Chemnitz contemporary witnesses: Karin Wiedemann

On 5 March 1945, my fifth birthday was just two months away. We lived in one of the little old houses in Brüderstraße in Chemnitz - Brüderstraße 10 - between Kämmergäßchen and Roßmarkt. None of the street signs can be found anymore. The area later became part of the Rosenhof. So we lived right in the centre of Chemnitz. An exposed location in times of bombing raids and air defence.

We - that was my 70-year-old grandmother, my 25-year-old mother and me, soon to be five. There was no male member of the family. Grandfather had long since died, father had already been killed in action in 1941.

There were families who were able to retreat in time to less threatened areas, such as the countryside. That was not possible for us. Our small bakery was officially obliged to contribute to supplying what was called the national community.

An employed master baker, who was not fit for war service, prepared the baked goods during the day, but we baked at night! So it was up to my mum to supervise the baking process in the late hours.

On 5 March, she was sitting on the threshold of the pit in front of the oven, where the baker had to climb in to push the oven. When she realised that the bread in the oven was still taking a while, she decided to check on us, Grandma and me.

There had been a pre-alarm, a bloodcurdling wail of sirens that differed from the main alarm and the all-clear only in length and number of sounds.

Our small house did not have an adequate cellar. We found shelter in a building behind our property. I think it was a cinema, Regina-Palast, if I remember correctly. We reached this air raid shelter - official abbreviation LSR - through our courtyard and a passageway cut into the man-high wall of the property.

The cellar room was overcrowded with people. We sat tightly packed on wooden benches without backrests. Steel helmets were stored on a shelf against one wall. Suddenly I had one of these monsters on my head. I also noticed a zinc bathtub filled with water, which was common at the time. Was that supposed to be a supply of extinguishing water? In any case, we soon dipped cloths into it to tie them in front of our mouths and noses to protect us from dust and help us breathe. A kind of celluloid goggle that covered the entire eye area and was held to the head with a rubber band was part of our basic equipment as splinter protection.

When my mum arrived, an unprecedented inferno began. Everything happened at once: crashing, howling, whistling, booming, vibrating, shaking. Pieces of plaster and stone broke off the ceiling and walls and crashed down on us. Pressure waves lifted the benches and those of us sitting on them at recurring intervals. And heat, this heat! Unbearable! The air was stuffy, saturated with dust particles. The wet cloths dried out in an instant.

Suddenly it was pitch black on top of everything else! The power had gone out! There must have been panic and horror. I didn't realise any of this. In the moment of raging, thunderous darkness, I was rigid, mute, deaf.

Later, adults reported incredibly dramatic reactions of fear. It is not uncommon for people to vow to live forever on bread and water if they could escape this hell.

How quickly we humans forget!

Finally, torches cast a dim glow. At some point the noise died down. I heard: Door won't open! Entrance blocked! We're trapped!

But there was still one of the usual wall openings into the neighbour's cellar, only closed with loose bricks. After this loophole was uncovered, I saw a bright glow of fire behind it. Someone said: There's a fire there. We can't get through. Then my memory leaves me.

It only returned when we had found our way outside and climbed over mountains of rubble through the remains of our house. There I saw our floor-length curtains from the first floor lying on the pile of rubble, as if carefully laid out by housewives. A blast wave had ensured that everything was 'tidy'. My mum, on the other hand, was horrified to see the large stone block lying on the very step of the oven pit where she had previously been sitting.

The enormous demands on courage, bravery, strength and determination made my mother, like all the other mothers at that time, rise above herself. We tried to escape the sea of flames.

But the danger to life and limb was far from over. We had to avoid stumbling over debris, dodge collapsing parts of the building and fend off flying sparks in time.

A crowd of people rolled with us across Falkeplatz and out along Stollberger Straße. It was still dark when we found shelter in a corrugated iron garage in the Markersdorf neighbourhood. I was lying there with other children in a large bed. The adults were huddled round a small iron stove. It was March, it was cold out here, it had snowed.

A tragic-comic event occurred in this place, which later amused our family on several occasions: my grandmother's shoes were soaked through by the melting snow in the burning city and were now supposed to dry on the little stove in the garage. When it was time to leave in the morning, they turned out to be hopelessly useless: they had burnt in the heat of the oven. Hard to believe: Grandmother's vanity saved them from being barefoot! She had packed her good patent leather shoes in her emergency luggage, which had to be ready to hand everywhere and at all times!

In April we found accommodation in Hilbersdorf. There were probably no more bombs. But we still had to stay in the cellar. Our house was right next to the large marshalling yard, an important supply artery for the town. The railway tracks came under artillery fire. Many bullet holes in the house facades bore witness to this for a long time.

Then came a day that was strange from the perspective of my childish mind. Strange in the sense of unusual, strange, different. There were white - yes, what? - Rags? Cloths? Sheets? No, white flags! It was the 8th of May. The day of liberation.

One day later, on the first day of peace, I celebrated my fifth birthday. A doll had been found. How lovely!

But I also took a very macabre present with me into my new year: It was a vocabulary that no child needs. It included words like air raid warning, bomber units, air mines, low-flying aircraft, aircraft weapons, unexploded bombs, being bombed out...

And the deeply ingrained knowledge of what war and fear are.

This is where the contemporary witness lived her story:

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