From the Frying Pan to Hell
by Sieglinde W. Alexander

The choice a child has against abuse is null. Either it is the frying pan or hell. A child is powerless. Having learned everything to become a dysfunctional adult, we continue our life in the same unbalanced pattern. We learned very early on not to rebel against injustice; we endured pain as a normal part of our life and repeated the pattern as adults. We remain silent and blind when abuse is executed somewhere else. The same way we were imprinted with worthlessness as we endured the abuse as children, now we accept depression, anxiety, Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, (PTSD) and the lifelong flashbacks as our destiny. The implanted guilt, shame and blame blinds us just enough so we will not be able to see the door that leads to mental freedom and healing. Meanwhile, having adopted the label of a nuisance, worthless to society, we no longer know who we are, because our brains have being altered by abuse. Now, we even deny to ourselves our need for wholeness, just as it was denied that we should develop into a healthy child.

The 14 years of my childhood were my private holocaust, stained with fear by the almost daily beatings, sexual abuse, oppression, and child labor. As a 14 year-old, I decided to end the daily terror and for the first time, I ran away from home, although I did not get very far. The child protection agency sent me back into the hell of my home environment. After having run away six times, I said to these cold-hearted bureaucrats from the child protection agency that I would steal or commit murder if they sent me back home again. I believed, at the time, that a prison was a safer place than my parents’ home. The authorities gave in and I was sent instead, to a home for teenage girls in Augsburg.

During my stay in Augsburg, I believed I had finally escaped from hell. Six months later, without a word from the child protection agency, I was herded like a domestic animal to another home in Hersbruck. I had no way of knowing that I would be introduced to a new hell, and this time a holy hell.

The new girls’ home was called Haus Weiher, and was operated by brother Buchta, a member of the Lutheran Brothers of Altdorf a part of the Rummelberger Anstalten. In this house of continuously praying, middle-aged, vicious spinsters, who called themselves “the ones without sin,” I became acquainted with other frightening cruelties, oppressions and dehumanizing humiliations.
As soon as I stepped over the door post of the old brick building, I learned the rest of the black pedagogy in this form of Christian love. Here we were indoctrinated, humiliated, misused and abused, using a another ”black pedagogy”, one that uses Jesus Christ as an excuse to abuse. I learned quickly that I was valued there even less than at home. Punishment, it was explained, was for the betterment of my character because it was necessary that I become free of sin and worthy of God’s grace.
Like all rotten newcomers, we were strip-searched. And every newcomer experienced the stripping of their individuality. Jewelry and every personal belonging such as makeup and perfume were taken away. Long hair had to be bound together, because only whores wore their hair open. Makeup was strictly forbidden since such was the mark of lust and prostitution. Old washed-out clothing from the institution was given to us to imprint unification and destroy the little remaining individuality. A few days later we were taken to a doctor in the near town Hersbruck, examined and tested for gonorrhea or other venereal disease.

From 7:30 a.m. to 6 p.m., Monday to Saturday, we worked, either on the farm, in the laundry, in the sewing/mending department, or we wove rug-carpets. This labor we did without receiving payment for our toil. After a year, I was allowed to begin a three-year tailoring apprenticeship. 14 girls as apprentices worked long hours every Monday, sometimes as late as 3 a.m. to finish dresses, skirts, blouses, and jackets for fitting the next day. Every Tuesday Ms. Rösner and two apprentices loaded with suitcase filled with finished clothing for customers and took the train to Nuernberg, where the customers came for their fittings or picked up their finished garment. It was a lucrative business for the institution. We, however, received 11 DM per month (about $5.00). With this money we had to buy soap and toothpaste. What was left had to be saved for the fabric we needed at the end of the three years, to buy fabric for the final exam, where we had to make a dress as the requirement for our final Bachelor’s Degree.

Ms. Heidingsfelder was the second Master tailor and functioned in addition as the watchdog over the 14 apprentices. The daily routine, and morning and evening washing with cold water was supervised by the same frustrated spinsters on duty.
Ms. Heidingsfelder watched over the eight girls who stood naked in a cold washroom. She made sure that they would wash every part of their bodies. The sexual leers of the spinster watching every move of the washcloth was the first of many daily embarrassments and humiliations we suffered. Sometimes her hand would stroke down our back, saying, “you forgot to wash some parts.”
One morning I caught her face in the mirror, seeing how her eyes scanned with disgust over my naked body. With a self righteous voice she forced the other 7 naked girls in the washroom to look at me, saying “God has punished her with psoriasis for her sinful life”. This burn mark dictated my life until I finally understood at the age of 42, how religion enslaves and manipulates the mind, and keeps people away from educated decision.
Strictly controlled warm water showers were only permitted every 4 weeks and only for three minutes at the time. Washing our hair was only permitted every 6 weeks. This was a special hardship for me since the crusted layer of psoriasis began to break open and bleed.
The doctor in town began experimenting with my psoriasis. Pills were prescribed to calm me down and I had to eat no salt for one year. Every morning after breakfast I stood with a glass of water in front the office door to receive my pill. After taking the pill I opened my mouth to show that I had swallowed. My complaint and explanation that these pills make me feel sleepy and listless were perceived as rebellious and ungrateful.
It was not until one Sunday morning on our long walk to the church when my friend Gerda pointed out a dead deer in the side of the road that I realized how much I had changed since being on medication. According to Gerde, I reacted completely without feelings saying, so what. She continued by saying, “that is not you”. “You have changed so much I don’t recognize you any more”. This was the moment I understood why I always felt like I was in a fog. I decided not to swallow the pills any more. Carefully I hid them in my mouth and disposed of them in the toilet or spit them in the grass on my way to the tailoring shop. Inevitably, I was caught and punished for my ungrateful behavior and ended up in the kitchen peeling mountains of potatoes, cleaning the toilets while others had free time to entertain themselves or watch a movie. Watching TV, a very rare occasion, was a privilege and the highlight of every month. Another punishment was that the prescribed medicine bath was declared as a luxury and because of my disobediences and ungratefulness was no longer allowed me. Instead I had to use Zignolin ointment that burned the little healthy skin I had left and discolored it to bluish purple. Further experiments were performed on me with shots of Volon 80 (cortisone).

Only as the psoriasis, in 1967, finally covered my whole body was I admitted to the Hospital in Nuernberg.
The doctors in the clinic were shocked at the condition of my skin. The next day I was exposed to a new treatment, an experiment Prof. Weber, the chief of dermatology invented. The institution gave their permission for this experiment. First my tonsils were removed as the first step. A few weeks later a new ointment from Russia together with UV light was used. The first dose of UV treatment burned the entire front side of my whole body including the face. Big blisters covered me from head to toe and for a weekend I was laying under a tunnel. The ointment on my leg together with the UV light caused a burn so deep that it revealed after the healing of the blisters, my leg had no more pigmentation. My protests against being used as guinea pig was answered with the dismissal from the hospital in spite of the psoriasis being only 50% healed.
Back at the institution the instruction from the clinic, a bathing 3 times weekly, was dismissed as a waste of water.

Everything was supervised and controlled, even how often we could use the bathroom. We had to ask for toilet paper and return the rest of the roll. Other female needs such as sanitary napkins for our monthly period was allowed only once a day, and for no longer than 4 days. If one’s period lasted longer, one had to use toilet paper.

Any rebellious attitude against the inappropriate treatment we received was punished by wearing the “bad girl’s” uniform, a blue-white checkered cotton blouse and a blue-white checkered skirt, the mark of the trouble-makers. Normally, our own clothes were locked in a room to which none of us girls had access. Underwear was handed out once a week by our righteous, moral guardians. A blouse was worn for 14 days; a skirt for four weeks.
The only thing in abundance was the prayers, which we said morning, noon and night. Every Sunday, all obedient girls were allowed to attend church services in the next town of Hersbruck. Divided into four small groups, we walked 2 kilometers one way to the church, no matter if it was raining, snowing, or the weather was steaming hot or frigidly cold. This was the only contact we had with the outside world. Under the threat of punishment, it was forbidden to speak with other people on our way or at the church.
We were allowed to write letters only to parents and close relatives. The letters were censored. If the contents did not correspond to the house-rules or we complained about the conditions in Weiher, letter simply vanished without our knowledge. At the time, I asked myself why no one was writing to me. As a 50 year-old, I learned for the first time that my cousin had written many letters to me letters, letters I never received.

The meals were sometimes inedible with little nourishment. All of our food was either steamed or boiled. We rarely had meat. Potatoes, in many forms, were on the daily menu. Breakfast was the same every day. It consisted of one slice of stale bread with a teaspoon of marmalade. The mold on the bread was cut away before they served it. Naturally, the food for the administrators of the house was different and better. When, at one Sunday lunch, maggots were crawling out of our waffles in the dessert, I finally reached the end of my endurance. I ran away together with three other girls sick of being treated like worthless slaves. The purpose for running away was to go straight to the child protection agency and report in detail what was going on in the house Weiher. With a promise to look into the matter the child protection agent sent me back. As I was told later, the other three girls were told the same by the agent in their town.
The Weiher administration found out that I was the leader of this outbreak. The consequences were brutal. First, my long hair was cut short by the administrator Frau Klose and I was dressed in the usual punishment clothing, a blue-white checkered thin cotton skirt with blue-white checkered blouse. I also received a severe beating from her. But there was more to come. For six weeks, I was locked in a small room just under the roof, with only a mattress and a small window that could not be opened and was covered in addition from the outside with iron bars. It was cold in the night and hot during the day. I had no bed covering, no bed sheets and no pillow. No one was allowed to speak with me and I was neither allowed to read nor write. A metal bucket in the room was my toilet for the first week. Later I was let out to use the bathroom twice a day. I received two meals a day, which were brought to me by one of the holy sisters. She unlocked the door, opened just enough to push my plate with food and one glass of water with her foot into the room. Without saying a word, or even looking at me, she quickly locked the door again. One of them spoke to me. She encouraged me to spend my time praying and asking for forgiveness of my sins.

After two weeks in isolation I began to suffer. Depression and thoughts of suicide occupied my day. In the third week I felt the closeness of insanity, a mental death, the growing gap between my logic and the emotions. Off and on I began to fade in and out of reality and remained longer and longer in my fantasy world. Flashbacks of my childhood appeared uncontrollable. Pictures of Walter Brudereck and the trailer where he raped me many times, flashed and dominated my thoughts. Why did my mother send me with him for many weekends? Was my 14 year old body the payment for the money she owed him? To occupy myself I begun to measure the room by setting one foot in front of the other and counting the steps or counting the wooden boards of the floor. My second entertainment was cleaning the wall with my fingers. After there weeks there were no more unclean spots on the wall so I begun soften the wall plaster with my spit. When the plaster was soft enough I closed with the plaster the hair splits in the wall with my fingers. Sleeping became a problem. Either, I woke up in fear visualizing a person in my room talking to me, or I could not fall asleep with out rocking my upper body. In a moment of clarity I realised that I didn’t feel anymore when I had to go to the bathroom. I went because it was scheduled – morning and evening. After these horrifying weeks I had developed an irrational fear of people. Back in the group I could barely adjust being around people. For another eight weeks, I had to wear the checkered punishment clothing as a reminder of my disobedience.

After three years, I finished my bachelor’s license as a tailor and left Weiher as a 19 year-old. I was an emotionally mutilated person with a destroyed identity and feelings of worthlessness, who now had to prove that I was a valuable and fully functioning member of society.
In the 3 years in Weiher, I endured not only the mental and physical cruelties of my holy educators and their religious system, I was also sexually abused by the older girls. My youth, like my childhood, was an inhuman exposure to trauma that could result only in hate and fury against every abusive and dominating person I was to encounter.

Shame and guilt, feeling worthless, I denied that I was in the institutions. If the subject of my childhood came up, I invented beautiful stories. The need of being or appearing “normal” was essential. Whatever I tried, I could not avoid being reminded how worthless I was. My father and mother-in-law used the knowledge about being in a home for bad girls to manipulate me. To apply for a job, it was necessary to show my bachelor degree that gave away where I was in the last 3 years. Employers took advantage of this fact and demanded sexual favors. I said no and was I fired. The next employer wanted to know why I was fired. I told him the truth. His answer was, “what do you expect? Only whores are in institutes like these”. The government job agency talked to the employers and were lied to by them, complaining about work ethics and lack of compliance. As I learned later, my work records showed “she is not willing to obey, shows resistance to employers and changes jobs frequently”.
The rest of the German, self-righteous society acted in a similar matter. If I rented an apartment, or opened a bank account, I was asked for references. Unavoidable, the three years in Weiher left an unerasable stain that hindered me from living a “normal” life.

I had learned that I could not expect any empathy from the society in which I lived. For 42 years I was shamefully hiding much resentment, mistrust and internal pain of worthlessness. I could no longer endure the feeling that people were pointing their fingers at me, shaming and blaming me again. What I did not understand at that time, was that it is NOT the child who is the guilty one, but rather the one or ones who had abused the child.

In April 4, 1991, I emigrated into the United States, alone.
I knew no one in the U.S., yet a new country seemed to me to be less of a threat than the country which was called my homeland. A country where respect and integrity is reserved for adults, and children are regarded as private property and child rearing is no more than black pedagogy (Schwarze Pädagogik), - child abuse. It was where I was born, where shame, guilt and worthlessness was imprinted on the soul on so many.
In 1992 I know it was necessary to begin with my own mental healing. I addressed and recognized my dysfunctions and fear, the result living for over 30 years with Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. That was the day I began to write my book, which is now on the internet in English and may be read at http://www.boxbook.com The “documentation of my stay at Weiher, together with a detailed explanation of the long lasting effects of child abuse will appear in the extended version of my book. I made this excerpt available in the hope that many others who were in Weiher from 1964 - 1968 will come forward.
After corresponding for years with many other childhood victims, I founded the website, Adults Abused as Children Worldwide, in 2000.

In 2002, I opened the website EMaK, “Erwachsene Misshandelt als Kinder” hoping to find others who were with me in the Maedchenheim Weiher. In 2003, I applied for disability due to many different health conditions, that can be traced back to early childhood trauma. This was the time I found out the missing, unpaid years in my social security. It is the law in Germany that every employer pays into social security for every person who works. But where were the years I worked in Weiher? It took me 7 years to find living witnesses and the final proof that I was in the Hause Weiher. None of my records could be found at the headquarters of the Lutheran organization Rummelsberg. They expressed the doubt that I was ever in Weiher. A copy of my bachelor degree was no longer available to prove my years of apprenticeship and that I worked, since records were destroyed after 30 years. Another surprise to me was when I found out that I was registered at my parents house as resident, not in Weiher were I was living and working. Any attempt to find evidence of my existence in Weiher remained elusive until I found my friend who was an apprentice at the same time. She had pictures of us. More living witnesses from Weiher contacted me in 2007 and all had the same problem, missing years of social security. Now I have a document that finally proves my years as an tailor’s apprentice in Weiher.

The Lutheran organization did everything to cover up the tracks of child slavery. An estimated 4000 girls were living and working in the “Hause Weiher” until it was finally changed into a place for handicapped people early 1972.

We the abused have a long way to go until we understand the fundamental meaning of human rights. But the German Government and its law has done its share to keep us as outsiders, the unwanted, the nuisance. In spite of all efforts for justification and implemented petitions, the religious organizations in Germany are going strong. This democratic government is protecting the abusers who still don’t have to pay any restitutions. It is not forcing them to back pay the once slave laborer or the social security demanded by law. What does it tell us, the victims? We are still worth nothing.

The media hype with headlines of the stories of the abused in institutions and how many people are today dysfunctional as a result, still don’t ask the German Government, “where is Justice?”
The Spiegel Verlag published a book about the intuitionally abused without paying the victims a penny for their story and even using these needy people to promote the book.
Is there a cover-up of by the German government, trying to hide these post-war atrocities? There is secrecy, not transparency, in their claim to work on an historical account and so far no solution for the victims. Why is the German government shutting out the victims, withholding information, if there is any to report at all? What are they waiting for? Most of the abused are coming into retirement age and many living already on the minimum income of disability. What is the German Government strategy to solve this post war crime on humanity? Is there an investigation against the abusive institutions, the employers of child slaves? Do they have to pay back-salary and the missing years of social security? Or is there a cover up? Is the German counselor Ms. Merkle waiting for all the victims to die? This would be certainly one solution to make the problem disappear and solve this historic atrocity.

To read that in just recent newspapers Ms. Merkel condemned China for their human rights violation was a slap in the face for the over 500,000 German institutionally abused. Her denial of the fact that a great number of them were used as child slaves, seems to be irrelevant to her. The petition filed in December 2006, by the institutionalized abused has not shown any results. What value has the 1949 established law and its amendment that says “die Wuerde des Menschen ist unantastbar? (the integrity of every human is untouchable).
Has Germany not learned anything from the inhumanity of the 3rd Reich?

Comment:
"I have read your piece about your experience in the home for girls. "Absolutely shocking..."
Paddy Doyle, author of "The God Squad": Website: http://www.paddydoyle.com/