Chemnitz contemporary witnesses: Helga Polzer

Helga Polzer studied at the Rudolf School as a fourth-grader. "Boys and girls were separated. We followed the lessons with our hands folded.
lessons. If you ever turned round, the head teachers Dietzel or Gröner came, they had the badges on them (note: NSDAP) and a long cane." Once she got a beating herself - on the hands, for turning round. "And we were only allowed to talk if we were asked."

Helga lived at Feldstraße 31, which later became Rembrandtstraße. There were only women in the apartment block, father Walter was at war. "When the air raids started in 1944, we had to provide water in the cellar. This was controlled by the air raid warden. The Jewish Sternberg family lived in the neighbouring house. They took the man away at the beginning of 1945. The women didn't talk about it." Why
Mr Sternberg was taken away by the Nazis was something Helga Polzer could only understand later.

In February 1945, her father was missing at the front. He was never to return home. A last letter reached Helga and her mother Hildegard: "Friedland, 22 January, My dear mother, my dear Helga! Just a few lines from me ... We were suddenly sent on the march yesterday. Let's hope for the best. I don't need to say anything else. You have the radio! Take care and stay healthy and receive warm greetings and kisses from your Vatel."

The big attack on 5 March. "We were visiting our aunt at Falkeplatz in the afternoon. There were no cellars in the houses there because the water in the Chemnitz often rose high. When the alarm went off, we had to go into the Kaßberg corridors, which had been converted into an air raid shelter. There were benches and chairs in there." Thousands of people survived the night of the bombing in these long corridors. Helga Polzer: "But 27 people suffocated in the front part of the corridors because the air became scarce. Children, men, women. They were lined up, we had to pass them when we went out. One woman was wearing a green jumper. She had her mouth open and her arm stretched up." At Falkeplatz, the houses were gone. Lorries were loading survivors. "We wanted to go home and see if there was anything left to save." Rubble, chaos. Mum and Helga finally came out at the castle pond. "We saw firefighters there and asked them how we could get on. But they were from Leipzig and didn't know their way around." The odyssey through the burning city continued. Smoke, flames, desperate people. Dead bodies. "We came out on Zschopauer Straße. A house was on fire. There was a dead man sitting in an armchair inside."

When they got home, the house was still standing! The front was there, the back was there, the windows were missing. "A neighbouring house burned for three days, there was phosphorus in it, it burned from floor to floor. The women felt with their hands on the outside walls to see if it was still hot inside." Shortly before the end of the war, the Americans bombarded the town with artillery. "A shell even whizzed through our house." Then the Red Army arrived. "The women hid, I don't know where. Suddenly there were two Russians in the flat and I was sitting alone on the sofa. A soldier looked round, took the photo where I was with my parents, looked at it, put it down and left." The women came out again. Only the bike was missing.

Helga Polzer was confirmed at the age of 15. She later assembled dynamos at VEB Fahrzeugelektrik, learnt shorthand and later worked as an industrial clerk. Never again war was the motto: "Anyone who touched a rifle should have their hand rotted off! I lived by this motto. But the young people later had to go back into the army." She looks at the floor, perplexed.

This is where the contemporary witness lived her story:

Contemporary witness brochures