Chemnitz contemporary witnesses: Hannelore Bauer
As a child aged 8, I experienced this terrible day very consciously and have not forgotten it to this day. It has stayed with me forever.
As on many previous nights, my brother (6 years old at the time) and I were woken up by our mum after the air raid alarm. It was terrible to always be woken from a deep sleep and go down into the air-raid shelter.
That night too, all the mums came down to the cellar with their children. The fathers were all at the front. Unfortunately, we couldn't go back to our flat that night. Our house was hit by a phosphorus bomb. A man's voice shouted through the cellar door that we should all leave the house immediately. It was already burning brightly upstairs. My mum took us children by the hand and we fled. I could still see the flames coming out of our flat. We ran as fast as we could from the city centre (then Schützenstraße, now Karl-Immermann-Straße). We travelled along Reichenhainer Straße to Kleinolbersdorf. It snowed heavily that night and we had to trudge through the deep snow. Towards morning, exhausted and tired, we found shelter in a school. There was warm soup and we were finally able to rest on straw. Our clothes were soaking wet. We didn't have any spare clothes. Mum could only take one bag from the cellar.
After 75 years, I still remember everything clearly, including the time that followed, which was full of hunger and deprivation. My father never returned from the war. I will always be grateful to my mum, who brought us up to be responsible people on our own and, above all, saved our lives. This time has shaped my whole life. I now have four great-grandchildren. My first grandson is now also 8 years old. The same age I was back then.
I hope that such a time never happens again. May there finally be peace for all children in the world.
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