“I was his oldest friend in Markt Hartmannsdorf,” says Karl Löffler, who took the younger man under his wing as an altar boy. As he remembers it with a smile, “we were all a bit of a rascal back then.” Once they were fumbling around with a “stubble gun” and accidentally hit little Peter. “He started crying like hell right away. His father, the dentist, who was doing the drilling, shouted: ‘They shot Peter’s eye out!’ Fearing the consequences, we hid in the church, but were found and shot.”
Hundreds at the funeral – Peter Simonischek adopted in his homeland
