Fredi was almost fourteen when they took him to the institution in 1939. His size was beginning to work against him. He was already almost six feet tall, and as his body grew, his limbs seemed to wither. The sight of him walking was a memory now, and Thomas was struggling to lift him in and out of his wheelchair each day. Franka was going to Munich to begin her new life. Her father had encouraged her to the point of almost forcing her to take the job. He insisted that she had her own life to live and that Fredi was going to prove too much for either of them. It was best that the professionals look after him. Franka accepted her father’s wishes without protesting, but deep down she knew that it was her selfishness that was driving her away, her own wish to live a separate, independent life. She was twenty-two. Daniel was the only love she’d ever known. She wanted more. Freiburg seemed poisoned to her now. Munich, the big city, would offer a new hope.
Fredi was better than any single person she had ever known. Hatred, malice, vindictiveness, and spite—the emotions that formed the bedrock of Nazism—were beyond him. Love was all he knew. Those who knew him felt the radiance of this love. It was impossible to resist. He took with typical optimism and good grace the news that he was moving into the home, declaring that he’d have a chance to make hundreds of new friends. And so it was. When Franka came back to visit in November 1939, a few weeks after he’d moved in, it seemed as if he’d been there his whole life. Everybody knew him. Everybody loved him, and he spent almost an hour introducing her to his new friends there, from the nurses who greeted him with beaming grins, to the patients who couldn’t move, or talk, who greeted him with a nod or a raised hand. No one was immune to his spirit.
Franka came back to visit as often as she could. She returned to Freiburg every three weeks or so, visiting Fredi each time with her father, whom the staff all greeted by name. Fredi seemed happy and in the best place. Her father reiterated that so often that she began to believe it, and the guilt of her moving to Munich eased. His condition stabilized. The doctors offered no hope of a cure, but the degeneration in his limbs slowed. Fredi could get around the institution with ease in his wheelchair, and he always had somewhere to be, someone to see and cheer up.
Franka knew several of the nurses from her time in school and kept in touch with them about Fredi’s progress in between visits. The more time went on, the more at ease Franka and her father became. Their new life with Fredi was better than ever. Their father could relax for the first time in what seemed like many years. Franka’s peace of mind over Fredi’s welfare allowed her to launch into her new life with verve and passion. It seemed as if equilibrium might be possible.
The news came without warning. It was April 1941, and Franka was called to the phone at work. It was one of the nurses she knew from the institution, crying as she spoke.
The black SS vans came without warning on a Tuesday afternoon. It was a fine day, and all the patients, even those in catatonic states, were brought outside. The older patients who were able to stand were told to line up. The head nurse objected but was pulled away and arrested. Men in white coats who didn’t identify themselves as doctors examined the older patients’ mouths. The staff were assured that it was all routine and would soon end. The patients were put into groups, some with an ink stamp on their chests from the attendant. One group was allowed to return inside, while the other, much larger group was herded to where the vans were parked. The patients were loaded into the vans, some in their wheelchairs, others hobbling on crutches, and some carried on stretchers. One child asked the SS commandant where they were going, and he told them they were going to heaven. They went to the vans with reassured smiles on their faces.
Fredi was nervous. It was as if some instinct told him that they were lying. Fredi fought, flailing at the nurses, begging them to let him stay. Screaming nurses who tried to come to his aid were held back with the flat edge of rifles and thrown to the ground. A smiling SS man put a hand on Fredi’s shoulder and told him that they’d soon return with wonderful stories to tell, and that where they were going offered free ice cream. Soothed by lies, Fredi began to calm. The same SS soldier took the handles of Fredi’s wheelchair and pushed him to the black van to take his place with his friends. The SS men started the children in song as if they were sending them on a day trip to the fair. Fredi waved as the door slammed behind him, and the sound of the children singing lilted through the air as they drove away.
Franka’s father made frantic inquiries as to his son’s whereabouts and was met with a wall of feigned ignorance and denial. A few agonizing days passed before he was informed by letter that Fredi had died of a heart attack and his body had been cremated. The letter was accompanied by a death certificate, and at the bottom was the official salute of Heil Hitler.
The ruling came from Hitler himself. The führer was inefficient and lazy and prone to giving vague directives, which he expected to be followed in quick order. He had spoken in the past about the “useless eaters” at home who wasted resources while the flower of German youth was being sacrificed on the battlefield. People “unworthy of life” were to be cleared from their hospital beds in order to make room for the wounded coming home from the front, or for the mothers whose children could make up for the losses in battle. What use were the incurably ill, the physically and mentally disabled, and the senile, in this time of war? “Disenfranchising” them would make for a healthier, more vigorous nation, and go toward securing the future of the Aryan race. Hitler appointed a panel of doctors who were to decide who should live and who should die. Countless thousands were selected to be murdered.