he first thing — one isn’t forewarned, one isn’t informed as to what awaits you outside — but as we exited and found Alexanderplatz in more or less the same condition as we had seen it when we ran down the steep slope into the depths of the shelter, the image was more or less a positive one. The second thing which was striking was always the glow of the fire. Particularly the fire over Lichtenberg and Kreuzberg. The sky was red and flickered with lavender tones. It is a play of color which one can never properly describe. It is terrifying. Bright, yet dark. Then one looks around to see if the path is clear, and one have only one wish practically, to come home quickly in order to see if everything is as one left it.
The second attack on the 22nd and 23rd saw the weight of the assault focused on the center, including Alexanderplatz. Streetcars were overturned. The contact wires of the streetcars lay in the street. One didn’t know at the time whether one could even cross the roadway. Is there still electricity in there or not? The people screamed, “Stop! Don’t go out! Be careful!” In other words it was chaos. The streets were full of debris. If the glass of the windowpanes had not already flown out, it lay on the street. Individual houses all around burned. That was an event where many people simply wandered in a certain direction without orientation, sometimes even towards a fire. They simply ran anywhere. My mother took hold of us and held on tight. We left a piece of luggage lying there. It was important to me that we not follow suit in fleeing in an arbitrary direction. Yes, that was a dire situation. Alexanderplatz was no longer recognizable.
Q: Describe that a bit more.
Bomb craters on the magnitude of 10 to 20 meters in diameter. Such deep holes were bored into the earth through the surface of the road. The facades of houses were literally shaved off by the shrapnel. Plaster, ornaments which were on the houses all around, all that lay on the ground below. Fire hoses which, for whatever reason, were still laid out from the 18th, had partially burst. Water ran everywhere. It was chaos. One could not readily cross the square. Either a streetcar lay askew, or there were contact wires, or there was rubble, debris and so forth on the street.
Q: Once again the question, how does a child react to that? Is it unreal at that moment, or is it very real?
As a child, I would say, one just huddled against someone, against adults. Small communities form when one is in such a bunker, even for a short period of time. You become friends very quickly with someone who shares the same fate as you, who has to bear the same burdens as you, because you know that it is better to be a group or a pair than to be alone. So it was that one often said, “We’ll go to your place first and take you there,” depending upon who was feeling better emotionally, in terms of morale. Only then did one go home. One made a small detour and first brought the woman who had three children and a small baby. Families were all bigger, the men weren’t at home, they were at war, and the families had three or four children. The woman also had a piece of luggage. One first delivered this woman to house number 68 for example, and then one went to one’s own apartment building and assessed the situation. It’s a small solidarity, one didn’t just call that a bunker community, but a solidarity among people. It developed spontaneously in such situations.
Q: Did the people conceive of that as a crime that was being perpetrated upon them, or did they see it as a part of the war?
That is a difficult question, how the people reacted in such a situation. Of course there were people who quite clearly repudiated the war, and also expressed that the war must be brought to an end. But everywhere you looked, even in these bunker complexes, there hung posters, proclamations, “Enemy, listen up!” This propaganda, which ultimately directly affected the people in such shelters, which was in plain view … there were enough informers, and enough examples have come to light, that people who spok