Friedrich Rost
Title
Friedrich Rost
Description
Friedrich Rost's account of the events at Hinter der Waage 8, Wildemannsgasse 19, pub ‘Zur Pinne’.
Date
1944-03-16
Coverage
Language
Type
Publisher
Rights
This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Contributor
Identifier
Record 43
BKasselVdObmv10043
Transcription
Translated from the original in German: Present is Mr Friedrich Rost, born 4 September 1883, formerly of Hinter der Waage 8, and makes the following statement:
When the alarm came, my wife went with the two children to the Pinne. We stood in the hall and also in the house and then it went blow on blow, and we had an incendiary in the house, and we threw it down and all the houses were on fire and then we tried to salvage but when we could not do that anymore, we made our way down Artilleriestraße to the school at the embankment. And there we stayed the whole night. Then people were saying that a panic had broken out in the Pinne and I went out but could not get through and so made my way to the stadium. There I found my boy and he said: “Mother and Günther are dead.” That was about 11 in the morning on the Saturday. I did not recognise the boy, he was covered in soot and had crawled through the breakthroughs out of the beer cellars and 500 people had been in the cellars of the Pinne which could only take 300. The Pinne took a direct hit. The people there had their lungs ruptured, so it was said, and then were suffocated by the gases. My boy must have been in a good position and he had held a wet cloth to his mouth. Those with ruptured lungs had blood coming out of their mouths and noses. The boy had been lying among the dead. They carried him out around 11 and then they took us to the Wittich barracks and then to Eschwege. The boy is now at Wahnfried (Wolfgang Rost) in Altenburschla.
I had five children from my first marriage, the three boys are on the Eastern Front. One girl died at the age of seven and the other died in the Pinne with her husband and children (Marta Jödecke, Friedrich and the children: Heinz and Rosemarie). Now only I and the boy are left and we were a big family.
My son Albert was acting party district leader under Schimmelpfeng and then he was in Arolsen-Korbach. Now he’s in the East.
I saw my wife lying in the court of the Pinne but they must have been buried without having been identified.
When the alarm came, my wife went with the two children to the Pinne. We stood in the hall and also in the house and then it went blow on blow, and we had an incendiary in the house, and we threw it down and all the houses were on fire and then we tried to salvage but when we could not do that anymore, we made our way down Artilleriestraße to the school at the embankment. And there we stayed the whole night. Then people were saying that a panic had broken out in the Pinne and I went out but could not get through and so made my way to the stadium. There I found my boy and he said: “Mother and Günther are dead.” That was about 11 in the morning on the Saturday. I did not recognise the boy, he was covered in soot and had crawled through the breakthroughs out of the beer cellars and 500 people had been in the cellars of the Pinne which could only take 300. The Pinne took a direct hit. The people there had their lungs ruptured, so it was said, and then were suffocated by the gases. My boy must have been in a good position and he had held a wet cloth to his mouth. Those with ruptured lungs had blood coming out of their mouths and noses. The boy had been lying among the dead. They carried him out around 11 and then they took us to the Wittich barracks and then to Eschwege. The boy is now at Wahnfried (Wolfgang Rost) in Altenburschla.
I had five children from my first marriage, the three boys are on the Eastern Front. One girl died at the age of seven and the other died in the Pinne with her husband and children (Marta Jödecke, Friedrich and the children: Heinz and Rosemarie). Now only I and the boy are left and we were a big family.
My son Albert was acting party district leader under Schimmelpfeng and then he was in Arolsen-Korbach. Now he’s in the East.
I saw my wife lying in the court of the Pinne but they must have been buried without having been identified.
Citation
Vermisstensuchstelle des Oberbürgermeisters der Stadt Kassel, “Friedrich Rost,” IBCC Digital Archive, accessed April 25, 2024, https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/collections/document/8701.
Item Relations
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