Chemnitz contemporary witnesses: Traudel Dahlstroem
Around 10 o'clock there was a pre-alarm, school was out and we ran home.
My parents and I - 12 years old - lived in Siegmar in a three-storey block of flats in Louisenstraße (now Curiestraße), on the corner of Jagdschänkenstraße, right in the middle of the line connecting two industrial plants that were important to the war effort: the Wanderer Werke in Siegmar (now Heckertwerke) on one side and the Diamantwerke on the other. As we know today, armoured engines and small arms were produced there. Siegmar railway station, also a strategic target, was 300 metres away.
My parents must have had a premonition that there could be a catastrophe. My mum and I took some of the things that were important to us into the cellar that day as a precaution. My father was at work. He was a foreman at Elite Diamant, was considered indispensable and had not been called up for military service.
As soon as we arrived in the cellar, a bomb hit our house with an indescribable noise. There was an explosion - a high-explosive bomb.
The rubble closed doors and windows. We were trapped in deep darkness, the dust penetrating our eyes, nose and mouth. Breathing was almost impossible. You couldn't drink the water in the bucket; it had become a muddy broth.
My mum fainted briefly, I was completely helpless, afraid that the cellar ceiling would collapse and bury us.
After a while, the sirens had given the all-clear, we heard voices. Neighbours cleared the rubble away from the cellar windows and after about 2 hours we got outside. One of our flatmates didn't survive. Mrs Dohrandt, who was about sixty, had been hit by falling stones in her cellar.
The bomb had torn away the west façade of the house from top to bottom.
We looked into the living room from the street. On the 2nd floor, a black piano was sticking halfway out of the house.
Our house was the only residential building in the neighbourhood that was hit that day.
However, a major disaster occurred behind Siegmar railway station.
A full ambulance train with refugees from the German eastern territories was hit by bombs just as it had left the station. Several carriages fell from the railway embankment and from the bridge onto the Zwickauer Straße below.
We saw many dead and injured, including many children.
I have now lived in peace for 75 years, but I fear that the memory of this terrible war is also fading in Germany.
Despite the terrible examples in the world, let us hope that at least in Europe peace can continue to be secured through intelligent policies.
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