I was still dressed deep in black. We were sitting way upon the side of the state opera. I was feeling strange. Oma was dead and the war was showing its real face more and more. Down there was the poor Madame Butterfly wringing her hands and her heart-ripping sweet soft sounds were filling the opera house.

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The Wedding

in the States they simply call him registrar. Behind this important man was a gigantic painting. Our beloved Führer was staring grim with an iron crabbed mouth into the future. Right and left from him were standing the especially consecrated Nazi flags. They had noticeably large well fed
tassels, woven in silk and gold.

And then the official part started. Rustling documents of birth dates and military papers were investigated. With sharp eyes all had to be conscientiously checked and rechecked. And when every little bit was satisfactorily finished the Standesbeamte was now steering toward the
spiritual, soulful part of our matrimony.

He started to explain to us the meaning of marriage. He explained it thoroughly, and he explained it long.

I put on a gravely serious face and tried to blur my eyes. That always helped if you were placed opposite a portrait of Adolf Hitler. I did not show any expression.

But then came the most important part of the ceremony - we had to take the marriage oath or whatever that stuff was called. Because this holy oath had to be given to our Führer, the honorable magistrate asked us with a decorous
gesture to rise. We did. We rose solemnly and straight faced. But unfortunately, the poodle did the same. He also got up. And that was very funny because now he also looked very grim-visaged at the portrait of Hitler.

But before the deistic act would take place the honorable magistrate had to read to us first the divine formulation of that sacrosanct pledge. "We declare that we were hereditary healthy, of pure blood, agreeing to have
many children and willing to serve with body and soul our beloved Führer Adolf Hitler and ....

But just in that moment of all moments I had to laugh - of course. No - not very loud, just in short regular intervals. One also could take it for deep soul sobbing, which the man obviously did.But then the honorable magistrate told us that now we had to repeat this holy oath. And we had to do it loud and clear, and both at the same time, and to add to this - Fritz with his deep voice and me with my high, and the poodle looking surprised from one to the other. I could no longer control myself and burst into a resounding laughter. It was so incredibly funny.

But to laugh at the oath to Adolf Hitler could very easily bring you very close to the concentration camp. My mind started to work feverishly. First it suggested to pinch myself so badly that even weeks later I had many blue
spots. In desperation I started to think of all the sick, all the dead people. Not even the dying of my grandmother could help. Everybody was horrified.

But the Standesbeamte seemed to be nice. He did not relate my laughing to the Führer. Such a thought was simply impossible. It would never ever have entered his mind. He related it to mental excitement and suggested we say it again, start all over from the beginning. But the same thing happened. I had to laugh again. Now the good man got angry and declared: "If I did not have the mental maturity he simply would not marry us" and he closed his large book with frightening fuming breathing sounds. Then suddenly I got sober and a little bit of respect for Adolf Hitler and his magistrate. Luckily Fritz had a good idea. He asked if each of us could say the oath separately and he
was holding my hand very tightly. And I tried not to look at Adolf Hitler and not at the poodle either. And then it worked.

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How heavenly was this first legal night and all 1001 that followed. We still sleep to this very day close embraced, as if we are still afraid that Hitler or any other mean force could separate us. The lovely bells from the famous old Parochialkirche, that ancient church, were playing, and we could hear their tunes in our room. Was it every half hour? I think - yes, I don't know for sure. But the sound, this marvelous sound, is still in my ears.

I don't remember how many days Fritz had leave. We spent the rest of the precious time in the country house in Woltersdorf, the same one in which we had celebrated the New Year, not too long ago.

It was May. The white lilac was blooming. Each morning Fritz covered me with its blossoms and the fragrance
filled the whole room.

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Bombing

In the beginning they threw only firebombs, which did not
frighten us too much. Often we did not even go to the basement. But then it became duty to go down. Everyone had to appear in the "Luftschutzkeller" (air shelter of the house). This made sense because in case the house was hit and fell down, they would know who was buried. We were also ordered to leave the apartment doors open because a group of tenants had to search during the raid for bombs so they could extinguish them. But maybe it was also ordered to make sure that nobody was hiding political enemies or military deserters. The Hausobman (a kind of political watchdog) was in charge of checking that it was carried out, which he did with great enthusiasm.

There were a few fires in our house. But we succeeded in putting them out with just sand. Once part of the roof in the house of my parents burned in bright flames. Papa was very brave, even though heights always terrified him. With a few old men he went right on the steep angled roof of the five story house and they were able to suffocate the blazing flames. We had no fire extinguisher. Sand was all we had. But there were buckets standing everywhere you looked, filled with that precious stuff.

In the beginning the bombers came only once a night. But later on twice. You would hear the warning over the radio. They came mostly over Hannover Braunschweig and their target was nearly always Berlin. They arrived in small and also in very large formations. Sometimes the whole sky was covered. All came grouped in such a perfect order like flying for a parade. You could hear the horrid frightening deep growling of their motors because they flew very low. First came the advance troop flyers. They had to set the targets. These marks looked like beautiful lighted Christmas trees. But when you saw them over your house you knew that all the coming bombers would aim in this direction. But you never had time to run away. Only enough to reach your
basement shelter and to hope that it was built strong enough.

In the Luftschutzkeller you met all the tenants, all the ones you usually had greeted only politely. In Berlin nobody paid attention to his neighbor, not like in little towns and villages. But it was interesting because now you saw that many people you thought were arrogant and unpleasant actually were nice and even would tell dangerous political jokes. You also noticed what immense hostility toward Hitler existed. Strangely enough the people were not so much on their guard when they were in the basement. At night you are not so cautious, because you are tired. You say more, especially when you are ripped out of your sleep and simmering with anger.

During the Hitler time there were always speeches, in school, at meetings or over the radio praising our dear Führer and the improvements. And at the end of each speech -long or short- you always would hear the sentence: "We owe everything to our beloved Führer."
One day now, when we had to drag ourselves tired into the basement again in the middle of the night, we saw a portrait of Hitler near the entrance. It was a framed and fairly large one. Obviously the Hausobman had put it there.
Perhaps on order or simply on own impulse. Anyway it was there. One woman went furiously to the picture and said in a loud voice": What on earth is HE doing here?" And another woman replied "because HE is the one to whom we owe everything, don't you remember."

And all the tenants broke into resounding laughter.

Most of the time the bombers came shortly before midnight and then again at about three or four hours later, when you had just fallen back to sleep. And in the morning at five o'clock most of the people had to get up to go into the ammunition or other war related factories. The attacks often lasted very long. There we were sitting now. We were cold. We were tired. We were hungry. The rations were very small. They gave us practically no meat, or any
other protein, hardly any fat, hardly any starch either and no sugar. They gave us only tiny lousy gram rations. We practically lived on a few potatoes and dreamed of fat in any form. We got just enough that we would not starve
to death. But all overweight people got slim and nearly everybody got healthy. Diabetes practically disappeared, absolutely no heart attacks, no allergies. By the way, an allergy was something that we had never heard of before. This word was not even in our vocabulary. If you had mentioned it we would not have known what it meant.

But we - the average German who were not Nazis - had no coffee, no real tea, no sodas or other drinks just water from the faucets but it was not chlorinated and tasted good. And our meager bit of food was not loaded with
chemicals. Maybe that was the reason why people were healthy even with so little nourishment.

There were - of course - rations for "Schwerarbeiter" (hard working laborers), They got a lot more. And the Nazis surely all knew where and how to get extras. On doctors orders for example.

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And every evening they started to talk about cake again. And then the magnificent ones one lady would mention, the ones she had baked herself long before the war, and how many eggs you had to put in and each night we tasted
in our imagination all the excellent food we had not eaten for ages. Till the sirens howled the end of the raid and it was confirmed that we definitely also had survived this air attack.

There we were sitting now each evening for hours. When the bombs were hitting close, the floor would tremble and bounce under us. Later on they came with the big Luftmienen, which would destroy many buildings at once to
bury countless people alive, where it was quite certain that you would not get out.

In all the basements they had opened passages from one house to the other and they had put axes on the sides with which you could hack yourself out in case of need. But the "Luftmienen" would mostly destroy whole rows of houses,
so that this would not help too much. In Berlin we had only five story buildings and when one of these super bombs hit, all would collapse. Our houses were completely out of stone and not built with protecting steel beams. They would fall together like card houses. Sometimes, they had reinforced the basements. These would hold, but the people were buried alive under huge stone heaps. No one attempted to get them out because in a few hours there were new air raids and new destroyed houses. They simply did not
have enough time and manpower to do anything.

Sometimes you would see desperate people digging in the stones for a loved one. But that was hopeless in Berlin. In the Memeler-straße a whole wedding party was buried one night. The groom was on leave from the front and nobody could help. After a while you got numb. If it hit, you had bad luck but everybody hoped that he would not be among the unfortunate.

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Buried alive

If it was God's decision that I should die, then it had to happen. But why should God want me to die and my child with me? No, I was confident that this could never be His wish, here in this ugly basement and already now. Life had only started, why should God want it to be finished? No - I did not believe this. So why be afraid?

All the people were sitting motionless, frozen. There was no screaming or crying. Nobody uttered the slightest sound. They did not move the whole time, but everyone had his head pulled in and his back bent. And then it was quiet, completely quiet. But there was that horrible realization that now the crashed down house with all its weight and rubble must be lying above us. It must have buried us completely, only the basement was still standing. But could it not collapse any time? Even if not, we were probably entombed alive. And then came the horrible thought that Fritz and my parents would never know where we are. We all ran to the entrance. The men grabbed the axes. In an incredible haste they tried to shovel the door free.

There was the fear that the ceiling of our basement might not hold. The shoveling seemed endless. hours- days. Time seemed to have stopped. There were only three shovels, but we were all down on our knees scratching with our bare hand on the rubble and the stones. Suddenly one man shouted that he could see light and they shoveled faster and faster. The feeling when I caught sight of the first ray is hard to describe.. And then we could crawl out. We had been very lucky. One floor above the basement was still holding. The first floor of this building had been used as a storehouse for heavy machines and they had put in steel beams to reinforce it.

When I saw the sky I started shaking and tears were rolling down my cheeks. I wiped them away embarrassed. And the other women did the same. And then I thanked God with all my heart. The thanking I always have done, every
time.

But within hours there was another attack and another and another. There was no end to it. And every time you were grateful still to be alive. There was forever the gruesome wailing sound of the air-warning sirens. Now the bombers came in gigantic formations. Sometimes the whole sky was filled. You could see them fly in rows, one after the other with their eerie sounds. It looked like one immense deadly diabolic animal. Often something weird happened. We were sitting in the basement knowing that this evil monstrosity
came to burn, to tear us to pieces and to bury us alive. But at the same time we knew that the people who formed this dreadful demon were the only ones to free us from one who was even worse. It was the sound of the coming liberation. Only they could do it. We were sitting like rabbits in a trap.
All of Germany was in a trap, one made out of strong iron and fine mesh. One, through which no one could bite himself out.

There was not the smallest corner through which you could flee. All borders were tightly closed, and all nations would hand us back. We had to try to survive within the trap. But our chances to outlast were very small. Our only hope was that someone from the outside could open the cage. From the inside it was not possible anymore.

The Flugabwehr (air defense) was shooting. They consisted mostly of young boys who were not yet old enough to be drafted. Sometimes they hit a plane and then you could hear it coming down with a frightening, whistling, hissing
tone. The very same sound their bombs would make when they dropped them on us. But how sorry we felt. Inside were people who came to free us. Even when they came to burn and to bury us alive, kill us in all ways they could. That was the insane contradiction in this whole insane insanity. The poor pilot, the poor crew. We all hoped in the basement that they were still able to jump and to save themselves. That they would not be hit by the air defense when they parachuted down.

But one thing I never understood. Why did they always throw bombs on us, the population? We were their friends. We were the ones they wanted to free. Why did they throw their bombs on apartment buildings, on schools and
hospitals? Why only on places with children and women? Why not on factories? Why not on military warehouses? Why only on the population, on people who hated Hitler?

But another thing was strange too. They never damaged our power plants. Whenever we left our bombing shelters - no matter how severe the attack was - no matter how many houses or even whole parts of Berlin had been completely destroyed - we always had electricity. Of course- we were glad that it still was there, but without the electric power we would not have been able to produce any more ammunition. Hitler would not have been able to order any more shooting. The war would have been finished. The planes came flying in daily and not once did they ever try to destroy the generating plant, which
was so visible with its large chimneys that even I could have hit it. It was nearly impossible to miss. Spandau (a large borough of Berlin) was the huge ammunition center. Spandau was also the main center for the electrical
industries, all that small - but so important- stuff without which the war would finally have come to an end. Spandau came completely unharmed through the whole war when nearly all other parts of Berlin had been totally devastated.

One other fact I don't understand either. Why were bombs never thrown on railway roads ? The huge shunting station was located directly in front of our house in the Bromberger-straße. An immense field of rails. The rails that
were needed to put the trains together, the many endless trains that had to bring the soldiers the supplies, the whole reinforcements to the front. Everything that was necessary to make the war at all possible. The house in the Bromberger-straße was not hit before the end of the war. And they never deliberately threw bombs on the city railway either. Had they demolished this transportation, the workers would not have been able to come to the factories
for quite some time. This - we did not understand at that time and I am still not able to understand it today.

Since we had to go to the basement twice a night, we became a group, a fraternity of hardship. I would like to add that when we laughed it was not from alcohol. We had not a drop, neither beer nor wine in our houses and not
in our air shelters either. I mean the average German in Berlin. We could make our jokes without. After terrible attacks we used to say: "If you are still alive - it's your own fault."