Hansl Hauer, age 13, Georg Hauer’s son

It was the Tuesday when my auntie told me to go over to the Danner farm.

“No one’s seen or heard anything of them over there,” she told me. “Maybe something’s happened and they need help.”

So I went over.

I guess it was about three. But I’m not sure.

There wasn’t any of them in the farmyard, so I knocked at the front door. I knocked good and loud, I shook the door, but it was locked and nobody opened it.

So then I went around the house. Peered in all the windows. Couldn’t see a thing, though. The place looked quite empty. Like there wasn’t anybody there.

I heard the dog. Whining terribly, it was. And I heard the cattle in the cowshed. The cows were lowing like anything. But I couldn’t get into the cowshed, it was locked from inside.

You can get into the cowshed from the old machinery shed, though, I know that. First you go through the barn, then there’s a wooden door into the cowshed on the left.

And the door of the machinery shed was standing open. Wide open, but I didn’t fancy going in there.

I just stood at the door and called. I called for Barbara and Marianne. But there wasn’t any answer and I didn’t want to go in. I was too scared because the cattle were bellowing like that, and everything was all different from usual. Like as if the place was deserted.

I got goose bumps, I really did, it seemed so scary.

Something’s wrong, that’s what I kept on thinking. I felt like there was a bell ringing in my head. Same as an alarm bell when the fire engine’s coming out. So I ran home quick, I told my auntie and my dad.

Dad said I was to fetch Farmer Sterzer, because he wasn’t going over to that farm on his own.

So I went on, over to the Sterzers in Upper Tannöd.

Farmer Sterzer’s Dagmar was outside in the garden with her mother. Working on the garden beds.

I shouted to them way before I got there, I was in such a state. Asked if Farmer Sterzer was home, and he came out of the door right that moment. I told him there was something wrong up at the Danner place. No one was in, and the dog was whining and all that, and the cattle lowing in the shed. And I said my dad said to fetch him to go over there with my dad. Because my dad didn’t want to go alone.

So Farmer Sterzer called Alois right away. Alois is the farmhand at the Sterzer place, he’s going to marry Dagmar.

Then I went over to Tannöd and the Danner farm with Farmer Sterzer and Alois.

It was just before we reached the house we met my dad. He’d been waiting for Farmer Sterzer there. Then he went on up to the Danner farm with us.

And then we found them.

Well, not me, because my dad wouldn’t let me go into the house. He said I was to stay outside.

And after Farmer Sterzer and Alois came out of the barn again, white as chalk they were, I was really glad I hadn’t gone in with them.

My dad told me to go down to the village. “And tell them they’d better call the police from the mayor’s house.” So that’s what I did.

I fetched my bike and went over to the village, I went to the mayor’s, and I shouted out how they were all dead at Danner’s. All of them murdered dead. I shouted it in everyone’s face, even the mayor’s.