The True Story of Hansel and Gretel

The deceased narrator believes that she must tell the truthful version of a story to correct other versions told by liars. She asks readers to listen to the story but warns that it will be difficult to hear. Though she does not reveal her name in this chapter, the narrator is a woman named Magda who is sometimes called “The Witch.” 

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.