In a quiet part of Jerusalem there once lived an elderly woman named Brigitte Ringer-Nenner, who had good reason to believe in miracles. She also believed in angels. The reason is found in the story of a little red diary in which she wrote poems as a child and which was lost to her for many years. She believed it was lost forever.
Brigitte Ringer was born in Berlin in 1922 and lived there happily with her parents and brother until November 9, 1938. That was the day the Nazis rampaged through the city, arresting Jews, deporting them to concentration camps, destroying their property. It was the date that came to be known as Kristallnacht, the night of the broken glass. And that was when her special angel, the Angel of Poetry, left her side.
This angel had come to her one night when she was very young. Her mother tucked her in bed, said prayers with her, and turned out the light. Suddenly the room was filled with a different kind of light, and she saw a beautiful angel with sweeping wings. Brigitte tried to hide under the blankets, but the angel spoke soothing words: “Don’t be frightened. God sent me to you. I am the Angel of Poetry, and my task is to accompany you all your life. Even though you can’t write yet, I will come to you at night. You can memorize the poems, and your father will write them down in the morning.”
And so it was, until the child learned to read and write herself. The angel visited her every night until that fateful time when Brigitte was sent to Bergen-Belsen. The angel told her: “I am sorry to break my promise to stay with you always because you, my child, are going to hell, and angels are not allowed in hell. But I shall ask God to let you leave hell alive. You shall write poems about your experiences.”
Brigitte’s poems were recorded in the little red book she had begun in happier days in Berlin, and she continued to write in it when the family escaped to Amsterdam. But the escape was short-lived because in 1943 the Gestapo found them there and sent them to a concentration camp. All she could take with her was one dress and her red book of poems in a small suitcase. Everything else her family owned was lost.
Years later the Allies were entering Germany, and the Nazis released the foreign citizens. Brigitte’s father had obtained citizenship from El Salvador for the family, so they were loaded into a cattle car, destination unknown. Brigitte was ill with typhoid. The journey lasted many days, the train only stopping to throw out dead bodies. Eventually they were told to get off the train, but she couldn’t find her suitcase. A sled took her to yet another camp, slightly better, where she would remain for two years. Even after the war ended, it was another 18 months before the family could leave Germany and return to Amsterdam.
But there was no home, no possessions, and certainly no little red diary. Neighbors allowed them to sleep in their attic.
Eventually, Brigitte left to search for other surviving family members. She knew of uncles and cousins in Antwerp, Belgium, but when she got there, she discovered that only one cousin survived – Shlomo Ringer, living with his wife and children. Over Shabbat dinner, she told them that her family had lost everything, but what she missed the most had no material value, her red book of childhood poems.
Wordlessly, Shlomo left the room and from his library, he returned with the book in his hand. How had such a miracle happened? He had also been interned, and was loaded on to the same train she had just left at some unknown station. When he disembarked from the train, all the luggage was dumped on the station platform. Bearing the same surname as his cousin, Ringer, he was given her suitcase. He threw away her lice-infested clothes but kept the red book as a memento of the cousin he believed had perished.
Thus Brigitte’s little red book was miraculously returned to her. She settled in Jerusalem in 1966, and her early and later poems were published by chaim.mazo@gmail.com. Titled The Angel of Poetry: A Poetic Perspective on Living through the Holocaust (96 pages), the book is written in English but the early poems are preserved in the original German.
This is one of Brigitte’s poems:
50 years have gone by …
That is a short time
For those who suffered
In concentration camps
Every day was an eternity.
50 years have gone by…
That is a long time for six million
Who went to eternity.
50 years have gone by…
Still it seems very near.
50 years have gone by …
It hurts deeper every year.■
The writer is the author of 14 books. She can be contacted at dwaysman@gmail.com.
In her own words
This is what Brigitte Ringer-Nenner wrote in her book about the diary:
I found that most of the family were not alive any more, except for my cousin Shlomo Ringer, who had miraculously survived in an internment camp inside Germany. Also his wife and children were there. I was invited to stay at their house. We were sitting at the table for the Friday night meal. I said to Shlomo, “We have lost absolutely everything, but what bothers me most is the loss of my little red book containing all of my poems from my early childhood. The room went silent. Nobody said a word. Cousin Shlomo got up from the Shabbat table and went to a very big library and took out – my red book! I was in shock, but at this moment I knew that this was the work of The Angel of Poetry. How else could this be explained?
Here is what happened. Shlomo had been deported from Belgium, where the Germans acted differently from those in Holland. Shlomo had also obtained foreign citizenship and therefore he was treated as a foreign national. Instead of being sent to a concentration camp, they sent him to an internment camp where the conditions were better for survival. It happened that Shlomo was in the group of people who were loaded onto the same train that I was told to get out of.
When Shlomo got off the train, all the luggage was stacked on top of each other to make like a small mountain. They started to call out the names on the luggage so that people could claim their suitcases. Shlomo heard my name called out, so he claimed my suitcase. We have the same last name, so they gave it to him.
Coming from the concentration camp, everything was infested with lice, so the only thing that Shlomo took from the suitcase was my red book, thinking that it would be for a memory of me, a cousin he once had called Brigitte, though he did not know that I was still alive.
‘The Great Lover’
For me, one of the most beautiful poems ever written was penned by British poet Rupert Brooke, tragically killed at a young age in World War I. In his short life (1887-1915), he wrote prolifically, and his poems are still quoted today. In one of the most memorable, “The Great Lover,” he detailed all the things that were most dear to him – from “the strong crusts of friendly bread” and “the cool kindliness of sheets” to “the benison of hot water.” It was his way of counting his blessings, and I think that is something we all need to do now and then. On rereading his poetry recently, I was moved by the fact that although he died at 28, he lived each one of his brief years so intensely, almost as though he were aware that he would not be granted the time to savor and reflect. “The Great Lover” inspired me to make a list of things that I take for granted in Jerusalem but nevertheless enrich my life. These I have loved:
- The sound of the siren that ushers in the Sabbath, knowing that for the next 24 hours my life will be peaceful and elevated above the mundane.
- Dawn shyly creeping on my balcony when Jerusalem is bathed in pearl as the city still sleeps.
- The wind sighing in the pine trees outside my window, and the birds that nest there so that each morning I awaken to birdsong.
- Eating breakfast on my white dishes with their big splashes of blue and yellow flowers, and pouring milk from a fat clay jug.
- I love the skyline of the Old City with its domes, minarets, and turrets. Touching the stones of the Western Wall and communing one-on-one with the Creator.
- The special quality of light in Jerusalem, especially sunset when indigo shadows lengthen; and then when the sky is strewn with stars.
- I love the quiet street where I live, the feeling “I’m coming home!” as I turn the corner.
- I love the knick knacks accumulated on holidays abroad and in the Jaffa flea market, where I went with a dear friend. A pottery vase of flowers picked from my own balcony garden – a rose, a daisy, a simple geranium.
- In winter, the embrace of my thick, blue dressing gown that hugs me in warmth.
- Old photos of people I loved who are no longer with us.
- So many things to love. But none more so than the company of family and friends; the laughter of grandchildren – now all the great-grandchildren – and the trusting way they offer their tiny hands.
The things we love the most cannot be bought with gold. They surround each of us each day, waiting to be acknowledged and appreciated. If we can take a few moments to pause and savor them, then – like the young poet – we can say these things were lovely and – we loved!