Chemnitz contemporary witnesses: Ursula Klimpel
Such a bad day that shaped my life.
I was just an 11-year-old girl and went to the Pestalozzi School on the Sonnenberg for the fifth year. I experienced the first bombing there in January 1945. Distraught, I ran home. There was no more school for a while. There were frequent alarms and a few bombs fell. The next major attack came one day after Dresden, on 14 February 1945, and again we ran to the air raid shelter. "This great fear." Fortunately, we were able to go back upstairs. But on 5 March we were hit hard. After the attack, we went outside through an opening in the wall. Three prams had to go out with us. Mum and I were almost the last ones out because of the chaos, and Dad was lost to us. The flames were already coming out of the second floor. As far as we could see, it was just fire and smoke. It must have been around 10 pm. It had snowed. Due to the heat, everything was slush. We then walked towards the industrial school. The roof of the school had also caught fire. It was completely overcrowded with people. I didn't want to go in. So we both spent this crazy night outside in a wooden hut behind St John's Church. In the early hours of the morning, my mum went looking for my dad. He was looking for us. We went into the school building together after all. But before that, the low-flying aircraft arrived. That was the icing on the cake, so my father said: Just get out of Chemnitz first. As one of our families lived in Thalheim / Erzgebirge, we were taken in by our brother and sister-in-law. I've lived here for many years now, but I've always enjoyed travelling back to my home town.
What I am reporting here in these lines is the bitter truth that war brings with it.
This is where the contemporary witness lived her story:
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