SILO

At the end of the war some German soldiers were living in a disused cement silo near Steinbach am Ziehberg. Before the Americans arrived, they withdrew from the silo and bolted and barred the silo from the outside. When, a few days ago, the owner of the silo opened the entrance to the silo, which had totally rusted out, with a heavy stonebreaker’s hammer, intending to demolish the old silo that had been in disuse for so long and to use the land to build an establishment for breeding and fattening pigs, he made a grisly discovery. Just inside the entrance to the silo were two totally decayed human bodies still wearing German uniform trousers and so-called army shirts. The farmer ascertained that they must have been comrades of the German soldiers who were living in the silo at the end of the war and who disappeared overnight. The authorities immediately tried to inform the relatives of the two men who had died in the silo. Even after thirty-two years, the papers of the two men who were found in the silo were so well preserved that there was not the slightest difficulty in deciphering them. One man was a lieutenant, the other a private first-class. Both were from Nackenheim on the Rhine. The question now is whether their former comrades, who are possibly still alive, should be traced or not. People are asking themselves whether the two were intentionally or unintentionally left behind in the firmly bolted and barred silo. In any case, a crime cannot be ruled out, in their opinion.