Chemnitz contemporary witnesses: Marianne Bregula
My terrible memories of the bombing raids on Chemnitz in February and March 1945:
I was barely 15 years old at the time and worked as a compulsory year girl in the dairy shop on the corner of Fichtestrasse and Rudolfstrasse.
The Luther neighbourhood was already the target of several daylight raids in February 1945, with surrounding houses of my workplace being hit. I can still hear the terrible roaring and crashing of the bombs today.
When the sirens sounded again on the morning of 5 March, I was delivering milk to the houses on Bernhardtstrasse. I didn't want to go into other people's cellars, so I ran to the house where I was working. I felt reasonably safe in these cellar corridors with vaulted ceilings. However, I didn't go into the cellar corridor along Rudolfstrasse as usual, but into the corridor in Fichtestrasse, and that was my great, indescribable luck.
When I heard the aeroplanes coming, I mentally cursed the Luther Church, as it always served as an approach target. Suddenly, without a sound, there were two huge detonations, the cellar floor shook and then I felt the house above us collapse. Behind me, the cellar ceiling collapsed and buried the people who were in the cellar corridor leading to Rudolfstrasse. I never found out how many people died. There must have been quite a few, because a lot of people lived in this large corner building. We, who had been spared from the collapse of the cellar ceiling, could hardly breathe because the mortar dust settled on our lungs. We were covered all around, it was pitch black and we couldn't get out. We finally managed to get out through the breach in the wall via the neighbouring house and through a cellar window. Outside was a horrific sight. Where the house had stood before was now just a large pile of stones. Rescue teams, who were prisoners of war, had already started digging to see if there were any living bodies left. A little boy was dug up alive and given into my arms. His mother and twin brother were probably dead. I took the boy to the rescue centre at the Rudolf School. It was very difficult for me to get there because there were piles of rubble from houses that had been hit in the surrounding streets. The rescue centre was already completely overcrowded. I can never forget the cries of pain from the injured people.
When I finally came home in the evening, just as I had come out of the cellar with my headscarf and mortar dust on my clothes, my parents and siblings couldn't even imagine what I had experienced that day, because they hardly noticed the attack on the Kaßberg.
When the major attack on Chemnitz began a few hours later and I had to go into a cellar again, my nerves were frayed. My parents' house was spared from the bombs. That was my second great stroke of luck on that terrible day.
I hope I never have to experience something so terrible again.
Contemporary witness brochures
The eternal March
The last witnesses
When the old Chemnitz died in a hail of bombs