After five years of solitary confinement, visited only by her tormenter who abused her bodily, with his fists, as well as sexually, she had her first child. Incredibly, after five years she had the strength to give birth alone, and the SANITY to care for her daughter alone in the 5×5 m room in which she had been confined already for five years.

I am most impressed by the way she, without resources or friends to talk to and without help during her many illnesses in the oxygen-poor room and their illnesses from both environment and heredity, through untreated pain including the loss of all her teeth, through many unassisted childbirths and the death of the infant Michael, retained the mental strength and the creativity to make the children’s life bearable for them so that they would not experience the terrible loss and frustration and grief of losing the world that she had to endure.

Today, their adjustment to life outside is helped by the fact that she planned and worked to allow them to think they were normal, growing up normally, which is essential to their having the courage it now takes to embrace this unknown life. She created a reality for them that did not include knowledge of things that could not help but hurt them every day–their isolation from an entire, beautiful world; the fact that they were prisoners; the existence of siblings living–even in this abusive household–with riches they couldn’t even imagine; the randomness and coldness with which they were abandoned in the cellar and the others taken upstairs to a normal life. Even the fact that their grandfather was their father–she did not want them to know that they were the children of incest, or that the terrible grandfather they feared was also their father. In that way, she helped them grow up without the bitterness they could not have avoided if they had known the truth–the bitterness that now would have been a stumbling block in the way of their already difficult adjustment. Without that bitterness, their prospects for a good life in the sun are infinitely better.

The cost to Elisabeth must have been terrible. Her beloved children, loved despite the violence in which they were conceived and born, were her only friends, her only relief from a solitary existence. It would have been a relief to tell someone of her suffering. Yet to protect them, she committed herself to an additional 19 years of emotional isolation, of having no one to speak to regarding her agony, physical and mental and emotional, no one from whom to seek emotional support or sympathy.

I don’t even have to wonder–I couldn’t have begun to endure what she did, and make still more voluntary sacrifices for the children. In fact, I can’t even comprehend it. What an amazing woman!

Actually, Elisabeth, thinking they would see it never or not for a long time, helped keep them from chafing over their imprisonment by raising them to believe that their life in the dungeon was “real” and the things on tv were “imaginary” or “on another planet.” One article reported the boys’ delight in finding that cars were real; Felix’s comment on being taken to a local fast-food restaurant was, “I’m glad McDonald’s is real.”

There is reference in this article to Elisabeth as his “favourite daughter.” If you read the reports of psychiatric interviews and of friends who spent time with them, you will realize that she was his LEAST favourite daughter. People don’t imprison and rape out of love; they do it out of desire for control, anger, hatred, and so on. Elisabeth had demonstrated, early on, that she was the one in the family who had a side which he could not completely dominate, of which he could never be quite sure. In fact, she actually ran away once–which infuriated him, as it was a flagrant denial of his power of life or death over his children. In the end, I am certain the psychiatric analysis will say that his motive was to “break” her, to teach her once and for all that he was her master, and not to try to escape him.

I hope you are as appalled as I am at these clips from the interview of a friend whose family spent time with the Fritzl family at their respective homes. Note particularly that the evenings together were “happy” DESPITE the treatment of a “shy and reticent” daughter by her “amusing” father. I think it sheds a little light on why the neighbors saw nothing wrong in the family life at the Fritzl home:

“For Paul Hörer, who first met Josef Fritzl 35 years ago, the Austrian was a “decent, outgoing and, above all, amusing bloke”.

“He remembered how Fritzl came to stay with him in Munich, and how he and his family spent happy evenings with Fritzl and his wife, Rosemarie, on the terrace of their “tip top” house in Amstetten where there was “white marble everywhere”.
. . . . .
“Hörer, too, remembers her as “reticent and shy”. But he added: “I had the impression Josef didn’t like her as much as his other children. He hit her more. Every little thing meant she got dealt a few.”"

I hope you are as appalled as I am at these clips from the interview of a friend whose family spent time with the Fritzl family at their respective homes. Note particularly that the evenings together were “happy” DESPITE the treatment of a “shy and reticent” daughter by her “amusing” father. I think it sheds a little light on why the neighbors saw nothing wrong in the family life at the Fritzl home:

“For Paul Hörer, who first met Josef Fritzl 35 years ago, the Austrian was a “decent, outgoing and, above all, amusing bloke”.

“He remembered how Fritzl came to stay with him in Munich, and how he and his family spent happy evenings with Fritzl and his wife, Rosemarie, on the terrace of their “tip top” house in Amstetten where there was “white marble everywhere”.
. . . . .
“Hörer, too, remembers her as “reticent and shy”. But he added: “I had the impression Josef didn’t like her as much as his other children. He hit her more. Every little thing meant she got dealt a few.”"

For many years, the dungeon in which Elisabeth gave birth to and cared for her first two children Kirsten (19, now in hospital) and Stephan (18), was 5 x 5 metres. Just guessing, but it may be that Fritzl had not yet devised his scheme of “taking in the abandoned children of his daughter” and really had no plan other than to leave them in the dungeon.

Two years later, perhaps Fritzl thought the 5×5 cell was a little crowded with a third child. In his first interview, he told reporters that whether they went upstairs depended on whether they were “crybabies.” He may have been referring to the fact that the first child taken upstairs (Lisa, 16) was sickly, and Elisabeth thought her chances of survival were better with grandmother Rosemarie (not to mention clean water, air to breathe, etc.). Lisa’s adoption was subsidized by the State. But by the time Monika (14) and Alexander (12, twin of Michael who died in infancy) were born, he had discovered that State subsidies for foster children at 800 pounds each were twice as high as for the adopted daughter, so they were kept as foster children and were never adopted.

Youngest child Felix has just turned 6, fully six years later than the next youngest. Rosemarie was about 62 and the dungeon creep was about 67 when Felix was born, and he may well have decided another baby would not fit into his lifestyle, would disrupt the order he could expect in the household now that the three children (6, 8, 10) were all in school. At any rate, at his and Rosemarie’s ages, he may have elected not to “start over” raising children.

So, you see, it all makes sense — if you are a COMPLETE PSYCHOPATH!

M and A

I thought he was finally impotent.

What can of worms has been opened, time will tell!!!

Did the wife and kids ever go on luxury holidays to sun themselves abroad?

It did hit me that what if something happened to the evil one, who would know that the family were there?
Read that the dad used to tell the family in the bunker that if anything happened to him they would all perish, what a life to live where you wish nothing bad happens to such an evil person otherwise that would be your own death sentence. : (

What an absolute ++++ !!!!!!

It looks like his family might not have been the only victims of this monster.

I’m quetsionning on collective reponsability:
Fritzl managed to maintain his system for 24 yrs…leaving no appearing evidence of his criminal project….Nobody did dared to check serioulsy his case….or to ask…[crazy]

Recently in Belgium , the serial killer Marc DUTROU Gate was also an horrible story for kidnapped chidren and their famillies. The inquiry revealed later that many people known, participated also, even within the police, and among politics. Still a scandal in Belgium because all of them are not in jail….

Fritzl, Dutrou are criminals inrooted in our society, they have in common, that are highly influent on their surroundings, over victims but also theirs accomplices, wich is an evidence that their are not schizophrenics, Hitler drove easily mass people to HIS HELL.

With reference to above,thank God they did have a TV to give them an insight into the real world, cars, buses, streets, cities , dogs, cats, the list is endless!!!

We can only hope that when watching TV they hoped and dreamed that one day they would see it with their owns eyes. I really hope they all believed one day they would get out .Their hopes and dreams have now come true!!

Talking to myself again, do it all the time

It was reported that the young boy had said when he was in the police car, I have seen cars on TV and always wanted a ride in one. Simple pleasures.

A world apart from the children of today, Xbox, iPhone,computers, Playstation etc etc.