Chemnitz contemporary witnesses: Albrecht Günther
My story about the end of the war in Chemnitz
I don't know if it happened exactly on 5 March 1945, but I have several experiences from that time that have left a lasting impression on me.
Apart from the fact that I was sitting in a pram on the night of 13 to 14 February 1945 when I saw the red sky from what was then Rosenplatz in Rabenstein as Dresden fell to rubble. I can still see this "red sky" today. Later, when I grew up, I realised that my grandparents lived in Gambrinusstraße1 in Dresden. After all, I lie in bed with my heart pounding when I hear a siren in the middle of the night and then find it very difficult to fall asleep.
I was born in Rabenstein. My father was stationed in Chemnitz with the fire police in the main fire station "Schadestraße" as a technical officer and driving instructor. Around the time shortly before the end of the war, my father came to us in Rabenstein in a fire brigade radio vehicle, which was painted in the field grey colour of the Wehrmacht, because he wanted to say goodbye to my mother and me because he was being sent to Prague. On the journey from the town centre to Rabenstein, an air raid alarm had been sounded.
As a full alert had been sounded for the Chemnitz area by the time we reached our flat, my father spontaneously decided that my mother should get into the radio car with me and we would flee to the Rabenstein forest.
You have to realise that all air raid shelters were closed from the inside when the "full alert" was sounded and nobody was allowed in. In addition, our flat in the basement was not approved as an air-raid shelter and my mother always had to flee to the neighbouring house with me in her arms when the air-raid alarm sounded. A makeshift air-raid shelter had been set up there by supporting the cellar ceiling with separate beams and installing thick stone slabs in front of the cellar window.
Anyway, my father drove in a great hurry to the Rabenstein forest on Totensteinstraße. I was sitting backwards on my mum's lap and was therefore able to look out of the window on the passenger side when I suddenly noticed that several huge brown fountains of dirt were rising to the right of the vehicle we were sitting in, in the direction of Wüstenbrand. I can still remember my mum trying to turn my head away with her hands to protect me. But I was so fascinated by the images I saw that I absolutely had to look at them.
Years later, on a walk along Totensteinstrasse, my father showed me these bomb craters, which are still visible today and have since filled up with water and are partly overgrown with bushes. They were obviously the bombs of a so-called Jabo, which had mistaken the radio-controlled car for a military vehicle and had only just missed us on Totensteinstraße with its bombs.
Despite being only 2 ¼ years old at the time, this is still an event that I always visualise in my mind's eye as if it had happened yesterday.
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