Margot K

Margot K

Margot K's account of the events at Ahnabreite (Warteberg), Schäfergasse nos. 7 and 9.

1944-03-22

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Record 47

BKasselVdObmv10047

Translated from the original in German: Present is Miss Margot K., of Ahnabreite 14, born 1 December 1926 and makes the following statement:
When the alarm came, I was in the kitchen with a friend. I first finished the letter I was writing. Then we went outside and had a look. There was nothing to see yet. Then the searchlights appeared and a plane in their lights. Then the ack-ack started shooting and the bombs started to drop. Then we went down into the cellar with our luggage. And then we heard crashing and the wailing of the blockbusters, a wooden partition collapsed because of the air pressure. And Mr Kaniz constantly ran around in the house, up to the attic and everywhere. On the street, a few bombs were on fire. We heard a crackling and he said: “The summerhouse is on fire.” He wanted to go and put it out but bombs were still dropping. When this calmed down, we put out the fire of the summerhouse which took until around three. And then we went to bed and slept a few hours and the following morning we had to firefight again because the summerhouse had started burning again.
The following morning I went into the town with my friend to look for my parents. We got to Holländische Straße which was blocked off because there was a dud near Helmholtz-straße. So we had to walk along Fiedlerstraße, along the iron forge and then towards Holländische Straße up the rampart. Everything was completely destroyed there. Then we went up Bremer Straße, across Königstraße so as to get to Pferdemarkt. The bodies which had been brought out were already lying there. Where our house was, a way to the cellar had already been dug. Smoke was coming out. I met a soldier who said: “There are no bodies in your cellar.” We had three breakthroughs and I thought my parents had all got out. So we went down to the school to see whether they were there maybe. But we couldn’t find them. So we went back home. On Sunday morning we searched again but did not find anything. On Monday morning bodies were lying in front of the house. People said: “The cellar of Schäfergasse 9 is still on fire, there are seventy dead bodies in there.” They only found bones there. My sister and my uncle were among the bodies. I could just about recognise them. At that point, I gave up hope. My parents have now been declared dead.