Klara T

Klara T

Klara T's account of the events at Schillerstraße 12, main cemetery, secondary modern no 16.

1944-03-17

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Record 45

BKasselVdObmv10045

Translated from the original in German: Present is Mrs Klara T., born 8 September 1896, formerly of Schillerstraße 12, now of Heisterstraße 5, and makes the following statement:
When the alarm came we went to the cellar. The party members of the ward were there too. The people from the rear building came also into our cellar because the fire started quickly back there. We wanted to get out because the gate to courtyard was already on fire. After the attack, we went through the break-through to no 14 (Butcher Jacob). But that house was also already in flames. So we had to get back. I am on my own, without family, my daughter moved with her children to the countryside already after the raid in July. My husband is in Russia. We stayed for over an hour in the cellar because we did not dare go out at the front where everything was burning. A soldier on leave (Klenke) had fled with his family to the school already. He came back three or four times and took us with him one after the other. Because we did not dare go out. The third time he took me with him and a daughter of the landlord, Luise Vogt. As I wanted to enter the school, I fell. There was fire on the ground. But I got up again. Then we went through the breakthrough into the school on Sedanstraße. We stayed there for a few hours. People left slowly. Then the air raid warden came and said the building above was on fire, so about 25 of us made our way out together. There were many children among us but they could already walk. We fled into the house of the Trieschmann bakery opposite. That house still stands. I left soon there too because of the smoke and the flying sparks.
We went through Sedanstraße to the train station in the lower town, across the rails and under the waggons, down the slope to Mombachstraße and through a passage onto the main cemetery. Many people from Mombachstraße had brought their furniture there. Children were lying in their beds under the open sky among the gravestones. It was really a sad picture but they were all glad that they still had their lives. That was a joy. I then went to the main entrance of the cemetery. It must have been towards morning. That’s how long I’d been sitting on the log. I then went back through Mombachstraße. Here I met a railway worker from Minsk. He was a comrade of my husband’s. There I had a wash and was given something to drink. Because I wanted to go to Schillerstraße. But a neighbour said I shouldn’t go there, the fires were still burning. Then I met other residents of the house. I went back to Rothenberg with them and we stayed there behind the hill for a few hours in the cellars of the houses there. Towards eleven, we went to Niedervellmar, where we were given something to eat and where they treated our eyes and from there a car took us to Ihringshausen and from there we went by train to Hann. Münden to friends. I took a neighbour from across our landing (Gombert) with me. Then I travelled to my mother in Eisleben.
My father-in-law, Peter Trieschmann, of Druselgasse 14, my sister-in-law Anneliese and her son Horst (3 years old) were killed in the raid.