The Austrian Josef Fritzl kept his daughter in the basement for 24 years and had seven children with her, who never saw the light of day. He had a “normal” family upstairs that supposedly never knew who lived in their basement. Here is evil on a scale that beggars the imagination.
How those children, the oldest of whom is 18, lived in total isolation and how they are reacting to experiencing for the first time the sight of the moon, the sun, and other human beings is heart-rending. From an article in the London Telegraph, Dungeon children speak their own animal language:
When he was rescued Felix pointed to the moon, which he was seeing for the first time, and said: “Is that God up there?”
He then made excited gurgling noises when he saw a cow.
Doctors said that since he emerged from his prison he is constantly excited and keeps trying to hit the air with his hand.
When he saw the sun for the first time he was even more excited than when he discovered the moon.
He made a squeaking noise and tried to look directly at the sun. When he realised he couldn’t he kept covering his face with his hand.
When police took him in a lift at the hospital he was petrified and clung on to his mother as the floor moved.
Police said he was stunned when one officers started talking into a mobile phone.
Felix was also excited about the police officer’s mobile phones. He was stunned by the ring tones and even more when one of the policemen used his mobile phone to talk.
The youngster also often hums an unknown tune to himself which police believe his mother used to get him to sleep.
More on the 18-year-old and the 5-year-old when they first saw the moon.
This story has stunned me. I wonder why I haven’t heard of it anywhere except here. It is an disheartening story of lack of emotion and extreme cruelty.
This story makes me profoundly sad. I feel especially for the children’s mother.
It is astonishing the evil that humans are capable of. I marvel at how this sort of cruelty is even possible, especially for a man to do to his own children. Lord have Mercy.
Theresa, don’t worry. The story is all over the place. I think it broke on Tuesday. Check out Google News if you want the entire story. It has been on their Top News list for a couple days now.
[...] May 1, 2008 This cannot be real. If it is, we need another word for evil. Posted by OB1-K. under OB1-K. Also from Veith’s Cranach site is the story of the dungeon children. [...]
“This cannot be real. If it is, we need another word for evil.”
What? You mean like “as-bad-as-abortion”.
Depravity. There’s an appropriate word.
There is no end…
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Gene Edward Veith is the Provost and Professor of Literature at Patrick Henry College, the Director of the Cranach Institute at Concordia Theological Seminary, a columnist for World Magazine and TableTalk, and the author of 18 books on different facets of Christianity & Culture.
Lucas Cranach, self portrait c.1530.
About Lucas Cranach
Lucas Cranach was the great artist of the Reformation. He was a close friend of Martin Luther. He was a businessman, who first printed Luther's translation of the Bible; a politician, who served on the Wittenberg town council and served the city as its mayor; a chemist, who operated a pharmacy; a teacher, who trained a host of apprentice artists; a family-man, who helped arrange Luther's marriage with the two men serving as the godfathers of each other's children; and an active layman in his church, who gave his pastors important personal and material support. As a Christian who lived out his faith in his many different callings, Cranach thus embodies the Reformation doctrine of vocation, using the gifts God had given him in service to Christ and his neighbor in the church, the family, the workplace, and the culture. In the spirit of Lucas Cranach, this blog will discuss wide-ranging issues of Christianity and culture with a Lutheran twist.
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