April 20, 1969. My eightieth birthday
Today I am eighty years old.
Although it can never serve as an atonement for my terrifying sins, I can say that I am no longer the same, starting with my name. My name is Friedrich Strauss now.
Nor do I pretend to escape any justice, I cannot. In conscience I am paying my penalty every new day. "My struggle”Was the written testimony of my delirium while now I try to discern what is really left after the bitter awakening to my condemnation.
My debt to the justice of humans makes little sense to collect it from these old bones. I would let myself be devoured by the victims if I knew that it relieved the pain, that extreme and entrenched pain, old, stale, clinging to the daily lives of mothers, fathers, children, entire towns for whom the best thing would have been if I had not been born.