Where is Felix?

We lived on Louisenstrasse, so the quickest way to the city centre was the number 11 tram from the stop on Bautzener Strasse/Rothenburger Strasse. We were able to get off the tram a few stops later directly opposite the CENTRUM department store at the stop on Prager Strasse. We naturally took our 5-month-old son, Felix, with us.

We reached the CENTRUM department store at about 4 p.m. Felix was fast asleep in his pram. The CENTRUM department store also had a separate entrance on Waisenhausstrasse. There was a care facility for small children and babies operated by the store a few metres from this entrance with a separate access point. Unfortunately, all the spaces were occupied. So, we left our pram between the entrance to the care facility and the entrance on Waisenhausstrasse. There were already a few other prams here with sleeping babies. Felix was fast asleep.

When we returned from our shopping expedition 30 minutes later, we could not believe our eyes:

FELIX HAD DISAPPEARED! The pram was still in the same position, but it was empty.

Please note: Leaving a pram in front of a store or a different shop was absolutely normal in 1984. There was not much space in stores and shops back then and prams could not be taken inside.

One of the biggest police operations in the history of East Germany started a few minutes later. All the available officers in Dresden were mobilised and deployed, and the “Felix” special task force involved more than 40 officers during the first few weeks.

Investigations continued in every conceivable direction, including:

• families where applications for adoption had been turned down;
• people who had already been linked to child abduction in the past;
• women who had suffered a stillbirth or miscarriage;
• the CID (Criminal Investigation Department) also focused on us at the start of their investigations. Were Felix’s parents trying to cover up a crime?

The East German community police officers and their voluntary helpers, the riot police and even the transport police as well as workers from the Ministry of State Security left practically no stone unturned in Dresden to rule out the possibility that Felix had been abandoned somewhere. They also conducted interviews and questioned people with the goal of obtaining information about the sequence of events.

This and a great deal more was done, but sadly without any tangible results. The head of the special task force, Ekkehard Schuldt, commented on this, saying, “We had nothing, absolutely nothing, no leads.”

Nobody reported that the boy was missing! Nobody knew his name. The little nameless boy was examined at the children’s clinic of the “Carl-Gustav-Carus” Medical Academy in Dresden to clarify his identity and assess his physical health.

The abandoned child was believed to be about 12 months old. His age was determined by the presence of 8 milk teeth, his general state of development and assessing his age using the so-called “carpal bone method”.

The doctors discovered that the foundling must have undergone intensive medical care and infusion therapy during the first few weeks of his life.

The surgical method used to open the foundling’s veins to administer the infusions was not typical of the technique used by the East German health services. It seemed to be “rough”, and the examining doctors believed that a doctor without any special training for microsurgical procedures, which would have been appropriate for very small children, might have opened his veins.

Overall, scars from vein openings were found at 6 points (crooks of the arms, wrists, ankles). A drawing sheds some light on the precise location of the “venae sectia”.

“Colonel Teryochin (the Deputy Military State Prosecutor for the Soviet forces in Germany) reported the following as regards the request for assistance sent to the Military State Prosecutor of the Soviet forces in Germany on 10 January 1985 in connection with the child abduction/abandoned child in Dresden on 31 January 1985:

3. It is assumed that the abductors have already left East Germany with the child (our Felix is meant here!!) and are now in the Soviet Union. … The group’s military state prosecution service assumes that there is a direct link between the abduction of the child and the abandoned child and the perpetrators come from the Soviet forces in Germany.”

Please note: As Felix’s parents, we only learnt about this note in the file by studying our Stasi file in the early 2000s.

Please note: Even though we were people affected by the criminal proceedings, we were not informed about the content of the investigations.

We had some information that Mr Schuldt had been working for the CID in Rostock for some time. We managed to contact him, but Mr Schuldt was very reserved at the outset. He only agreed to meet us after several telephone conversations.

We lodged an appeal against this negative response. As a result, we obtained the reasons why the resumption of the case had been rejected from the state prosecutor, Mr Avenarius, in August 2001:

The crime was already subject to the statute of limitations according to German law.

The state prosecutor, Mr Avenarius, allowed us to privately inspect the investigation files. We spent several days viewing the documents filed in 12 removal boxes.

However: the East German Ministry of State Security had clearly investigated the case with intensity and great focus. The employees apparently wanted to show the CID that they were the better investigators.

And: the former head of the district state security authority, Major General Böhm, had left a hand-written note on the top of the closed file: “Please keep safe!” This matter was obviously very important for him.

Yes, we did not file a missing person’s report in December 1984. We did so at Dresden central police station during the afternoon of 23 August 2001.

The CID was not thrilled by this. We had to exert some pressure for them to reopen the old files.

All took place on 17 March 2003. We answered the presenters’ questions and had the opportunity of asking our questions to the studio audience and the public watching on their televisions.

Although the broadcast regularly attracts 20 million viewers in Russia and neighbouring countries, we did not receive a single lead for our ongoing search.

But was there also an answer to our question: “Where is Felix?” – No!

Knut Vetten managed to arrange an interview with Mr Sultanov in Ufa. His facial expression, his gestures, his way of responding and his entire demeanour towards the cameraman only suggested one conclusion: the man was very familiar with the topic, but did not want to say anything or could not or was not allowed to. He was obliged to maintain silence.

When he got out of his car, he did not look in our direction. But Lenore’s powerful voice unmistakeably rang out across the square, “Mr Putin, please help me find my son!” We were certain that Mr Putin both heard and understood the sentence. We were also convinced that his advisors had “warned” him about us during his journey to the Green Vault, and that is why he deliberately ignored us. He knew all about the story!

Thanks to our public appearance, people started to take more notice of the “Where is Felix?” issue again. We received help at a political level up to and including the Chancellery Minister, Thomas de Maizière.

Instead of a book, we handed over a letter to Mr Schröder, asking him to support our cause with Mr Putin. Mr Schröder was visibly irritated, but accepted the letter. His office responded within three weeks. This response did not help us any further, because Mr Putin did not see our request for assistance.

The whole truth is: his parents treated him as an undesirable object, abandoned him and took something “better” for themselves! Individuals do not willingly want to face up to this. As a result, some time passed before we were able to get to know the foundling, Martin. He had suppressed his story and focused on his life. We fully understood and still understand this. However, it was important for us to personally get to know the young man.

Russian media took up the story in a big way. Extensive articles in various national newspapers, reports in the main news programmes of TV channels and a fairly long magazine article in the “Maximum” series on NTV Russia published our story in Russia and neighbouring countries.

The head of the investigation team, Judiciary Colonel Generalov, received us in his office on 30 January 2008. During frank discussions, he told us about the task given to his investigation team. He confirmed, when we asked, that President Putin had personally commissioned the task. All the young men from the birth period in question, whose births had been registered by the registry offices of the Soviet forces’ garrison headquarters in East Germany, were being checked. This measure consumed a great deal of time so that a final result could not be expected immediately.

Please note: The registry offices of the Soviet forces’ garrison headquarters in Germany documented about 8,000 births in all every year. It was therefore necessary to find about 4,000 young men from two years of births and question/check them. It was doubtful whether it would be possible to find all 8,000. The Russian resident registration system is porous, not all the officers and civil employees came from Russia, and many families from the CIS sought their fortune abroad outside the CIS after 1990.

This conversation reassured us that the Russian authorities would do all in their power to process the request for legal assistance from Germany until they achieved some success. We returned home in an almost euphoric mood.

We now knew the names of about 15 young men whom the Russian state prosecution service had selected as potential “Felix” candidates, but the DNA samples were all negative.

Because the straws that we could clutch at were becoming rarer and more and more fragile, we decided to increase the reward for any key information to EUR 10,000.00! May God help us!

We had not managed to transport a DNA sample from Sergey to Germany since receiving this information in 2008 and so confirm the suspicion or not.

We learnt today on the Internet that Sergey had died in tragic circumstances on 16 December 2010.

Although we could not get to know you, we will remember you and also try to solve the issue that interests us, even after your death. We mourned Sergey’s passing.

Regardless of this, individuals in the circle of those interested in our case repeatedly made suggestions about what or whom we should specifically question or look for. Groups looking for Felix were formed on social media , e.g. at www.vk.com (a network in Russia – “In Contact”), and networks were searched for possible candidates etc. Every now and again, an editorial department from a newspaper or a TV channel got in touch and wanted to report on our story again. We avoided these requests last year, as the editorial departments only wanted to fulfil their so-called duty to chronicle events, in our experience. The journalists did not have the time or, above all, the financial resources to actively resolve the matter in order to get a little closer to finding Felix. The language barrier was also a significant factor.

The background to this is the fact that, after more than 30 years, the final judicial possibility, the final legal basis, under which investigative work could still be actively conducted, had been exhausted. If some new information arose at some stage, further work would naturally take place on this missing person case.

The visit mainly took place in a garage that Yuri had converted into a workshop with a living room feel. He told us that he was stationed as a KGB agent in Dresden in 1984/1985 under the guise of a member of the military state prosecution service. He managed to find the nurse in May 1985 who had looked after the foundling in the so-called “Lower Hospital” for the Soviet forces in Germany in Dresden in 1984. His superior had forbidden him from directly talking to her.

Using Russian social networks, Andrej had managed track down the nurse a bit later, and he was able to talk to her on the phone. She confirmed that she had worked at the hospital, but could not remember anything. Andrej believed that it was more likely that she was not allowed to remember anything.

As we left, Yuri gave us a striking picture including pieces of amber; it was about as large as an A4 sheet of paper.