Chemnitz contemporary witnesses: Horst Reimann
"We lived in the cellar for more than four weeks. Mum slept in the zinc bathtub and she set up my cot downstairs. There was also a Volkssturm unit in the cellar. They had built a barricade out of old barrels of fat chemistry in Neefestraße, where the Solari Tower is now."
Horst Reimann experienced the war at Platnerstraße 5, where he lived with his mother in a two-room flat. In March 1945, he was five years old and an only child. His father was in the Reich Labour Service, then on the Eastern Front and later in France. The war and the time afterwards left their mark on Horst Reimann. When the first fireworks went up in the sky, he winced. "That put a strain on my nerves."
The war was a time of scarcity: "When the milk turned sour, we used it to make curd cheese. When we had dumplings on Sundays and the grated potatoes were squeezed, we left the water to stand until the starch settled to the bottom. And that was then used to starch tablecloths and other laundry." Some people dried potato peelings and ground them in the coffee grinder.
Horst's mother stuffed stockings. "Once she helped some people who had no money but had a dog. There was no food for it, so they slaughtered it and gave my mum a piece as payment." She then cooked it like mutton.
"We lived in the cellar for more than four weeks. Around February, March 1945. Mum slept in the zinc bathtub and she made my cot downstairs. As a five-year-old, I helped to barricade the cellar door with bricks after a bomb hit and injured a girl who was sitting on a water barrel. It was compulsory to go into the cellar back then. People were supposed to survive."
"Consideration had to be shown. Children had to be quiet, woe betide us if we shouted. There was also a Volkssturm unit in the cellar. They had set up a barricade in Neefestraße, where the Solari Tower is now, made from old barrels of fat chemicals. Empty barrels are more dangerous than full ones - because of the gases that form ...! There used to be barracks where the Toyota tyre warehouse is now. Italian foreign labourers were housed there. They came begging because they were worse off when Italy changed sides. Mum gave them a piece of bread. She was reported to the police. She had to go to the Gestapo. I still remember my mother's words today: 'The biggest scoundrel in the whole country is and remains the informer!
"We saw the big attack. The sky was fiery red. The next day, Mum took me to her sister's in Richard-Wagner-Straße. Streets full of rubble. Later, there were even serious injuries and deaths when the walls of the houses collapsed. We ourselves were spared, like the whole neighbourhood." In the late summer of 1945, my father returned from captivity. With pneumonia. Horst:
"I didn't have a real relationship with him then."
Then things got tough again for the now six-year-old: "In November 1945, I had an ulcer on my duodenum. There was no money for an operation. The Russian doctor ordered Alternate hot and cold compresses. And somehow it went away. There was a light diet, boiled potatoes and beetroot. I couldn't eat beetroot for years."
He collected scrap metal with his schoolmates, as there was no pocket money. "I went into a ruin in Goethestrasse and took out lead pipes," he says. "A handcart full of three hundredweights! Once a landlord chased us away. The money we got for it also helped my parents, who didn't have much. They had to do extra work on Saturdays: clearing rubble in the city."
The war and the time afterwards left their mark on Horst Reimann. When the first fireworks went off in Brückenstraße, he flinched. "That put a strain on my nerves." The fear of betrayal also remained.
Horst became a wood technology engineer.
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