Free The Murder Farm by Andrea Maria Schenkel Page A

do with the dreadful crime committed against the Danner family. This is simply an attempt to revive old stories. There are some people, you know, who just can’t leave such stories alone. The war’s been over for ten years. So let’s lay those stories to rest once and for all. Times then were bad enough.
    We all suffered. Everyone has his own burden to bear, but the world goes on turning. Times change. Wondering “what if?” does no good. No good at all.
    Of course there were injustices, of course there were moments of despair. Every one of us went through them. But the war’s over. It’s been over almost ten years now, time we started forgetting.
    I was a prisoner of war myself, and believe you me, it wasn’t easy. I was lucky. I managed to get home soon after the end of the war. Others didn’t have as much luck, but what about it? What’s over is over.
    There are plenty of other problems, after all. But slowly we’re going uphill in this country. Don’t you read the paper?
    I mean, look at the international situation. Right at this moment in time, since the end of the Korean War, the tension has relaxed slightly, yes, I agree. Our fears of another war are gone for the moment. But I can tell you, the communists in Russia won’t let it stop at that. You don’t suppose this man Khrushchev is any better than his predecessor, do you?
    Very well, so now the last prisoners of war are coming home. At last, after almost ten years, but that doesn’t change anything; that doesn’t change the potential danger from the East. That’s why it was so important for us to sign the Paris treaties.
    We have to act as an opposite pole. If only because—perhaps most of all because—the world has changed since the war.
    That chapter, I would like to think, is now finally closed.
    I do beg you not to go chasing after every rumor. I can guess where you heard that one.
    And was that lady’s own conduct always so far above reproach that she can point the finger at others? I wouldn’t want to judge her, but one hears this and that.
    I mean, there’s her husband at the front, defending his homeland, and his own wife stabs him in the back, has a relationship with a Frenchman.He’s fighting for the Fatherland and she fraternizes with the enemy.
    The enemy is always the enemy, that’s what we said at the time, and you can’t deny the truth of it even now.
    So kindly listen to me. The names of honest folk are being blackened, a whole village community is dragged into it. Just because a half-Jewish Polish worker hanged herself. The girl was probably unbalanced.
    In my view, drawing such conclusions so long after the event is more than distasteful. That kind of thing gets no one anywhere. So let’s stick to the facts. Speculations of any kind are not constructive.
    Particularly in the case of such an abominable crime. So if you would now excuse me . . .

O King of Glory,
    O Son of God, Jesus Christ,
    O Lamb of God that takest away the sins of the world,
    grant them peace!
    O Lamb of God that takest away the sins of the world,
    grant them peace!
    O Lamb of God that takest away the sins of the world,
    grant them peace everlasting!

Anna Hierl, age 24, formerly maid at the Danner farm
    I saw it coming. Was I surprised? No, not me. Shaken, yes, I knew them all, I lived under the same roof with them for a while. But surprised, no, I wasn’t surprised. Somehow I’d always been expecting some such thing.
    Old Danner liked to hire drifters to help with the harvest, you know.
    Why? Well, he paid them less. Simple. You can pay a man less if he has a record and don’t fancy being reported to the police.
    A fellow like that, there’s times he’s glad to have a roof over his head and a hot meal. And Danner was glad, too, on account of he didn’t have to pay them much. That was old Danner for you. Sly as a fox, and a skinflint.
    I remember the old man showing one of those good-for-nothing deadbeats all over the farm. Now that’s something