Our idea for this blog was for it to be about “fun” things. This post is not fun in any way. In fact the story I’m going to tell you sickens my stomach and breaks my heart. One of the biggest reasons to travel is to learn about the place you are visiting, and something about people living different lives than ours. Sometimes one of these learning experiences smacks you in the face in a way that brings you to tears.
With only a few days left in our trip to Europe, we returned our rental car back in Konstanz, Germany, where we had picked it up 15 days earlier. The AirBnb where we stayed that night was an older apartment building — actually a series of apartment buildings strung together to form a triangular block. We thought we’d be sharing it with Arthur, our host, but it turned out that he was busy for the night and we had the place to ourselves.
As we we entered the building, we took notice of the small, brass plaque outside the door. On previous trips to Europe, we had learned about these markers, known as Stolpersteine, or "stumbling stones”. They are placed outside the doorways of the homes of people who were deported and killed by the Nazis. This project was started about 30 years ago by Gunter Demnig. So far, over 100,000 of these memorials have been placed in 26 European countries. Watch the short video below for more information.
Stolperstein, or "stumbling stone” (see red arrow on sidewalk in front of our apartment)
This is the Stumbling Stone in front of our door, along with the English translation.
As I mentioned, we had been seeing these memorials all over Europe. We don’t always stop and read them (sometimes there are a half-dozen or more in front of one doorway) but they constantly remind us of what happened here. While there are those who disagree with the idea of embedding these plaques into the sidewalk, where passers-by literally walk on them, we have found them to be powerful reminders of what terrible things can happen to a country when . . . . I’ll leave it at that.
On this particular evening I decided to look deeper into the story of Karl Egon Fuchs, a child of age 7 or 8 (depending on his birth date) who was taken from the apartment where we were staying — and ‘relocated’ to a place called Grafeneck and murdered there on the same day, August 29, 1940. Here’s some of what I learned.
What was Grafeneck?
(Paragraphs below are excerpts quoted from the Holocaust Encyclopedia. Read full article HERE.)
“In October 1939, the Nazis transformed Grafeneck Castle from a care facility (for male patients with disabilities) into the first centralized killing center within Aktion T4 (the Nazi Euthanasia Program). The goal of this program was to kill patients with mental and physical disabilities living in institutional settings. In the Nazi view, the T4 program was meant to cleanse the “Aryan” race of people considered both genetically defective and a financial burden to society. By killing patients who had disabilities in Germany, the Nazis aimed to restore the racial "integrity of the nation.”
“When T4 operatives began to identify sites to serve as killing centers for the euthanasia program, they first chose the Grafeneck complex. The isolated location of the castle in the hills of the Swabian Alb appealed to their need for secrecy. The surrounding forest shielded the site from public view and only two entrances led to the facility. Grafeneck was the first functioning T4 killing center. Its operations commenced on January 18, 1940. From this date until December 1940, personnel killed patients by means of gassing on an almost daily basis, excluding Sundays and holidays.”
“In December 1940, the killings at Grafeneck came to an abrupt end as the clandestine activities at the castle began to attract public attention. In response to public pressure, euthanasia officials hastily deactivated the killing center. The last gassing of patients and the cremation of their remains took place on December 12–13, 1940.”
“According to internal statistics kept by the T4 program, 9,839 patients were killed at the Grafeneck facility. During a trial in 1949, however, West German authorities established that the number of victims was higher than wartime records showed, with 10,654 persons murdered at the facility.”
“Both Grafeneck medical directors, Dr. Horst Schumann and Dr. Ernst Baumgard, continued their murderous work at other killing centers.”
“After the war, The perpetrators of the “euthanasia” killings at Grafeneck were not immediately called to account for their crimes. After the German surrender in May 1945, the Allied occupation left euthanasia offenses—a German-on-German crime—to newly reconstructed German courts. In the early postwar years, West German courts pursued such cases diligently.”
Grafeneck "euthanasia" killing center (early 1940)
The Stumbling Stone in front our our apartment didn’t give a lot of information about the life of Karl Egon Fuchs, but in a very few words it told a lot about how and why he died.
He was 7 or 8 years old when he was taken to the killing place called Grafeneck. He was taken there because he had a disability. The vast majority of Stolpensteine commemorate Jewish people who were taken to concentration camps by the Nazis and killed there. But little Karl’s story adds another dimension to the horrific truths of the holocaust that I wasn’t aware of. That is, the Nazis designed and tested their killing methods (specifically gas chambers) on victims who were not Jewish. In fact, the victims in the initial wave of mass executions were considered “Aryan” and were murdered in an attempt to weed out “genetically defective” human beings from the German population.
I never met Karl Fuchs, but I’m here to tell you he was not defective. He was a beautiful young boy who was loved by his parents, his siblings, and his grandparents. He was murdered. He was murdered by a government that was allowed to grow like an untreated cancer.
Karl, I want you to know that Karen and I stayed in your house. Perhaps we slept in the room where you slept. We think about you all the time. We love you. We weep for you. We are sorry your short life had to end this way. We will never forget you. And we will do everything we can to try to prevent this from ever happening again.
Ruhe in Frieden, mein kleiner Freund.
UPDATE: MORE ABOUT KARL FUCHS
My old friend and neighbor, Harry Adler, saw this post and sent me what he found about Karl Fuchs on a site dedicated to telling the stories of the people commemorated by Stolpersteine in the city of Konstaz, Germany. There’s even a photo of Karl and his mother, Anna Fuchs, when he was a baby. (see photo)
Thank you, Harry. This is wonderful to find out more about Karl, and even see a photo!
Here are some facts from the article:
Karl Egon Fuchs was born on Feb. 26, 1932 as the son of Anna and Karl Fuchs in Konstanz. He had five other older siblings.
Little Karl never learned to speak properly. This speech disorder was probably the reason why he was admitted to the St. Josefsheim Herten children's home near Lörrach on April 8, 1937, just over a month after his fifth birthday.
An official form dated September 5, 1940, was sent to Karl’s family from the head of the Grafeneck State Nursing Home. The following words were inserted using a typewriter: “Karl Egon Fuchs, faithless, resident of Grafeneck, died on September 5th at 4 a.m.” and further under the item Cause of death: “Diphtheria, toxic heart muscle weakness” . Both the date and cause of death are fictitious, even the word “without faith” was a lie, as the boy was baptized as a Catholic in Herten on December 24, 1938. Grafeneck was a killing center and not a state nursing home and the patients never lived there but were cruelly killed. Karl Egon Fuchs was murdered in the Grafeneck gas chamber six days before this letter was dated.
Karl was murdered because he had a speech disorder.
Anna Fuchs, holding her son Karl. Anna died in 1975. She suffered greatly from the fate of her little son, whom she affectionately called “Karlemännle”.