Chemnitz contemporary witnesses: Rolf Pfüller
My memory of the bombing on the day of 5 March is full of terrible images. One of my mother's aunts had died and the burial had taken place that morning in a cemetery at the other end of the city. When we reached the city centre on our way home by tram, we were surprised by the pre-alarm. Not far from this spot was the factory where my grandfather worked as a guard. He knew the air-raid shelters there and took us there. The entrance to the factory was very close to Johannisplatz, a busy junction in the city where several tram lines crossed. We experienced the bombing in the basement. The earth shook, the lights flickered and went out, the walls shook, plaster crumbled from the ceiling and walls, the air was stuffy and full of dust. We lay on the floor, my mum lay over me and covered me with her body. It took a very long time. Whenever an attack wave had dropped its bomb load and there was some calm, an air raid warden would try to get new news from outside. He kept shouting into the cellar that a new wave of bombers was approaching.
Then the inferno finally came to an end. Our cellar had not been hit and we were able to leave it. I can't remember whether we had to climb over rubble, I can't remember whether people were shouting, whether fire brigades were in action, how we got home through the destroyed city. I only ever see one image in front of me: a square covered in shards, surrounded by ruins, on the other side a huge fire, in the centre of the square a concrete mast that had carried the overhead lines of the tram lines running out from the square in a star shape and was now surrounded only by torn cables and wire ropes hanging to the ground, at its foot a smoking bomb funnel.
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