There are gruesome scenes that accompany the from Puchheim, Germany, Friedrich Maier a life. There, where he grew up, he must be in the NS-time in a death March to watch. Now he has documented the memories.

Puchheim– It was the spring of 1945 when a then nine year old boy on the otherwise as a football field used by Park in his home Neunburg vorm Wald is a picture offered, he should not forget. Over 100 almost to skeletons emaciated prisoners camped in the small Park guarded by SS men.

In the soul

On all fours you are crawled on a loaf of bread, a compassionate residents in the amount of about to die had been thrown and was then stretched with a piston stroke low. A little later the prisoners how to kill have been thrown in the car Wild on, in the meantime, arrived Head and removed. What is the small Friedrich Maier looked at the time, without understanding it, and what you should let go of him ever again, was the end of one of the death marches from the concentration camp Flossenbürg. 75 years later, after a professional life as a classical philologist, and University Professor, wrote today in Puchheim-place of living of pensioners, which has burned him at the time, "in the soul".

Maier felt, as it were, obliged his memories in a small "Memorandum" referred to a booklet to compile. Because he is one of the last witnesses of the time, the can talk with a keen mind from earlier. Because he is not for a conclusion, but rather a constant remembrance of this "Entmenschung of people". And because mündlliche Tradition, the abomination may be less impressive than a printed log. With the words, "grandpa, you are right, it says it" came to have his grandson Dominik. In history class he had to get a book in the Hand, in the nine Burger events were documented.

Maier's writing is also, and not least for young people thought to have the maximum theoretical reference to the third Reich. He wants to give "immediate emotional affectedness", which he succeeds in, especially in the Park scene all out of proportion. He describes hohläugige from his childish point of view, bald skull, the only tedious highly extended, such as "animals, shortly before Death". As a small Boy he had not understood what was going on, found no words. But he took a mental wound, "the breaks again and again, even now".

The little chronicle does not end with the loading of the half-dead, that were killed later in the middle of the forest. 23. April, the Americans took control of the nine-castle, and a few days later, it came to a kind of criminal court for the residents. They had to dig with their bare hands, the buried bodies and about kilometers to the city cemetery, bear. Also, this dead March of the nine-year-old watched and saw the bodies, the "us out of empty eye-sockets, opposite to the staring. As you would accuse us and the eternal curse.“

shoot them In the subsequent "punishment funeral" for around 200 exhumed victims of an American officer, a Priest and a survivor of the detainee, called in German, and with cracking voice, the languages of each of the tenth to the presence of committed nine Burger. The fear, the little Fritz was shaking on the whole body.

criminal court rejected

But the Americans rejected such criminal court categorically. "Barbarism is not with your same repaid," writes Maier. But, nevertheless, he also speaks of a "grossly cruel humiliation" of the inhabitants of his native city. Because the atonement can't afford to had been had to the perpetrators.

Frederick Maier left after high school its upper Palatinate home, and studied in Munich. There and after the turn at the Humboldt-University in Berlin, he taught as a Professor for the mediation of classical languages and literatures and their continuing effect in Europe. He was also Chairman of the German classical philologist Association. Since 1972, he lives with his wife in Puchheim, he has three children, eight grandchildren and one great-grandchild.

The book

Friedrich Maier: 75 years Ago – The end of a death March. Idea-Verlag, Palsweis, 9.80 Euros.