Chemnitz contemporary witnesses: Walter Fritsche

I experienced this saddest period of German history as a child, with the immune system of childhood. This means that if a child is not directly affected by the events of the war, it lives happily ever after as if nothing happened. My few memories of this time are completely subjective and will not add much to the reader's knowledge of history.

When the declaration of war on Poland was broadcast on the news (we already had a radio receiver in 1939!), we were sitting at the family table and there was a shocked silence. Then my 9-year-old sister said with pathos: "Who dares to attack the German people?" Funnily enough, I remembered that, perhaps because the situation was so strangely tense. Looking back, I realise how this one remark smelled strongly of Goebbels. I went to school that year. Lessons began with a very pleasant event: the timetable was reduced to 2 to 3 hours a day. Among other things, religious education was cancelled completely. The reason: conscription for military service. My class teacher Fritz Lohse was also soon called up. He was still one of the old-style primary school teachers who sometimes took out their violin in class and played a little piece for the children. So he was called up, went to Africa and one day a parcel arrived with a bag of peanuts so that everyone could have a taste. We were completely unfamiliar with peanuts at the time and it made a big impression on us.

At some point, the air raids started. At first, we only saw them from the perspective of air defence. When darkness fell, all the windows had to be darkened. Roller blinds were rarely used at the time, so blankets were sewn from scraps of fabric and attached to window hooks with eyelets. As no streetlights were allowed to burn, the night outside was sometimes pitch black. People had illuminated badges on their collars and it was sometimes a strange sight to see just two points of light coming towards you in a slightly bouncing motion. There were also torches with a dynamo and a lever to power it. If you wanted to see something, you had to make a rhythmic squeezing motion with your hand. In terms of air protection, this had the advantage that they were only used when you really couldn't see anything. Then came the increasingly frequent nights with the air raid alarm. Alarm (wailing sound going up and down), get dressed, down to the cellar. There we sat close together and played Halma or Mensch-ärgere-dich-nicht until the all-clear was given (constant high-pitched sound). Were we scared? Hardly, nothing happened to us. We imagined that the cellar stairs would protect us. I was actually a scared child. I was afraid of dogs, the fists of older boys, of dizzying heights, but not of bombs. All citizens who could already stand on their own two feet were given a gas mask. When we put them on, we turned into green-faced monsters, which we thought was great fun. Otherwise, their usefulness was questionable. The carbon filter was supposed to absorb poisonous gases, with the exception of carbon monoxide. Poison gas was not used during the bombings, but carbon monoxide was probably produced in huge quantities during the fires!

During the day, the air raid alarm came in handy for us children, as it meant that many a school lesson was cancelled. I was already attending the "secondary school" in the city centre at the time. We were allowed to leave the school during the pre-alarm with the promise to go to an air-raid shelter. Every house owner was obliged to take people from the street into their cellar in the event of an alarm. LSR was written in large letters on the house in fluorescent paint. This sign can still be seen on some houses that have not been renovated. The "pre-alarm" (three swells with pauses) preceded the alarm. The air units were then at an even greater distance and it sometimes happened that they turned off, so that the pre-alarm was immediately followed by the all-clear. We were actually obliged to return to school in such cases, but we usually "forgot" to do so.

Instead, I set off on foot with my friend Hans Richter on the 5 km walk home through the city centre and the Küchwald forest. We ignored the alarm and when we reached Wittgensdorfer Straße, we heard an increasingly strong roar. Looking up, we saw an impressive sight: the bombers were silvery crosses in the bright blue sky, about a hundred of them forming a marching block. We counted 20 blocks. Fortunately for us, they didn't drop anything!

The bomber units first worked on the cities in the Rhineland, later they flew over Chemnitz without dropping any bombs and finally they started on us too. One night, the sky in the north lit up red as Leipzig burned. The night-time firebombing raids were prepared by daytime attacks with high-explosive bombs. The aim was to destroy the infrastructure, in particular the water pipes to hinder the fire-fighting work, the railway lines and road bridges. In Chemnitz, the Wanderer works in Siegmar were heavily bombed. My future father-in-law, who was unknown to me until then, was there and narrowly escaped the attack. Some of the houses in our neighbourhood were completely destroyed and on Wittgensdorfer Straße the bomb craters lined the streets. From that time onwards, we fetched drinking water in buckets from a spring on a farm on Auerswalder Straße. A nice and muscle-building activity for a growing boy!

Then came the night raid on 5 March 1945, in which the city centre of Chemnitz was completely burnt to the ground as far as the southern suburbs. With one exception, the town hall. The fire brigade had fully focussed on saving this building. Nevertheless, they were unable to save the old part. Several aeroplanes flew in front of the bombers, marking the target area with bundles of flares hanging from small parachutes. They were called "Christmas trees" because of the way they looked. When we took a look out of the cellar, we saw one of these in the sky and knew what the bell had rung.

As we had a light northerly wind, the marker was drifting southwards, which meant that the northern parts of the city were largely spared from the bombs. Here in Chemnitz-Borna, the pub "Zur Schmiede" burnt down completely, rod bombs had ignited in several residential buildings, which were immediately fought with the extinguishing water kept in bathtubs and hand pumps. I wanted to help put out the fire but was sent home, which made me terribly angry! In the morning, we children saw our father in a badly damaged house, armed with a helmet and a pry bar (a pole with a point and barbs), poking around in the ceiling to find any remaining embers. Dad became a hero to us. Days later, we saw a small hole in the shape of a hexagon in the front garden 2 metres from the house. There was a stick bomb in it, which had narrowly missed our house.

The day after the attack, we saw wagons with handcarts and soot-blackened figures leaving the city - a terrible sight! Since then, the bombers left Chemnitz alone and the water pipes were repaired in a makeshift manner at some point.

Editor's note: Report slightly abridged

Memories of a childhood during the war

When the old Chemnitz died in a hail of bombs