On the other side of the Danube, in Walch, an old woman hid me for three days. She didn’t have anything for herself anymore. Hid me till the Yanks came into the town.
She gave me some of her dead husband’s old clothes, too. Because I still had my Wehrmacht uniform on, and if the Americans caught me wearing it they’d have taken me prisoner. And the Nazis, if they’d caught me they’d have shot or hanged me out of hand for deserting, for betraying the Fatherland.
I walked home from Walch. Took me almost a week before I was finally back. The whole country seemed to be on the move after the Nazis cracked up. I saw ragged figures, dead people, hanged men.
But a horror like we saw at that farm, there’s no words for it. The way they were butchered—like animals.
What kind of man could he be? I mean, it was a monster, a lunatic.
And can you tell me, why the children too? Why those poor little mites, I ask you? Why?
Thou who lentest Thine ear to the thief on the cross,
we beg You, hear our prayer.
Thou who fillest the elect with joy in Thy mercy,
we beg You, hear our prayer.
Thou who holdest the keys of Death and Hell,
we beg You, hear our prayer.
Thou who wouldst liberate our parents, relations and benefactors from the pains of Purgatory,
we beg You, hear our prayer.
Thou who wouldst more particularly show mercy to those souls of whom no one on Earth thinks,
we beg You, hear our prayer.
Thou who wouldst spare and forgive them all,
we beg You, hear our prayer.
Thou who wouldst satisfy their longing for You right soon,
we beg You, hear our prayer.
Thou who wouldst take them into the company of Thine elect and bless them forever,
we beg You, hear our prayer.
The room is bathed in faint light.
He can’t tell whether the curtains are drawn or not.
He sees the room before him immersed in shimmering, milky whiteness. As if through a veil as thin as gossamer.
He sees the furniture of the room. The chest of drawers, dark brown oak, a heavy chest with three drawers. Each drawer has two brass handles. They are dulled, worn with use. You have to hold both handles of the drawers, that’s the only way to pull them open. They are heavy drawers.
A picture above the chest of drawers. A guardian angel leading two children across a wooden bridge. The children walk hand in hand. A boy and a girl. A stream races under the bridge at the bottom of the picture. The guardian angel, wearing a billowing white robe, has spread its arms protectively over the children. Barefoot, the angel is leading them over the wild torrent. A mountain range casts its shadow in the background. White snow can be seen on the mountain peaks.
The picture frame is gilded, the gilt is beginning to flake off in many places. The white of the frame beneath shows through.
He knows that the bed is on the far side of the room. With the bedside table next to it.
Both made of the same dark brown oak.
A death cross stands on the bedside table, with candleholders to its left and right. The candles are lit.
A girl lies on the bed. Little more than a child. Her eyes closed. Her face translucent, pale. Her hair, plaited into braids, hangs far down over her shoulders. A myrtle wreath has been placed around her forehead.
Hands folded on her breast. Someone, perhaps his wife, perhaps the woman who came to lay out the body, has put a death cross into her folded hands.
The girl wears a white dress. White stockings. Her feet are in white stockings, no shoes. Her figure seems to be slowly dissolving in the light of the room.
“Look at her, oh, do look, she is an angel now.”
He hears the voice of a woman. His wife? Feels his throat tightening more and more. Notices the nausea rising gradually inside him.
“She’s an angel now. Isn’t she beautiful?”
The nausea almost takes his breath away.
He turns and runs to the door.
Almost tears the door off its hinges, or so it seems to him. Hurries downstairs. All he wants is to get away. Out across the fields and meadows to the woods.
There he drops to the ground. He lies with his face in the cool moss. With every breath he takes in the cold, earthy aroma of the woods. A scream rises from deep inside him. The scream makes its way out. He screams in his despair. There is nothing human about the scream, he screams in despair like a wounded animal.
The scream wakes him. He sits up in bed, bathed in sweat.
The dream is repeated night after night. Sometimes his wife is lying dead on the bed before him. On other nights the girl has taken her place, or the little boy.
He stands up, goes to the window, looks out into the cold night.
Maria Sterzer, age 42, farmer’s wife in Upper Tannöd
When my husband and Alois got back to our farm, they didn’t need to tell me anything. I could see something terrible must have happened from the way they were walking, long before they arrived. And when they were back sitting in our living room, both of them so pale, I knew it. You could read it in their faces, the horror. For the first few nights my husband kept waking up. The sight of the dead wouldn’t let him rest.
To think of such a thing happening right out here. You can hardly imagine it. Not that I’m surprised to hear old Danner didn’t die in his bed.
One shouldn’t speak ill of the dead, so I don’t like to talk about those dead people. We live in a small village here, you know. Any kind of tittle-tattle gets passed on, so I’d rather not say much.
All I will say is, I didn’t like the folk at that farm.
Loners, every one of them, and the old farmer in particular wasn’t a good man. You couldn’t get close to them, and I didn’t want to either. I haven’t even spoken to them since that business with Amelie.
Amelie was a very nice girl. She was a foreign worker on the Danner farm. That was still in the war. They made the POWs and all kinds of other people do forced labor on the farms. We had one from France here, our Pierre.
The men were all away in the war, except for Danner, he somehow fixed it not to get called up. He was thick as thieves with the Party people back then.
There were strict rules about the treatment of the foreign workers. But I didn’t stick to them. Our Pierre worked on the farm. I could never have run the place all on my own with the small children and my mother-in-law, God rest her soul.
My husband was at the front, and later he was a POW; he didn’t come back until ’47. And thank God he did come back in the end!
Our Pierre liked working on the land. He came from a farm himself. Without him the place would have gone downhill fast, he worked as if the farm was his own. We all got on well. We didn’t have much ourselves, but we shared what little we had with him.
When a man works as hard as that, you have to treat him decently. I mean, he’s a human being, not a beast of burden. That’s what I said to the mayor. I told him so to his face when he tried warning me off.
All he said was, “You’d better watch your step, Frau Sterzer, many people have been strung up for less.”