Society’s Betrayal

We, my husband and a friend, walked past the Brucktmühle and turned onto Schulstrasse.

For a moment, I slowed my steps. The sight of the old mill stirred memories I could not hold back. How many times had I sat on that large cornerstone, trying to quiet the tingling weakness in my legs? The mill, built directly over the bridge, had always fascinated me. The rushing waters of the Wörnitz River turned its great wheel, driving the grinding stones that crushed grain into flour—steady and relentless, just like life had once felt.

As soon as we stepped onto Schulstrasse, another wave of memories rose.

I had been late for school so many times. There was always a reason. Sometimes I hadn’t finished my chores. Other times, shame kept me from going at all. And sometimes I simply didn’t know what excuse to give for unfinished homework. I loved school, but I struggled with it constantly. My parents made me work at the gas station, leaving little time to study.

Without warning, my thoughts pulled me back to 1961.

That morning, I could barely walk. My entire body ached.

I don’t remember what I had done wrong that time. I rarely did. My father had beaten me again with the water hose—another “deserved lesson,” as he called it. My legs, head, and hands were swollen, and the wounds on my back were still open. I couldn’t carry my schoolbag on my shoulders; I held it awkwardly in my hand.

When I arrived late, Mr. Fielechner was already in a foul mood.

Ever since the new teacher had quit shortly after the school year began, he had been forced to take over the sixth-grade class himself. He never let us forget how fortunate we were to be taught by the principal.

“Sit properly,” he grumbled.

I tried.

But the moment I straightened, pain ripped through my body, fiercest along my right side. I couldn’t focus on anything else. The wounds consumed my attention, my back throbbed, and the muscles in my thighs and calves felt even weaker than they had the day before.

Why was it always my right side? I wondered.

My father always forced me to lie across the washhouse table. He held me down with his left hand and beat me with his right. Bruises layered over bruises, stretching from my shoulders to my calves before the old ones had time to fade.

One day, sitting in class, I thought I had found a solution.

If he broke his right hand, he would have to use his left.

The thought barely formed before—

A sharp blow struck my back.

“You are daydreaming again!” Mr. Fielechner snapped. “Sit up straight and pay attention!”

I closed my eyes, gritting my teeth against the searing pain. Carefully, I shifted my weight to the left side of the chair, trying to keep the pressure off my wounds. But as I settled there, I realized my left side felt strangely numb.

When I leaned slightly to the right, Werner, who sat behind me, suddenly cried out:

“Mr. Fielechner—she’s bleeding!”

Silence fell over the room.

The principal stared at the blood spreading across the back of my light-colored blouse. My face burned with humiliation.

“I… I’m sorry,” he muttered, his tone suddenly different.

He sent me to his office and asked a classmate to fetch a female teacher.

Relief washed over me when Mrs. Böhm entered the room.

She spoke gently, asking me to remove my blouse so she could see where I was hurt. I refused, offering weak excuses, insisting it was nothing.

But she insisted.

I knew what would happen if she saw my back. She would confront my father—and that would only make things worse. In our home, there was an unspoken rule: family matters never left the house.

More teachers gathered. Then our family doctor arrived.

And everything went dark.

When I opened my eyes, I was in an ambulance.

“Please… stop. I’m fine,” I pleaded with the nurse.

She tried to calm me, clearly confused. She didn’t understand why I was so desperate to leave.

But I knew.

What would happen when I got home?

How could I explain something I had never been allowed to explain?

The hospital was familiar. The chief physician had once worked with my mother during the war, at a military hospital on the Russian front in Riga.

He gave me an injection and instructed the nurse to call my parents.

I was too exhausted to protest.

When I woke again, I was alone in a hospital room.

Panic returned instantly.

I had to leave before my parents arrived.

Dizzy, I forced myself out of bed and searched for my clothes. I had just reached the closet when a young doctor entered.

“What are you doing?” he asked.

Patiently, he explained how serious my injuries were, why I had fainted, and why I needed to stay.

“You must remain here for a few days,” he said.

Then he began asking questions.

Three days passed.

Neither of my parents came.

I felt abandoned—and yet, strangely, relieved.

The nurses were kind. The doctors were gentle. For the first time, life felt quiet… almost peaceful. I didn’t have to work. I could sleep as long as I wanted.

It felt like something I had never known before.

Rest.

On the fourth day, they told me I would be going home.

After I dressed, a nurse led me to the chief physician’s office.

When the door opened, I saw my mother.

The conversation stopped immediately.

She excused herself quickly, claiming she had “important business.” For the first time, she did not raise her voice.

On the way home, she spoke.

“The doctor says you need medicine, treatment—and more food,” she said. “Your father already spoke to him. He was very upset they interfered in family matters.”

She turned sharply toward me.

“What did you tell them?”

“Nothing,” I whispered.

“It’s nobody’s business what happens in our house,” she said, her anger rising. “That young doctor claimed you work too much and shouldn’t carry heavy loads. What does he know? If you ate properly, your back would be stronger. Carrying sixty pounds didn’t hurt me at your age.”

She shook her head.

“But how you developed stomach edema—I don’t understand that at all.”

I remembered the doctor’s questions.

How often do you eat?
Do you have friends?
Do you play?

I had barely answered him.

“Only lazy children play,” I had said. “We have to work.”

When he asked about church, I repeated my mother’s words:

“Churchgoers are hypocrites. They’re too lazy to work and waste their money listening to nonsense.”

Then my mother added, almost casually:

“Your father won’t be home for a few days. He’s working on his invention.”

Relief flooded through me.

Thank God.

He could stay away forever.

I thought about the plan again—about finding a way to stop him.

I didn’t understand why no one fought back. So many people suffered under him, yet no one stood up to him.

Maybe one day, someone would.

When I got home, Nigg told me what had happened.

“He went crazy when the hospital called,” he said. “Kept saying he’d teach you a lesson. But don’t worry… one day, when I’m older, I’ll make him pay.”

“I know,” I said quietly. “But what do we do until then?”

A week later, everything had changed.

The same teachers who had once shown concern now avoided me. Only a few classmates dared to ask what had happened.

It was clear.

My father had spoken.

And they had listened.

Slowly, doubt crept in.

Was it my fault?

What was wrong with me?

Why was I so alone in my misery?

At twelve years old, I began to understand something that would shape the rest of my life. Back then, I often wondered why I could never manage the 750-meter walk to school without having to stop and rest halfway. I did not yet understand what my body was telling me. What I did understand, however, was that I could not rely on anyone—not even the society around me—to protect me.

The adults who were supposed to help had either turned away or been silenced or intimidated. That realization settled deeply within me. Around the same time, I became aware of a constant, underlying tension in both my body and mind—a state of anxiety that never truly seemed to lift. I began to wonder what kind of future I could possibly have if there was nowhere I felt safe and no one I could turn to.

That awareness marked the beginning of a psychological burden I would carry for years. Fear, hypervigilance, and uncertainty gradually stopped feeling like temporary reactions to what was happening around me. They became my normal.

It would take more than six decades before I finally received an explanation for the physical weakness that had followed me since childhood. I was seventy-three years old when, after all those years of living with unexplained muscle weakness, I finally found a medical professional in the United Kingdom who recognized and diagnosed my condition as post-polio syndrome.

Only then could I begin to understand what had started shortly before my sixth birthday. After nearly three weeks of high fever, my body had never been the same. From that time on, I could no longer walk uphill or climb steps without struggling, and even ordinary distances became exhausting. Years later, those 750 meters to school would force me to stop and rest halfway, though I had no idea why.

For more than six decades, I lived with the consequences without knowing their name. At seventy-three, I finally had one: post-polio syndrome.