The Memoir
I was nineteen years old on the night of February 13, 1945. I lived in Johannstadt, near the Great Garden. I remember the air raid sirens at 21:51. We had heard sirens many times before—Dresden was safe, they said, there were no factories here, only hospitals and refugees.
The first bombs were high explosives. Our house shook but we were not afraid. Then the incendiaries came. They fell like rain, thousands of them, little canisters that burst into flame when they hit. Our roof caught fire. My mother screamed at us to get out.
The street was already burning. The asphalt was melting. I saw a woman running with her hair on fire. I saw a horse bolt past, its mane ablaze, screaming like a human being. The sound was not like explosions—it was like the wind itself was screaming.
We ran toward the Elbe River. They said water was safety. But the firestorm created winds of 150 kilometers per hour. People were lifted off their feet and thrown into the burning buildings. I saw a man holding a child blown away like leaves.
We reached the riverbank. People were already there, thousands of them, trying to get into the water. But the water was not safe—the heat above was so intense that people who surfaced were scorched. I saw heads in the water, faces blackened, gasping for air that burned their lungs.
I held my little brother under the water with me. We shared breaths through a pocket of air under the riverbank. I held him there for two hours. When we finally emerged, Dresden was gone. The city I had loved was a landscape of ash and bone.
My brother died three days later. His lungs were burned from the inside. I buried him in a mass grave with 6,000 others in the Altmarkt. I never found my mother or father.
I am eighty-eight years old now. I still wake up smelling smoke. I still see the horse with the burning mane. I am not angry anymore—anger requires energy I no longer have. But I remember. That is all I can do now: remember, and tell you, so that someone else knows what the wind can do when it becomes fire.
[Lieselotte Schmidt's testimony was recorded by the Dresden City Archives in 2008. She was one of the few survivors from the Johannstadt district, which was completely destroyed. She never married and worked as a librarian in East Germany until reunification.]
The first bombs were high explosives. Our house shook but we were not afraid. Then the incendiaries came. They fell like rain, thousands of them, little canisters that burst into flame when they hit. Our roof caught fire. My mother screamed at us to get out.
The street was already burning. The asphalt was melting. I saw a woman running with her hair on fire. I saw a horse bolt past, its mane ablaze, screaming like a human being. The sound was not like explosions—it was like the wind itself was screaming.
We ran toward the Elbe River. They said water was safety. But the firestorm created winds of 150 kilometers per hour. People were lifted off their feet and thrown into the burning buildings. I saw a man holding a child blown away like leaves.
We reached the riverbank. People were already there, thousands of them, trying to get into the water. But the water was not safe—the heat above was so intense that people who surfaced were scorched. I saw heads in the water, faces blackened, gasping for air that burned their lungs.
I held my little brother under the water with me. We shared breaths through a pocket of air under the riverbank. I held him there for two hours. When we finally emerged, Dresden was gone. The city I had loved was a landscape of ash and bone.
My brother died three days later. His lungs were burned from the inside. I buried him in a mass grave with 6,000 others in the Altmarkt. I never found my mother or father.
I am eighty-eight years old now. I still wake up smelling smoke. I still see the horse with the burning mane. I am not angry anymore—anger requires energy I no longer have. But I remember. That is all I can do now: remember, and tell you, so that someone else knows what the wind can do when it becomes fire.
[Lieselotte Schmidt's testimony was recorded by the Dresden City Archives in 2008. She was one of the few survivors from the Johannstadt district, which was completely destroyed. She never married and worked as a librarian in East Germany until reunification.]