Chemnitz contemporary witnesses: Karlheinz Reimann
On 14 February, my childhood home, Beethovenstraße 46, was the only one in the area to be hit by an explosive bomb and largely destroyed. Fortunately, none of us were there that evening. The residents who were in the bomb shelter during the attack also all survived.
I still remember the attack at midday on 5 March, when my mother took me to visit her sister in Zeisigwald. She lived in the "Porphyry House" next to the entrance to the quarries, which is now a listed building and was built by the quarry owner Otto in 1869. In a group of people, including some presumably shot-down Americans under guard (particularly exciting for me as a child!), we all sought shelter under the brick arches at the entrance to the quarries, the so-called "Devil's Bridges" - what a terrible mistake! If bombs had fallen even close by and shaken the ground, we would probably have been crushed by the debris of the collapsing arches.
That evening, we travelled back to Kleinolbersdorf from the station forecourt on a KVG (public transport company) bus. It was already completely dark and the bus driver could certainly only see a little, as the headlights had to be masked except for a narrow slit. On the Zschopauer Straße in front of the "Neue Schänken", the bus had to divert via the Cervantesstraße to Adelsberg, as the Zschopauer Straße was buried. The red brick building of the engineering factory - now a petrol station - lay in ruins across the entire street from the midday attack. The bus returned to Zschopauer Straße via Hermersdorfer Straße to drive past the "Erholung" restaurant to Kleinolbersdorf. This road was still very narrow back then. Before the Gartenstadt housing estate, a lorry also with masked headlights approached the bus. It was impossible to pass each other and the two drivers had a long discussion about who should drive back. My mum decided that we should get out and walk home. We were not yet in the house when the sky over Chemnitz was brightly lit - "Christmas trees" everywhere over the city centre! We hurried to our cellar and watched from a distance until after midnight as Chemnitz fell to rubble in a hail of bombs.
One of my childhood memories in Kleinolbersdorf is that after the hours of bombing and fear in our cellar, my mother ran with me by the hand to Zschopauer Straße that night to look out over our town. Even outside the glowing red city of Chemnitz, the air was spring-like and the newly fallen snow was covered everywhere with flakes of soot and charred paper. Many people, often with blackened faces and the smell of burning on their clothes, who had lost everything in the city and were glad to still be alive, arrived in the surrounding villages at dawn to look for a place to stay for days or weeks. My mother also took in a bombed-out couple who reached us at the end of the night of 6 March with a few saved belongings on a handcart and stayed with us for a fortnight. Two days after the attack, not all the fires in Chemnitz had been extinguished. Memories of my childhood experiences during the war prompted me to research the bombing raids on Chemnitz and write them down for future generations in the hope that such a tragedy will never be repeated for them.
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