Chemnitz contemporary witnesses: Ursula and Gottfried Heiner

Both are children of Sonnenberg: Gottfried Heiner (84) and his Ursula (80). He grew up in Palmstraße, she in Fürstenstraße. Then as now, that was a 900 metre walk. But neither of them knew each other. Perhaps Heiner saw his Ursula when the eleven-year-old walked past Körnerplatz and she played Huppekästel as a six-year-old. Or when Ursula ran to safety from speeding cyclists on Fürstenstraße, which her mother had always warned her about. Scenes that could still happen today. Perhaps Ursula and her mum passed the Lessing School on their way to the Zeisigwaldbad and Gottfried jumped out after class? At any rate, back then, on the eve of 5 March 1945, the two of them were still indifferent to each other. And when the bombs fell, they went their separate ways.

Gottfried Heiner: "It had snowed. The air raid siren sounded in the evening. We heard it here on this radio." He points to a dark wooden box in the parlour. "Nora" is the name of the receiver: "It played the air raid siren and always sad music." Today it no longer works. It is a silent witness that remained in the kitchen when the family of five fled to the cellar on 5 March: the war-disabled father, mother, Gottfried and siblings. "I was wrapped up warm and had a blanket over me.
When the blasts came, I remembered an earlier attack. I had heard the screams of those buried in the neighbouring house. I pulled the heavy blanket over my head and just wanted it to stop." The whistling, the bursting.
The endless stream of British and Canadian Lancaster and Halifax bombers travelled overhead, releasing their deadly cargo.

At the same time, Ursula, her mother, grandfather and brother were sitting in the shelter in Fürstenstraße. Her father was on the eastern front. Ursula was wearing a bodysuit, jumper and jacket and had a cardboard suitcase with her belongings, some rusks inside: she remembers: "There was a crash, plaster was falling. I was scared. Mum took me in her arms and protected me." Grandad only went out in the morning. When he returned to the cellar, he said: "We no longer have a home." The front had collapsed. Ursula: "It looked like a doll's house with a clear view of the railway station."

Gottfried had survived the attack unscathed, but the house was missing doors and windows. "A bomb had exploded in the neighbouring house at Palmstraße 10. It was the first time I saw dead bodies. They were lying in the front garden." On the Schlossberg, Gottfried's grandfather carted his dead brother to the castle cemetery in a handcart.

Both families left Chemnitz. Perhaps even in the same refugee train? Thousands of people fled the destroyed city. Ursula went to Rathendorf with her mother, grandfather and brother "We had a room there. There was food." They were all Silesian children who had fled, "they spoke differently, you couldn't understand them." Her father was shot in Berlin on 5 May.
was shot in Berlin. Three days before the capitulation. Many of her childhood friends' fathers also stayed in the war, she learnt when the family later returned to Chemnitz. "Only one came back from captivity, he looked like a ghost. You can't understand that. You had to accept it."

Gottfried's family had fled to Erdmannsdorf. Also to a farmer. "We went back to Chemnitz twice to get things. Low-flying aircraft came along Augustusburger Straße outside." The eleven-year-old survived that too.

Gottfried and Ursula met in a choir in 1957. Four years later, they got married. Ursula worked as a nursery school teacher. Gottfried became a new teacher. He eventually set up the Ebersdorf School Museum and is still its honorary chairman today.

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