate in an orphanage in Prague because no one knew who they were and where they were from.
Different language, that sisters didn't have any kind of humanity, remember the children.
Then, one day the arrival of someone. They were asking for Jewish kids. They were Jewish.
They went so to Lingfield, UK. A rich man had decided of helping these children still without parents giving them an estate where they could in the while recuperate the lost serenity and that cottage, oh, was so lovely, dreaming and enchanting.
Lingfield represented for Andra and Tati the Paradise after years of horror and sufferance. They received wonderful food and gifts; they had a birthday, (they didn't remember when they were born of course, too little) and there was a constant, joyous atmosphere plenty of good slices of cake, tea, love. It didn't seem real. They started to love the people of the staff, and the rest of children with which, after years, they were in grade to become friends with.
But one day Miss Lauren the coordinator, let them see a picture of two happy people. "Do you recognize them?" They were their parents, although that imagine said something but not a lot to them, because they had forgotten them in the while.
Constricted to leave Lingfield for meeting the parents, these two children happy and cheerful were devastated. Why leaving good food, and friendship and good people for the unknown? And who were that people? Would they have met the same atmosphere that they were breathing at Lingfield?
The children didn't speak italian anymore, and when they saw their mother they were not so enthusiastic. Another change. When Miss Lauren left them with the mother days after their arrival it was devastating to them because they loved that nice lady. She saved them in a moment of profound difficulty.
Nothing returned as it was before as Tati and Andra told.
When the normality becomes not eating, not living, being treated as a wild beast without love, attention, dedication; when it's the normality to play seeing wagons of corpses close to you; when you could be killed because you cried too much, when you were not a person anymore, no, it's normal that nothing can return to a normality.
Although little when children see too much, live too much, it's difficult to cope with it, and tensions and emotions subsequent at the facts experienced return on surface sometimes. The brain of a kid is more plastic than the one of an adult, but there is also to add that it is like a sponge in grade to absorb the beauty and the horrible part of the existence, and these experiences will remain forever. That's why a kid should never suffer for a second. And these children saw the horror.
I was thinking at that star, searched by Tati, Giovanni and Andra in a moment of joy and at the impossibility for these children to look at the sky for searching for it later, because simply too devastated by their internal pain, fear, and horror; they didn't remember the beauty of the world; that there was someone to love; they didn't know that dreams were still possible; that maybe there was somewhere, a different life.
But they survived. These ex children are now positive ladies, and they want to share with everyone what they experienced. With their story was born the first cartoon movie about the Holocaust and every year these two sisters share their experience returning in Auschwitz with scholastic groups, because it's important not to forget but remember, constantly remember what the human cruelty is in grade to do, for hate, for discrimination.
It's a wonderful book for your children this one.
Start a good conversation with your children about what it meant the horror of the past world war, and the immensity of sufferance that left behind. Be brutal. Don't hide nothing. Maybe they won't sleep for one night, but then they won't never forget that once horrible men created this mess; that learned lesson will remain in their mind forever.
I thank DeaPlaneta for the physical copy of this book.
Anna Maria Polidori
No comments:
Post a Comment