ZGram - 11/12/2004 - "I could have been Heidi" / Part II

[zgrams at zgrams.zundelsite.org]

Zgram - Where Truth is Destiny:  Now more than ever!

November 12, 2004

Good Morning from the Zundelsite:

Taking up where yesterday's Zgram left off:

[START]

My return trip to Wuppertal after the holidays was hampered a bit by 
air raids, however, I managed to arrive safe and sound, and on time.

      During January 1944, I became more and more interested in the 
reports of the events occurring at the Russian front. Already at 
Christmas time when I was at home in Tetschen, reports of the 
unimpaired advancement of Russian troops had been disturbing. 
Already then the Russians had broken into Silesa and were pressing 
hard for Breslau on the Oder River, Breslau is now a city in Poland. 
To be sure, Lower Silesia, left of the Oder River, could still be 
held by our troops, but now, during these last days of January, 
according to reports, the city Breslau was almost surrounded by 
Russians. And with this advance, the Russians would soon reach the 
borders of Moravia and Bohemia.

      I could no longer doubt it...the Russians would push forward to 
the Elbe River in a short amount of time. And therefore at war's end, 
my family would be in an area controlled by the Russians whereas I, 
in Wuppertal, would be in the area controlled by the Americans. My 
family and I would find ourselves separated and I wanted to avoid 
this at all costs.

      I spoke to the Hildebrandts, whom I rented from, and they 
agreed, that I could share my rooms with my wife and two daughters. I 
spoke also to Otto Erbsloh and requested a leave from my work station 
of several days in which to travel back to Tetschen in order to move 
my family to Wuppertal.

      It was February 13, when I left Wuppertal by train to get my 
family. My trip to Tetschen was an adventure of wits and 
patience...in a tunnel on the stretch from Warburg to Kassel in 
central Germany, the train had a lengthy stoppage before the all 
clear to continue. And then on the other side of Kassel, close to the 
Heinebach Station, fate caught up with us. Bombers, like buzzing 
hornets, came shooting at us, stinging us again and again. When 
finally, the engine took a crucial hit, the train came to an abrupt 
stop. We were trapped.  Trapped out there out in the open. It was 
every person to take care of himself.

      A perilous crowd had formed at the doors, so I exited the 
compartment by leaping out through a window. People were streaming 
out from all sides of the train. Everybody frantic, running for 
protection, which in itself was dangerous. The shooters of these 
hostile air weapons felt so untroubled and so secure over German 
ground, that they flew extremely low, taking aim at unarmed 
civilians. Everybody was trying to flee from these flying demons.

      Near the railroad I discovered a shiny refuge, a heap of logs 
and railroad joints, piled in such a way, that if I hid amongst them 
I could be hit only from a vertical direction, which is not possible 
from shooting bombers. I was about to crawl into the heap when I 
noticed a small boy screaming and running everywhich way alongside 
the train. I ran back and  grabbed him, tucked him under one arm and 
scrambled back to my covering.

      The attack in Heinebach demanded several victims before our 
enemy called it quits.  Had I not found so quick a covering, my fate 
could also have been called "Heinebach". A new engine for the train 
had to brought from Bebra before our trip could continue. And then it 
soon became night, the night of the 13th to the 14th of February, and 
with nightfall the train traveled faster towards the east, towards 
the city of Dresden, and after Dresden, we travelers in the 
compartment knew it was only a short trip southeast to 
Tetschen-Bodenbach. However, we could rejoice for a fast trip for 
only a short time because shortly before Leipzig, the train had to be 
diverted south in the direction of Chemnitz. To travel east we could 
not. Travel east had been shut off because of severe bomb attacks on 
Dresden. At that time, of course, we could not know of the extent.

      It was around noon on the 14th when I finally got off the train 
in Bodenbach, and here, as I saw later in Tetschen, everybody stood 
under the schock of the devastating attacks heaped upon Dresden. 
People in these two cities on opposite sides of the Elbe River had 
been aware that certain destruction was taking place in Dresden 
because when the bomb squadrons set out for new attacks they flew 
over the area.

      As we were to learn later, that even with the already 
unfathomable scope of the devastations pounded on numerous German 
cities, this air attack on Dresden was by far the largest bombing 
catastrophe to occur on German ground. The atmosphere was so hot that 
it melted windows in other cities miles away, some as many as forty 
miles away.  Dresden had been a city of some 620,000 inhabitants, and 
now thousands were buried under the rubble. Also finding death that 
night in Dresden, called the "Elbe Florenz",  was the sorry mass of 
Silesian refugees, who had overfilled the city as they ran for their 
lives from the advancing Russian Armies.

      The bombing of Dresden was surpassed only by the atom bombs 
dropped over Hiroschima and Nagasaki. These attacks were in no way 
justified, militarily or strategically, because at this point of the 
war it had already been decided in favor of our enemies. It was 
simply the murder of women and children.

      Father, my sister, her husband and their daughter, and Mama, my 
wife's mother, were very sad when I came to tell them that I was 
taking my wife and my daughters to Wuppertal, but I couldn't take all 
of them back with me, I couldn't even take Father. And in any case, 
Wuppertal had nothing much livable available.

      My wife and I prepared hastily for departure. Everything that we 
could fit into suitcases and baskets was packed laboriously; 
clothing, underclothing, potatoes, apples, etc. I took everything to 
the train station for shipment to Wuppertal. But, as it turned out, 
we never saw them again. In the blown up hell that was Germany, they 
certainly got lost.

      On Saturday, the 24th of February, ten days after I had arrived 
from Wuppertal we went to the Bodenbach train station to leave. 
Father, my sister, her husband, their daughter, and Mama, came to see 
us off. It was overwhelmingly heartbreaking.





[END]

Tomorrow:   Part III