 fact that a woman slits her wrists, or that you have to see mutilated, charred people? How did you react to that?
Yes, this question of the suicide attempt of this woman. That was actually new. That was horrifically new. That didn’t fit in the upbringing, in the entire mode of perception which one had picked up personally at home in the educational process. Perhaps a different example.
Once again to turn attention to the bombing on the night of November 23rd, 1943, as we left the bunker on Alexanderplatz after the approximately 40-minute assault, and we neared our apartment, we came to a corner house, which had been torn in half by the blasts. A so-called aerial mine had dissected the house. At this time, the new Friedrichsstrasse, into which we had to turn, was closed.
There were already hastily summoned OT-men — rescue workers of the Organization Todt, members of the armed forces — and above all firefighters on duty. They extracted people from a broad hole in the rubble and laid them out on the sidewalk, one by one. These people had no major injuries. But I saw quite clearly, because we couldn’t go down the street, that blood ran out of the corner of their mouths. Their lungs collapsed due to the air pressure of the extremely heavy bombs. They told us that later.
The firefighters talked with one another, and I was astonished when I saw that they had bottles of Schnapps. I discovered later that they gave out alcohol for such missions. I said then to my mother, who had not understood that, “Mom, the firefighters, they’re talking so funny. What kind of firefighters are they?” Then she briefly exchanged a few words with a fireman and smirked a bit, despite the situation, and said, “Manfred, the firefighters are from Leipzig. They’re Saxons.”
So as a child one registered attentively that even linguistically the rescue workers are of a different nature. In fact, in my research with reference to my activity in the Society of the Berlin Underworlds, I have found that 53% of the Leipzig firefighting units, the most hard-hitting units, were commandeered by Berlin in 1943 for the rescue of the imperial capital. This then, one year later, left residents of Leipzig bitterly infuriated.
Q: Once again the question, or perhaps then to put in more concrete terms, how can a child react to seeing these dead people lying there? Or was it simply a part of war which they recognized? They were of course aware that it was a war.
That these people were laid out side by side… they weren’t stacked up, and there were a few children as well… that was an extended topic of conversation in the following weeks, and personally, these images have always remained with me, how the children laid there and did not move.
Q: But did that fill you with panic?
No. I wouldn’t say panic. That provoked a certain respect and fear by all means, but not necessarily that it could have led to a catastrophe.
Q: Were there any explanations for it?
Yes. The explanations were more of the technical variety, shall we say: that it was due to the bombardment, and because of the explosions of these bombs. After this point, all of the occupants, even of the shelters in the residential buildings, were advised that they had to crouch down upon the impact of the first bombs, that the children had to hunker down and compress their chest cavity with their arms, and open their mouths wide. That was a reaction to the implementation of such super-bombs.
Q: When the door opened after the attack, how would you describe that? Apocalypse? Or what words are there to describe what one saw then, or how one perceived it as a child, when there were impacts in the area?
On the example of the events of November 1943, on November 18th, the first air attack more or less passed by Alexanderplatz, because due to its size all of Berlin could not be attacked by a bomber wing. It was attacked variably, precinct for precinct, according to the general staff. In this case, the momentum of the attack was divided amongst Reinigendorf, Kreuzberg and Lichtenberg.
As we could leave the complex, then naturally t