HSFTP – 16 Children Murder Not

It wasn’t until a friend told the story of how her son—her then three-year-old son—killed their pet rabbit that I was reminded of my own childhood premeditation.

My brothers and I never had a normal brother-sister relationship until we finally realized who our real enemy was and decided not to fight one another. Our daily lives consisted of work and a constant battle to defend ourselves. If we dared ask to play with other children, our mother’s favorite expression was, “Don’t you have anything better to do? I will cure your laziness.” Then she would list things we had to do immediately.

Besides the daily routine of washing dishes and dusting, one of our parents’ favorite assignments was for Nigg to sweep the street and the courtyard. I had to clean the stairs from the third floor all the way down to the basement.

When we had finished everything, she would find something else waiting for us—stacking firewood or sweeping the cellar where the coal was stored.

One evening, around eight o’clock, I had just finished cleaning the kitchen. I was tired of being responsible for my brothers and dealing with their rude behavior. My daily work around the house was enough without them making a mess all over again. I still had to dust the bedrooms before I would be done for the day and could begin my schoolwork.

My two brothers had just come back from fishing. Instead of going to the wash house where they were supposed to clean the fish and leave their wet clothes, they came straight into the kitchen. When I saw the dirty wet clothes on the floor and the fish in the sink, I lost my temper. Yelling, I went after Hans, since he was the first one I could reach, and beat him over the head with a dish rag.

Nigg stood by the door laughing. His laughter sent me into a rage. I turned Hans loose and reached for the broom. I knew I didn’t stand a chance against Nigg and tried first to threaten him. He kept laughing and teasing me. He called me a dumb nut, my father’s favorite expression for me. I grew angrier.

The real fight started when he pulled my hair. With the broom in hand, I hit him until the broomstick broke against his arm. We stopped when I saw his arm swelling, and I immediately felt sorry for what I had done. Together we wrapped his arm in cold cloths. We had obviously had enough.

Once we calmed down and sat at the kitchen table talking, we began comparing our lives to those of the other children we knew—how their fathers played with them, how their mothers cooked and washed for them. Each of us had an idea of how our parents should be.

We finally came to the conclusion that the problem was that our father was the devil in person.

“We have to stop fighting each other,” I said. “We must stick together.”

Nigg said, “Nobody will stand up against the old man. They are all afraid of him—cowards. The last one we can expect any help from is our mother. We have to take care of this problem ourselves and can’t trust anybody.”

I said, “Remember when I told Uncle Dittl that father beat us?”

“Yes,” Hans replied. “He threw Uncle Dittl out, and we got a lesson not to talk about family business outside the house.”

“You don’t have to worry about a thing,” Nigg yelled at Hans. “It is Sieglinde and I who get all the heat. You get away with just about everything because you are the old lady’s favorite child. She protects you all the time and makes sure no one blames you. If anything happens to you, it is always our fault. When you got into trouble with other kids and got hurt, it was our fault—we should have protected you.”

Nigg was so angry I had to stop him before we ended up fighting again.

Once we changed the subject, we talked—for the very first time—about how afraid we were of our father.

Nigg told us how he listened to cars at night while lying in bed.

“First,” he said, “I figure out what type of car it is by the sound. Then, if it stops in front of the house, I know.”

“I do the same,” I said. It was true.

Every time I hear a car, I hold my breath and listen to whether it stops in front of our house or pulls into the driveway. If I hear it in the driveway, I know my parents are home, and I begin to shake. Then I listen as they unlock the door and walk up the stairs. I hear them in the kitchen. I hold my breath, trying to hear what they are saying. Then I pray they go straight to bed.

Sometimes minutes turned into hours. It felt like an eternity while they decided what they would do. If their voices grew louder, I knew the piercing whistle would follow. It didn’t matter what time of night it was—they always found a reason to wake us.

One time Nigg did not do his “duty” of shining the old man’s shoes. We all had to line up like soldiers in the night to receive our “just punishment.” Most of the time he only said, “You all know why.”

That night we had gone to bed late again, just before I heard the car pull into the driveway. I lay in bed praying, Not again tonight. I could still feel the beating with the hose from the night before.

The dreaded whistle sounded.

This time it was about the big window in our store downstairs. We tried to tell him we didn’t break it—that someone else had—but he was not interested in our explanation. He called us lying bastards, and once again we had to go to the laundry room, one by one.

The next morning he said, “If it wasn’t your fault this time, you all needed the discipline anyway.”

That was when we decided it was time for us kids to do something.

First, we thought about running away together. We soon realized that if the police caught us, they would bring us back and probably wouldn’t listen to our story. We remembered what happened when Mrs. Reischel called the police about us. They came, talked to the old man, and left.

Running away wouldn’t work.

Then we looked at each other and knew we all had the same thought.

“We have to get rid of him.”

After a long silence, we decided we had to kill him before he killed one of us.

Nigg suggested “fixing” the brakes on his Mercedes.

I said it wouldn’t work—he and the devil were one.

Then Nigg said, “We all know what would happen if he didn’t break his neck.”

It wasn’t the best idea anyway. Any mechanic would figure it out.

I said, “Poison would be a waste of time. That old Satan would probably survive that too.”

As hard as we tried, we couldn’t come up with anything worth attempting. Nigg suggested installing the big axe above the door so it would fall and split his head open when he walked in.

“No,” Hans said. “What if mother comes in first? There must be another way.”

No matter what we planned, there was always the possibility that someone else might get hurt.

We promised to keep thinking until we found a solution. We were full of hope that soon we would be free from torture. The thought that he would not be around much longer gave us strength to endure his attacks.

We learned to survive by staying constantly alert.

As we grew older, we learned how to answer our father’s questions quickly and in ways that pleased him. If we did not tell the truth, at least the lie protected us. We learned to steal small pieces of time for ourselves by inventing stories—like having to stay longer at school.

One time I told my mother I had to walk a school friend home because she was not feeling well. I knew if the lie were discovered, I would be punished. I did it anyway.

Later, Nigg and I realized it did not matter whether we lied or told the truth. Our father never believed us.
“You,” he said, pointing at me, “must get better at telling stories.”
Puzzled, I asked why.
“Because,” he said, “you are too dumb to lie.”

He was never satisfied with simple explanations or the plain truth.

Soon, we no longer felt like liars. We used his love for drama to protect ourselves. His philosophy of life was shaped by Hitler’s dramatic speeches, so we learned to dramatize—to invent stories powerful enough to satisfy him. These stories gave us small moments of freedom until the next time.

We heard the same speech again and again about Hitler’s “glorious goals.”

Even today, my father’s words echo in my ears:

“To achieve a goal, you must eliminate everything that stands in your way. I hope someone like Hitler will rise and lead Germany into glory and order again.”

Whenever my father spoke, he did so theatrically. His jokes were sarcastic or racist, and he expected people to laugh. If they did not, he called them an uneducated mob and made it clear they were not part of the elite.

For those who disagreed, he said, “If Hitler comes back, they will be the first in concentration camps.”

We were confronted constantly with his philosophy—through his actions and his words.

I did not understand politics, but I refused to accept his beliefs. Not everyone in the world could think like him. I hated control—mental or physical—over human beings.

Every child searches for a way out of unbearable mental and physical pain.

In my childhood, yelling seemed like the lesser problem. We were grateful if yelling was all we received. Only later did I understand its impact.

I became silent when confronted with death. When my beloved Lella died. When the guinea pig died. In both moments, I noticed the silence death brought—and how it ended pain.

That silence became, in my mind, freedom.

Abused children do not kill in the same sense the law defines murder.