Chemnitz contemporary witnesses: Heinz Gläser

Picture: Franziska Kurz

In 1945, I was 9 years old and lived at Oststraße (now Augustusburger Straße) 91. The frequent bomb alarms are unforgettable for all those who had to experience them. They began in the Chemnitz area in 1940 with the first bombs being dropped, but they did not cause any significant damage. When the siren sounded, indicating different levels of alarm, everyone had to go to the air raid shelters (you can sometimes still read the "LSR" sign on old walls). The house we lived in didn't have a cellar. Our coal and potato cellars were close to the house in the courtyard under an outbuilding. This was a single-storey wooden barrack that served as my uncle's office. There was a vaulted cellar underneath. We went there when the bomb alarm sounded. Of course, this cellar would not have offered sufficient protection in the event of a bomb hit and we would have been killed. Nevertheless, as will be explained later, it was precisely this seemingly unfavourable arrangement of the cellar that saved our lives.

In February 1944, the first bombs were dropped in Chemnitz, in Casparistraße.

We children went there and were still happy when we found bomb fragments!

On 2 March 1945 it was our turn, in the morning there was a heavy air raid with high-explosive bombs on Chemnitz. In our cellar, we could hear the sound of bombs coming closer and closer. Then there was a terrible explosion very close by and then for a long time (or so it seemed to us!) a hail of falling debris. We were certain that our house had collapsed. Fortunately, there was also a man in the cellar, my father. As he was already over 50 years old, he didn't have to join the Wehrmacht, but had been drafted into the Volkssturm (the last reserve for all old people who were still reasonably mobile), but wasn't on duty. He ventured out of the cellar and came back: "The house is standing".

After the all-clear, we realised that a bomb had hit the pavement in front of our house. The deep bomb hole reached right up to the wall of the house. It was clear that if the house had had a cellar, the wall would have been pushed in and the house would probably have collapsed. We would certainly have been killed or buried in that cellar.

This bomb was one of five or six bombs that had been dropped in rows along the Oststraße and had hit the right and left of the road. Some houses were destroyed. The bomb was probably aimed at the Reinecker-Werke, which was located at this height along Bernhardstraße (the next but one parallel street to Oststraße, about 200 metres away). This factory was then completely destroyed during the major attack on Chemnitz on 5 March 1945.

Our house was badly damaged, all the window panes broken, glass splinters everywhere, even in the walls of the furniture. In the ceiling above our bed, a cobblestone was still clearly visible for a long time, which had broken through the roof and both ceilings to the 2nd floor and our ceiling to the 1st floor. It was difficult to continue living in this rubble.

That's why my mother took me to Klaffenbach, my birthplace, where I stayed with my cousin and her family. At that time, you had to walk from the end of the tram line in Altchemnitz (then "Reichels Neue Welt") "over the hill", as they said (on Harthauer Berg in the direction of what is now the B95 to Klaffenbach school). On the mountain, we had to hide from low-flying Allied Mustang planes in the ditch by the road.

There in Klaffenbach, I witnessed the major attack on Chemnitz on 5 March 1945 and saw the blood-red sky over the burning Chemnitz. After a while, the first bombed-out people came through Klaffenbach and told me how terrible the fire was raging in Chemnitz. I was terrified for my family. Fortunately, we soon learnt that Gablenz was not so badly affected. My older sister Ellen, who had been working as a postman in the centre during the attack, also made it home safely.

After the bombing, the school in Chemnitz was closed, so I went to school in Klaffenbach for a few weeks. By the end of the war on 8 May 1945, however, I was already back in Chemnitz and witnessed the arrival of the Soviet troops.