Reinhold Sch

Title

Reinhold Sch

Description

Reinhold Sch's account of the events at Frankfurter Straße 26/28 (Municipal Police Department), Engelhardstraße 8.

Date

1944-05-31

Temporal Coverage

Spatial Coverage

Coverage

Language

Type

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 95
BKasselVdObmv10095

Transcription

Translated from the original in German: Present is Reinhold Sch. (in his municipal police uniform) and gives the following statement:
It’s very short; it didn’t take very long. Because I was on duty and had only returned from leave the day before. And on the day I was put on night duty. It was only me and two from the tax office but I can’t remember their names. We sat down and wanted to have our tea. I took the phone and we went down into the cellar. Then people came down from the street, maybe thirty of them. They were people living in the building and people who’d come from the street. And then I went up again to get my coat and as I came back down again, the bombs started dropping. And as it is with women and children, there was a big fuss, and I tried and tried to calm them down and when I went up to have a look as to what was happening, the sports hall at the back was already on fire and the house above, we weren’t able to see that.
So we wanted to get out. I had taken my things down with me and as I went back up to get my things and to fight the fire, flames were already shooting out from the first floor. That’s how fast it was. So we went back down and I had to calm people down. The ventilation pumps started working but that did not help at all because they sucked hot air in. The cellar was filling up with smoke and shook with each detonation. I had thought we might be able to hold out in the cellar but that was no longer possible. So, and as we had the big hit, the lights went out and people became agitated and we opened the breakthrough because we could no longer get up into the building because of the fire and we left through the pub on the corner of Fünffensterstraße. And outside were soldiers and air raid wardens and they guided us to Schöne Aussicht. Our clothes, coats and hats, we had soaked in water, otherwise we would not have got through the rain of fire.
Then I wanted to get home – Rothenditmold – but was unable to get through the fire. That was about eleven o’clock. I then stood on Adolf-Hitler-Platz. And then two colleagues came from my station, they took me with them via Frankfurter Straße and Philosophenweg to Tannenwäldchen. Fire was everywhere and as I came to Philippistraße, I could not pass. So I made my way through the allotments, Naumburger Straße, past the Zahn, it was dangerous because the fences and everything were lying around. And then Beier’s building collapsed, that was on fire on Naumburger Straße. And then I turned into Engelhardstraße and looked for my apartment. There was nothing left except the scaffold and a few pillars. It was burnt out. Only my wife had been at home. She had her things in the cellar; she fled in her underwear and a coat. She had to flee all the way to the cemetery. I found her there at three in the morning among the graves and she only wore her underwear and coat and had a shopping bag with her. The people in our cellar in Frankfurter Straße all got out.

Citation

Vermisstensuchstelle des Oberbürgermeisters der Stadt Kassel, “Reinhold Sch,” IBCC Digital Archive, accessed March 19, 2024, https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/collections/document/8953.

Item Relations

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