Chemnitz contemporary witnesses: Regina Schettler
We live in the back house. We are my mother, my brother, 11 months young, and me, 5 years young. Our father is a soldier at the front in Russia. As is so often the case, the sirens are wailing that day too. With my brother in the pram, we walk across the courtyard to the rear façade of the front building through a small wooden door into the air-raid shelter. It is dark, only one light bulb on the ceiling glows dimly. Surprised by the alarm, passers-by have access to the air-raid shelter of the front building from the street. And a man, blind, has felt his way down into the cellar. The sirens wail incessantly. The man says: "Close the wooden door now." And the pram with my brother is placed against this door. The residents of the front and rear buildings, all women, sit silently in a semi-circle on small stools and benches. From far away we hear the drone of aeroplane wings, ominously coming closer and closer. The blind man says: "Take the baby out of the pram." The mother takes it into her lap. The light bulb flickers and goes out. Bombing.
The air pressure knocks us to the ground. We breathe heavily. Then it's quiet for seconds. I say: "I'm alive."
We hear walls collapsing, falling in on themselves and an eternal trickle of shattering glass and crockery. Some women scream, whimper, cry. "Keep calm, keep calm," urges the blind man.
A light shines into the dark cellar. The wooden door is gone. We stand frozen in front of the pram. It is full of rubble and chunks of rock. The blind man from the street is a foresighted man. My little brother is alive. We are all alive.
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