Chemnitz contemporary witnesses: Roswitha Spahl
I was little, not even six years old, and it was actually my first real memory in my life. I don't really remember what happened before that. My parents had a bakery on Zschopauer Straße and there were lots of rented flats opposite, they were called barracks. There was an air raid shelter underneath.
It was already dark and I was supposed to go to bed when the sirens began to wail, as they had done so often in the last few days. I knew there was going to be a bombing raid and I had to get dressed. My mum was annoyed with me because I didn't get ready.
We ran across the street to the bomb shelter and waited until the all-clear was given and the attack was over. When we tried to get out, the door was already covered and the men were looking for an emergency exit. There was a fire in front of the door and also around the door, we were thrown cold wet blankets and ran through the burning door, there was a commotion and shouting outside and everyone was running around who hadn't made it out of the cellar. Everything around us was on fire. Our parents, my sister Maria, my brother Herbert and our Frenchman Jan, a foreign labourer for our bakery. My older brother Rudolf had been drafted. Our father didn't have to go to war because he had to bake bread for the people in the town.
We ran past the hospital on Zschopauer Straße, where people were walking around the grounds in nightgowns. I saw how the ceilings collapsed and the beds fell down. We then went to a football pitch and sat there for the rest of the night until it got light. My sister and I just cried.
My eyebrows and the hair at the front of my head were burnt, despite the wet blanket. In my haste to get dressed, I had a leather shoe and a slipper on.
We didn't know where to go, our bakery had burnt down and a bomb had fallen into my grandparents' bedroom, so we couldn't go there either. Early in the morning we went to Adelsberg to a friend's house. Fortunately, a customer helped us and made his garden shed available for a while.
My father then had to take over an empty bakery. After all, we had to ensure that the people back home were supplied with food.
We were very lucky, we had lost our belongings, but we survived.
This is where the contemporary witness lived her story:
Contemporary witness brochures
The eternal March
Memories of a childhood during the war
The last witnesses
When the old Chemnitz died in a hail of bombs