The Murder Farm Read online

  Everything around me was ghastly. Like in a nightmare. Like the Trud was sitting on you squeezing the air out of you. I wanted to get out of there, away from that place.

  When I turned to go out, Hauer barred my way.

  “We have to look for Josef,” he shouted at me. But I pushed him away. Hauer tried to keep on holding me. “We have to look for the little boy. Where’s the boy? Where’s Josef?”

  But I just left him standing there. I went out into the open air, so I could breathe.

  Out there I found Alois outside the machinery shed. He was pale as a ghost. Couldn’t even stay on his legs anymore. He’d slid down to the ground outside the shed with his back to the wall. I sat down beside him.

  But Hauer—he’d followed me out of the barn—he kept at us. We must try to get into the house from the barn, he said.

  I couldn’t do any more, I was exhausted and trembling all over. I felt unspeakably awful.

  Hauer still wouldn’t let it go. He kept at us, badgering us the whole time.

  “We have to get inside the house. We have to find out what happened.” He kept repeating it. Alois and me, though, we just stayed there sitting on the ground. So in the end Hauer went back into the barn alone.

  From there, so he told us later, he went through the cowshed into the farmhouse.

  A few minutes later we heard the door of the house being unlocked.

  Meanwhile we’d pulled ourselves together enough to feel we could stand.

  Hauer called to us again to go into the house with him. And now that we didn’t have to go through the barn and past all the dead family, we finally did as he wanted and went into the house with him.

  There was still a glass sitting on the kitchen table. It looked like the family had only just left the room. Like one of them would come back into the kitchen any moment.

  We looked around the room. The door to the little room next to it was ajar. Hauer threw the door wide. We found a woman’s dead body, it was half covered by a quilt. There was blood all over the place around her.

  I didn’t know the woman, I’d never seen her before in my life.

  Still Hauer kept on urging us to search the other rooms in the house.

  And at last we found little Josef in his cot in the bedroom. He was dead too.

  Alois Huber, age 25

  Supposing I hadn’t stumbled, maybe we wouldn’t have found them so soon—who knows? There was no light to speak of in that barn. The daylight coming in through the open cowshed door wasn’t enough to make the place any brighter.

  First I thought I’d fallen over a stick, a piece of wood, some largish object. It was a while before I took it in.

  Me and Farmer Sterzer, we just stood there. If Hauer hadn’t been there to clear the straw away, I reckon we’d have stood there forever. I reckon we’d just have stood there unable to move.

  When I saw those dead bodies I felt sick.

  Not that it’s that easy to upset me. I saw more than enough in the war, believe you me. Everyone who was in the war saw enough dead bodies to last them a lifetime.

  But a thing like that. All of them killed stone dead.

  I mean, I’d known them all, they weren’t strangers, they were people you saw every day.

  I couldn’t look at them. I was out of that barn double quick, and I threw up outside the machinery shed.

  Everything else, it was like the world around me had stopped. All I still felt was that sickness. That horror. Whoever did it can’t be human. Whoever did it is a devil. Can’t be anyone from around here, we don’t have monsters like that in these parts.

  If Farmer Hauer hadn’t gone on and on at us like that, I’d never have gone into the house to look for the others. Never in my life.

  Farmer Hauer kept pressing us to go in, though. We followed him like lambs to the slaughter. He didn’t lose his nerve. I mean, it was almost unbelievable. He didn’t lose his head like us, like Farmer Sterzer and me. Everything he did, he was very calm and self-controlled. And he was the one who knew Danner and his family best. I mean, he was kind of almost like his son-in-law. Well, he was little Josef’s dad, right?

  In his place I could never have kept such a good grip on myself. He never lost his nerve, not for a moment. I must say I admired him for that, for being so self-controlled. Almost cold-blooded, he seemed.

  I’ve seen things in my time, back under Adolf they called us boys up at fifteen years old. They put us in uniform, gave us guns, and told us to go and shoot at the enemy. The enemy. What a laugh! The enemy was old men and mothers with their children, and I was supposed to shoot at them.

  I was stationed in Regensberg. The Yanks had already surrounded the whole town. We were told it had to be defended to the last man. Better dead than fall into enemy hands, they said. What a load of garbage, none of that mattered now.

  This group of mothers with their children and old men, they were walking through the town. They wanted the place to surrender without a fight. Only women and children and old men, they were, the other men were all at the front or taken prisoner.

  The Party top brass had already headed for the hills, the filthy cowards. We even had to help them pack their cases.

  They wanted to scarper for it quick, those gentlemen. They sent us kids, just kids of fifteen we were, out into the street. Told us to shoot the demonstrators. We were supposed to shoot those old men, and the mothers with their children.

  So in all the confusion I scarpered too. Threw my gun away and went down to the Danube. I hid in the cellar of a burned-out house there. That evening I swam across the river under cover of darkness. I’m a good swimmer.

  I was scared then. Terrified. I was scared to death.

  I thought that was the worst thing I’d ever have to see in my life.

  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.”

  I even got an anonymous letter. They were threatening to report me. All the same, I did what I thought was right. I wasn’t letting them get me down, not them.

  Amelie was in a bad way. They didn’t treat her well at Danner’s farm. The old skinflint gave her hardly anything to eat, and she had to work like an ox.

  And she was a delicate little thing. She didn’t come of farming stock. She was from a city in Poland, I think it was Warsaw, but I don’t know for certain.

  I felt so sorry for her, poor creature. Our Pierre said Danner was chasing after her. Pestering and molesting poor Amelie, Pierre said, he even beat her. She showed Pierre the bruises, and she cried.

  Seems that Danner once even hit her with a whip in the farmyard. Just because she wouldn’t do what he wanted. She had bloody welts afterward.

  And do you think Frau Danner helped her? She didn’t say a word. Far from it, she tormented and harassed poor Amelie herself the whole time.

  I suppose if someone’s been knocked around all their life they’ll take the chance to knock someone else about if they get it.

  Amelie couldn’t bear it at the Danner farm anymore. She couldn’t run away, so she hanged herself. Poor girl. She hanged herself in the barn. In the very same barn where they found Danner himself and his family.

  That’s odd, when you come to think of it.

  Old Danner hushed it all up afterward, and the mayor helped him.

  Pierre liked Amelie a lot. He sometimes gave her something to eat on the sly. There wasn’t much we could spare, but maybe a piece of bread, some fruit and vegetables, and now and then a little bit of sausage. He smuggled it to her in secret. Once, when she was almost at the end of her tether, she told our Pierre about her brother. He was sure to come look for her after the war was over, she said. And then she was going to tell him all about Danner. She’d tell him how badly they’d treated her on the farm, how the old man had been chasing her all the time, pestering her. Wanting her to do things she couldn’t even mention to Pierre.

  At the time I wasn’t sure whether our Pierre had gotten all that right, because he didn’t speak anything but French, and German after a fashion with me.

  But I haven’t been able to get Amelie’s story out of my head, not since they found them all dead. In that very same barn. Who knows, maybe Amelie’s brother did come to find her after all and took revenge on Danner for her?

  He wouldn’t be the first. There are several who’ve taken revenge on their tormentors. You keep hearing such stories, off the record. There’s plenty of skeletons in closets around here. It was a bad time, and there were many bad people around then.

  Franz-Xavier Meier, age 47, Mayor

  It was around five when Hansl Hauer showed up at my house. The lad was quite beside himself.

  “They’ve killed everyone up at the Danner farm,” he was shouting. “Killed them all stone dead.” He kept shouting it. “They’ve killed every last one of them. They’re all dead.”

  And I was to call the police at once, wh
ich naturally I did.

  I drove to the Danner family’s property in my car. I found Georg Hauer there, Hansl’s father, and Johann Sterzer, along with Alois Huber, Sterzer’s future son-in-law. He works for Sterzer on his farm.

  After a short conversation with the three of them, I decided not to view the scene of the crime for myself.

  A little later the officers from the local police arrived, and I determined that my presence was no longer necessary. I’m afraid there’s nothing more I can say that might help to clear up this terrible crime.

  Well, of course I was shocked, what do you think? But it’s not for me to find out what happened, that’s the business of the authorities responsible, in this case the police.

  And that’s just what I told the journalists from the newspaper, in almost the same words.

  Oh, don’t you start on about that woman, that Polish foreign worker! I can’t tell you anything about that. I am afraid the records of the incident were lost in ’45. My predecessor as mayor could tell you more if he were still alive.

  I was a prisoner in a French POW camp at the time myself.

  When the Americans came here and liberated us in April ’45, I wasn’t home yet. They took over the then mayor’s house and the village hall. They commandeered those buildings as their temporary quarters. The buildings were devastated by the time they moved out.

  They acted like vandals. They shot at porcelain plates in the garden with their pistols. “Tap shooting,” that’s what they called it. Just imagine. After they left, everything was laid waste or useless. Those fine gentlemen had taken what little was still of any use away with them.

  So most of the files from the time before the fall of the regime had been destroyed, too. We suffered severe damage, as I am sure you will understand.

  And for that reason I can’t tell you much about the events leading to the death of the Polish foreign worker.

  As far as I know, the Polish worker, the one assigned to the Danner family, hanged herself. She was buried here in the village.