A Son's Quest for Truth : The Last Battle of a German WWII Veteran

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A Son's Quest for Truth : The Last Battle of a German WWII Veteran

 

By Jürgen Dahlkamp

 

DER SPIEGEL/ Markus Matzel

Heinz Otto Fausten, a German soldier who fought in World War II, saw things no one should ever have to see. After that, the high school teacher just concentrated on the future. But then his son started asking questions to find out whether he was a murderer.

 

Ottoooo..! That scream, that horrible scream, the scream that has echoed and reverberated in his head for the last 71 years. That scream, shrill and terrible, that only he can hear now, as he sits at his dining table in a small house at the end of a quiet, dead-end street, in a quiet living room with a vase of tulips and a gingerbread heart on the shelf, with the words "Opa is Fantastic" written on it with icing.

 

The scream transports Heinz Otto Fausten back 71 years to a trench in Kalikino, Russia, 2,240 kilometers (1,400 miles) away. The journey takes him a fraction of a second. Suddenly he is 21 again, and caught in a ruthless, violent world where life is about nothing but survival

 

He is crouched on the ground next to his friend Ekkehardt. They are cowering in the trench, the entire company, one man next to the other. The trench is their only protection. Suddenly the company commander in front shouts to the soldiers behind him: "Fausten group to the front." Fausten doesn't move, sensing that whoever heeds the command is a dead man. "Don't say anything, Ekkehardt," he tells his friend, but Ekkehardt calls out: "We're coming."

 

There are eight men in the group, and their objective is to capture the village. They crawl past dead bodies and the wounded

http://www.spiegel.de/international/zeitgeist/reminiscences-of-a-german-world-war-ii-veteran-a-891462.html