Chemnitz contemporary witnesses: Dieter Gründel

I was nine years old in March 1945 and experienced the two bombing raids with my family on 3 March 1945 at 11:00 am and on 5 March 1945 at 8:30 pm.

At the time, my family included my mother, my grandmother (on my mother's side), my father (on the Eastern Front), my brother Klaus and I as well as my grandmother and grandfather on my father's side with a son and a daughter and three other sons (who were all at war: my father on the Eastern Front, his brother in Stalingrad and another brother in Norway).

We experienced the first day of bombing on 3 March 1945 in Altchemnitz, Krenkelstraße 6, and were the only three residents to survive a direct hit on our house. In a dramatic situation, I recognised the approaching bombers and called everyone in the house, including my mother from our ground floor flat and my brother, back into the air-raid shelter after the so-called pre-warning. Once in the cellar, we immediately knelt down, a crash followed and absolute darkness enveloped us in just a few seconds. After a while, the smoke cleared through the cellar window. A tabletop lay at an angle in front of the window. The blast wave had toppled the shatterproof concrete blocks and my mother pushed me out of a gap about 20 cm wide and two neighbours who had rushed over pulled me out of the cellar. Later, my brother and my mother were rescued through this window.

Eight people died in the house during this attack and one seriously injured resident was rescued from the rubble hours later. The three of us were given shelter by our grandparents on Bernd-Rosemeyer-Straße (now Scheffelstraße). On the property of the haulage contractor Paul Kühn, there was a rear building with a flat for the grandparents and, importantly for us, an old furniture trailer in which the rescue workers took the remains of our flat.

My mother had no peace and quiet because her grandmother was suffering from severe asthma and lived alone on the fourth floor of Turnstraße on the corner of Bernsdorfer Straße (a corner house with a butcher's shop). So it was decided that my aunt Marianne would take us - my mother, brother Klaus and me - from Altchemnitz, past the old brickworks, over the railway line, Chemnitz-Einsiedel, and the fields to Reichenhainer Straße, Luther- and Bernsdorfer Straße on 5 March at noon in a sledge with a few belongings.

It was a very arduous journey because it had snowed heavily in the meantime. After dropping us off, our aunt went straight back. She wanted to be back home in Altchemnitz by daylight. Mum sent me to the butcher's shop on the ground floor with stamps and money and I got some sausage from the friendly butcher's wife. In the meantime, it had become dark. The four of us were all sitting at the dinner table when the "pre-alarm" came.

We quickly picked up our "storm luggage" and a blanket each. We went down to the cellar. The residents had gathered there and were waiting for things to happen, which were not long in coming. The houses in Bernsdorfer and Lutherstraße were all hit. As we tried to escape from the cellar, we were met by the burning phosphorus. Back in the cellar corridor there were 200 litre barrels of water. We put the blankets in there and pulled them over our heads, soaked to the skin. Then we fled through the wall openings into the first neighbouring house and on into the second house. The cellars had been connected to the breakthroughs for years.

People then poured out into the third staircase. My asthmatic grandma had to stop to catch her breath. Our mum stayed with her and called out to us: "Wait a minute!", but we didn't hear her. We pushed on out onto Lutherstrasse. We got lost in the burning inferno. I then fled with the many people along Reichenhainer Straße, via Erfenschlag to Zschopauer Straße and then to Kleinolbersdorf. The innkeeper stood in front of the inn and distributed the arriving refugees into the houses. He said to me, "Kid, get yourself into the parlour!", where the landlady obviously took me in, pulled the wet blanket off my body and sent me to the large tiled stove to warm up.

My brother Klaus later told me that he had walked across Bernsdorfer Straße towards Zschopauer Straße and found shelter in a house that had not been destroyed. He was then taken to the Brühlschule on 6 March, a designated assembly point for those bombed out. My mother and her mother, suffering from asthma, made an arduous escape back to Altchemnitz along the same route. She still remembered the roar of the wild circus animals that had their winter quarters in the brickworks.

In Altchemnitz, she and my grandfather set off on 6 March to find us, Klaus and me, in the completely destroyed and still burning town. It was only on Friday morning that someone pointed out to her that there was a note in chalk on the wall of the destroyed house on Lutherstraße saying that Klaus was at the Brühlschule. Of course, she happily took her youngest in her arms and went with him to Altchemnitz in what is now Scheffelstraße, always looking for where her Dieter was.

I lived in the inn in Kleinolbersdorf until Monday, a week after the attack. The boss, obviously the mayor, drove to Chemnitz every day in his flatbed Opel and gave me a lift on Monday. He delivered me to my Gründel grandmother (on my father's side) on Scheffelstraße at lunchtime. Of course I was very happy when my mum came back from her unsuccessful search for me.

Finally, I would just like to say how much I respect the many people who had to survive this difficult time. "Never again war!" was always in the air.

Memories of a childhood during the war

When the old Chemnitz died in a hail of bombs