The True Story of Hansel and Gretel

The narrator begins her tale of World War II. On a November night in 1943, Nazi soldiers chase the Mechanik and the Stepmother on motorcycles. The family drives along a wooded road in Poland, with the Mechanik’s son and daughter riding in their motorcycle’s sidecar. As the Stepmother tries to persuade the Mechanik that he must leave the children in the woods to save them, he thinks about the unfairness of his situation. The Mechanik is Jewish but devoted himself to education and intellectualism instead of his father’s religion. Still, he and his family had to flee western Poland when the Nazis invaded it. The Mechanik’s wife died in a bombing as they evacuated. Though he remarried and survived both Russian occupation and life in the Bialystok ghetto under the Nazis, he witnessed the suffering of other Jews, and his family remains in danger.

The Stepmother continues to argue that the children will be better off in the woods. “Leave the children,” she pleads, “and we’ll all have a chance” (4). The narrator reveals that the 11-year-old daughter is blue-eyed and blond, and that she is protective of her 7-year-old brother. The Mechanik is angry with his wife, but ultimately, he gives in to her argument. When the children hesitate to run, The Stepmother tells the daughter that she doesn’t look Jewish and warns the son to hide his circumcision, which would reveal his Judaism. She also tells them to forget their Jewish names and go by Hansel and Gretel. The Mechanik and The Stepmother drive away on the motorcycle without looking back. 

Gretel directs her brother to hide in a pile of leaves as the Nazi soldiers approach on their motorcycles. From the hiding spot, Hansel admires the Nazis’ precision and notes how they “sat perfectly straight and weren’t afraid of being seen” (6). The Nazis pass by without noticing the children. Gretel feels uneasy in the ensuing silence because she is used to sounds of suffering in the Polish ghetto. She begins to cry but manages to praise Hansel for being quiet. The children practice using their new names. Gretel leads Hansel further into the Bialowieza Forest.

As the children walk, Hansel tries to ignore his growing hunger. He has a piece of bread in his pocket, but his father and Gretel have taught him that he should save food for as long as possible. Still, Hansel takes out the bread and begins tearing it into crumbs, dropping them onto the forest floor. Though Gretel is dismayed, she does not try to stop him. Hansel explains that he believes The Stepmother will follow the breadcrumbs to find him. Gretel does not share his belief. For her, the bread evokes a distant memory of eating challah, a traditional Jewish bread, with a white-haired man whose name she does not remember. Gretel thinks that her time in the ghetto robbed her of this memory and many others.

The children follow the sounds of an owl deeper into the forest. They consider walking through a stream to hide their scent in case the Nazis use dogs to track them but decide that the water is too cold. Gretel reminds Hansel not to urinate in front of anyone, even her, lest he show his circumcision. Weary and confused, Gretel decides to rest for the night. She tells Hansel to help her build a burrow of leaves, and they huddle inside the leaves for warmth. 

Hansel and Gretel awaken to snow. They talk about practicing their new names and finding food. They’re careful to be quiet although the forest seems empty. The children set out in search of a farm to steal food from. As they walk, Gretel remembers the relative comforts of her childhood: a maid, a refrigerator, and piles of books. Even in the ghetto, she thinks, her father managed to hold onto an atlas, a collection of fairy tales, and a book of mathematics. Gretel is lost in memories until she thinks of the airplanes that appeared overhead as she and her family fled Bialystok. “Then,” the narrator says, “the door in her mind shut and they were gone” (15).

The children spot a small hut with bread on its roof. As Hansel runs to steal the food, Gretel sees an old woman with long white hair watching them. The children run, but Hansel drops the bread, and he and Gretel fall to the ground to retrieve it. The woman laughs at them. She asks Hansel to carry her water pails in exchange for the bread, but Hansel refuses. The woman says that Hansel looks like a Rom, or gypsy, but that Gretel does not. Gretel tells her their new names and is relieved to see that the woman is not carrying a weapon.

Neither child answers when the woman asks about their parents. The woman says that bread is lucky, and Hansel becomes upset that he crumbled his own piece of bread in the forest. Gretel mimics the Stepmother by slapping him to calm him down. The woman asks for payment for the bread Hansel took. When he says he does not have money, she pulls a button from his coat. The woman uses a stick to draw a circle around herself and the children. She claims that the circle will restore Hansel and Gretel’s luck and mutters in a language the children do not recognize. She again refers to Hansel as “almost of the Rom” (18).

When Hansel asks her about the Rom, the woman explains that they are gypsies whom the Nazis exterminated. Gretel moves to help the woman with the pails, but she accidently steps on the circle. The children fear that Gretel has ruined their new luck. As the woman returns to the hut with her water, leaving the children outside, she tells them that her name is Magda, and that villagers call her Magda the Witch.

The Mechanik and the Stepmother leave his motorcycle in the brush. The Mechanik is paralyzed by thoughts of his children, but the Stepmother pulls him along into the woods. They wade through a creek to hide their scent from the Nazi’s dogs, just as Hansel and Gretel considered doing in Chapter 3.

The Mechanik wonders aloud why the Nazis would continue to pursue them, and why they pursued other Jews. He reveals that soldiers beat his parents to death. The Stepmother grows angry thinking about her own loss: the Nazis killed her husband and infant. She did not tell the Mechanik about the baby’s existence because “she couldn’t make her mouth say the child’s name” (22). The Stepmother wishes she could dwell on positive memories of her privileged life before the Nazi invasion, but she feels they are tarnished by what has happened since.

It begins to snow. Near dawn, a man with a gun emerges from the woods. The man reveals that he is a partisan, an outlaw working against the Nazis. He worries that the Mechanik and the Stepmother could lead the Nazis to him. The Stepmother assures him that neither of them would, though she believes the Mechanik would if it meant saving her life. The partisan takes them to his group of seven men, which is led by a former prisoner of war called “the Russian.”

The Stepmother realizes that the partisans are holding a Nazi captive. She grabs one of their guns and shoots the Nazi in the head over their protests. The Russian is pleased and says that she can stay with their group, but the Mechanik cannot. The Stepmother turns the gun on the Russian. The Mechanik tells the group that he has a motorcycle and that he’s an engineer. The Russian is convinced that he may be useful after all and says that both can stay as long as the Mechanik brings them his motorcycle. He agrees, but the Stepmother worries about his errand and thinks he will try to find the children. As the Mechanik disappears back into the woods, the Stepmother thinks of the Nazi that she killed and feels great happiness.