Word: stammerers
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...some degree, the revelations in West Germany complemented the stories provided by new witnesses in Brazil. In her attractive white house in the affluent hillside community of Petropolis Park, outside Sao Paulo, a nervous Gitta Stammer, who had earlier come forward to support and supplement the Bossert account, told her story to TIME's Jacqueline Reditt. Her face pale and worried, her hands trembling, the slight, 65-year-old Hungarian-born woman described how she and her family had kept a longtime lodger's secret for 22 anxious years...
When, later that year, the Stammers moved to a farm in Serra Negra, 100 miles north of Sao Paulo, their lodger went along, taking a room in their new home. One day, about two years after Pedro joined the household, a visitor left a newspaper in the house that featured a picture of Dr. Josef Mengele as he looked at Auschwitz. Despite the 20-year interval, said Stammer, she recognized in the picture the gap between Pedro's top front teeth, and the bent head with which he gave his one-sided smile. Later that day, she said, she showed...
...that point, the Stammers asked Gerhard to find another home for his friend. He promised to do so, but nothing happened. Weeks turned into months, months into years. Pedro stayed. Why did the Stammers not report their guest to the police? Because, said Gitta, Gerhard told them their lives would be in danger if they talked. Even after Gerhard had left Brazil, and died in Austria in 1978, said Stammer, she feared retribution from his "friends" if ever she went to the authorities. Throughout, Pedro never once threatened her family; he even went so far as to chide Gerhard...
Late last week Brazilian police unveiled more evidence, in the form of a deposition from a Hungarian-born woman who has lived in Brazil since 1948, to support the Bosserts' account. Gitta Stammer, 65, who with her husband Geza owned a small farm in southern Sao Paulo state, claimed that Mengele had lived with the couple for 13 years. According to her statement, in 1961 the Stammers were introduced by Wolfgang Gerhard to a man who called himself Peter Hochbichlet and who said he was Swiss. They gave him a job helping to administer their farm, and the man moved...
...already home in bed by now, I blush and stammer...