Chemnitz contemporary witnesses: Jürgen Reuther

I was born in September 1940 and from then on lived with my parents in my grandparents' house at Markersdorfer Straße 49, on the corner of Knieweg. My father was drafted into the Wehrmacht two months after I was born. He was then sent to the Eastern Front and fell in East Prussia in March 1945.

I experienced the time of the bombing raids on Chemnitz as a four-year-old, which was accompanied by the experience of often being torn from my sleep and having to seek shelter in the cellar of our house with my mother, brother and grandparents. Sometimes my grandfather would take me outside the house during the pre-alarm and I would see the Christmas trees in the sky. Until then, in our cellar vault, the all-drowning noise of the bomber squadrons' engines made the fear of what might happen physically palpable.

My worst experience was the day for my family and me, which unfortunately I can't date. Two air mines fell on Markersdorfer Straße during the attack. One fell right on Markersdorfer Straße between the properties at Markersdorfer Straße 51 and 42, which was about 30-40 metres from our house, and the second between the properties at Markersdorfer Straße 36 and 45. It was said that these air mines were supposed to hit the gasworks in Altchemnitz, but they fell near us.

A few days earlier, the house at Markersdorfer Straße 25 had been destroyed during the night in an attack, in which Aunt Lotte (from my grandparents' friends Mr and Mrs Viertel) had been buried in the cellar. She had only thrown a coat over her nightdress during the attack, tucked a two-pound sandwich under her arm and ran into the cellar. She was rescued from the rubble and arrived at my grandparents' house filthy and completely distraught. Her husband was on the night shift and had escaped this drama, where they were both suddenly left homeless. Aunt Lotte was in our cellar during the attack, when an air mine almost hit our house. I remember the hellish fear that prevailed in our cellar vault during this attack. I was on my mum's lap at the back, two steps lower than the others in the front part of our vaulted cellar, where my grandmother, grandfather and Aunt Lotte were standing, sitting and lying. Where my mother and I sat were the hordes of potatoes and I still remember the potato and musty smell of the cellar today. In the front cellar was the water meter, the gas meter and a shelf with preserving jars and a cold tiled floor. The whole cellar vault was so small that there was actually only room for two people in the front part and there were three in there, and my mum and I could just about sit down.

As the roar of the bomber engines got closer and closer, my Aunt Lotte broke out in hysterical cries of fear due to her traumatic experiences, and everyone prayed the Lord's Prayer and sent their own cries for help to God and all the good spirits. My mother clutched me and I clutched her until the big blow came and our whole house, including the cellar vault, shook to its foundations and then an eerie calm descended. My grandfather opened the cellar door and my mum pushed her way through, because to the left of the cellar door, under the stairs to the first floor, was the pram with my brother! Everything was full of broken glass, the torn-out washhouse door was leaning against the stairs to the upper floor, diagonally above my brother's pram. On my brother Stefan's pram, which was covered with a nappy, there were pieces of broken glass from the glass panes of the washhouse door and he was lying there sleeping peacefully. What luck in this chaos, my brother had survived unharmed and apparently unscathed.

Our house was in an unspeakable state, almost all the window panes were destroyed, all the curtain rods were lying around torn down. My grandparents' heavy bedroom door was lying torn out on my grandmother's bed and would have killed her if she had been lying there. Almost all the rafters of our house were broken, all the slates on the roof had been torn off and were lying in heaps on the street and in front of the house. The gable of the roof facing the air mine was a metre to one side; but we were alive!

On 5 March, I can dimly remember the endless line of people running past our house under the glowing red sky. This attack also destroyed my grandparents' livelihood, as the small print shop at Zschopauer Straße 86 in Chemnitz was reduced to rubble and ashes.

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