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This testimonial comes from a woman I met on a walk. She had lived through the Second World War and shared her memories with me. By Stephan Kobes
The aria fell silent. Worried, the singer raised her eyes to the ceiling. Had she heard correctly? Yes! She knew that sound well. The guests in the hall could also hear it. A tense silence spread. Everyone listened. The roar grew louder. And then, suddenly: crashing explosions, followed by the shrill wailing of sirens. Air raid warning!
Germany had been in the Second World War for some time and everyone knew what to do at such times. The employees of the opera house threw open the doors of the large auditorium to allow the audience the quickest possible access to a nearby air raid shelter. Fifteen-year-old Erika also pushed her way through the crowd towards the exit, but she felt lost. As she left the hall with hurried steps, she wondered anxiously where she should go now. This part of town was unfamiliar to her. What should she do now?
Then she suddenly felt a hand on her shoulder: “Come with me! There’s a particularly safe cellar just around the corner!” A woman had noticed Erika’s helplessness. Erika didn’t hesitate for a moment. She gratefully followed the strange woman, who led her quickly out of the danger zone.
Thoughts of the family
Erika kept close to the woman. Dozens of fighter bombers circled above them. The roar of their engines mingled with the deafening explosions of the incendiary bombs that flared up everywhere. Whole crowds of people desperately flocked towards a nearby air raid shelter in the hope of finding protection.
When Erika reached the overcrowded shelter, she had only one thought: “I want to go to my family,” she sobbed quietly. Then she sank to the floor, exhausted. Why had her mother sent her to the opera on this day of all days?
The images of the morning came back to her …
Invitation into the unknown
“You can go to the opera today, my child!” The sentence echoed in Erika’s ears. “What?” she asked in surprise. “Me? To the opera? But mom, we’ve never been to a theater before! What am I supposed to do there?”
“You’ll find out when you get there!” replied Erika’s mom with a gentle smile. “It’s time for you to get to know life! That’s why you can watch the show all by yourself today!”
Erika was surprised: “But mom, I don’t even know how to behave there.”
Her mother lovingly put her arm around her, pulled her closer and whispered: “That’s why!” She pressed the ticket into Erika’s hand.
Erika understood that any further discussion was pointless. Even though she would much rather have stayed at home that evening, she accepted the challenge. “All right, mom. Then I’ll go to the opera tonight.”
Attack by the Allies
The roar of the fighter bombers suddenly tore Erika from her thoughts. There was a deafening crash and rattle! “The next wave of attacks! We’ve never seen anything like it!” she stammered, trembling. “Yes! The Allies seem to have outwitted the air defenses,” said the woman who had led her into the bunker in a clipped voice.
The time in the air raid shelter seemed like an eternity to Erika. There was simply no end to the crashing of the detonations. The ground shook incessantly. The stuffy, sweat-filled air made it difficult to breathe. No one spoke, everyone stared in fear, the tension lay on people like a leaden cloak. What would life be like after that night?
The power of homesickness!
When it became quieter outside, Erika couldn’t stand it any longer. She hurried to the bunker door. “Please let me through. I have to get to my family!”
A hand pulled her back. “Child, you can’t go home now! Half the town is still on fire!” An older woman looked at her seriously but sympathetically. But Erika had only one thought. “Please! I have to go home!”
When the woman realized that she couldn’t hold Erika back, she said, “Wait, girl!” Then she took her woolen blanket, dipped it in cold water and put it around Erika’s shoulders. “This will protect you.”
“Thank you,” Erika said politely. Then she ran off, straight into the flaming inferno.
Through the flames
Erika ran as fast as she could. Whole streets were in flames. Mountains of stones and beams kept blocking her path, and the heavy dust and smoke made it difficult to breathe.
Despite all the obstacles, she was driven by a single thought: She had to get home. To mom. To Hans.
Finally, completely out of breath, she reached her family home – but to her horror, it was ablaze. The beautiful house could do nothing to stop the flames.
Hope?
Erika’s heart contracted painfully. Was this the end of her beautiful childhood? But she quickly clung to one last hope: the air raid shelter! She knew the place well, where her family had found refuge so often.
On the way, she suddenly saw baboons and ostriches wandering aimlessly through the streets. “Oh no!” she thought in horror, “the zoo was hit too!”
When she reached the bunker, her heart was pounding in her throat. The building that provided access to the bunker was badly damaged. Without hesitation, she ran to the place where an “N. A.” marked the emergency exit. She quickly cleared some rubble to the side.
See you again
Then the hatch opened. A figure stepped out, then another. “Mom!” cried Erika with relief, throwing herself into her mother’s arms. Her little brother Hans had also survived! At that moment, she was overwhelmed with joy and gratitude. It was so wonderful that she momentarily forgot all the horror around her.
Difficult news
After the joy of the reunion had subsided, Erika asked anxiously: “Mom, where is Ernst?” An awkward silence followed. “Didn’t he make it to the bunker?”
Erika remembered the many stories the old man had told her as a child and urged on: “Let’s go and see if Ernst needs help.”
Erika’s mother sighed and explained: “Ernst had sat down in your place in the bunker when you didn’t come. Later, a bomb fragment hit right there. He didn’t survive.”
“That was my place!”
Erika felt her knees trembling beneath her as she heard about old Ernst’s fate. Her heart hammered in her chest as she slowly absorbed her mother’s words.
“That was my place…” she whispered barely audibly as her eyes wandered over the people around her. The relief that her mother and brother had survived was mixed with an overwhelming feeling of sadness and the question of why.
Questions upon questions
When she finally sat next to her mother, in safety, she could not suppress her trembling. In the silence of the night, broken only by the distant echoes of war, she asked quietly: “Why, Mama? Why didn’t Ernst survive that and I did?”
Her mother took her hand, squeezed it tightly, but said nothing. What could she have said?
Erika couldn’t sleep that night. The events whirled through her head and she kept asking herself: “Was it just a coincidence? Or was it more than that?”
Did he really exist?
Years later, when she thought back, these questions still echoed in her mind. “Who told my mother to send me to the opera on that day of all days?”
Erika began to appreciate the value of life in a new way. Every decision, every encounter became more meaningful to her. The weeks following that fateful night were hard. Again and again she saw how difficult it was for older people in particular to find their way around the huge pile of rubble that was their former home. This realization helped her to bear the thought that Ernst no longer had to experience all this.
The events of that night had awakened a quiet voice inside her, telling her that perhaps there was more after all. Was it God? Had he made her mother send her to the opera that day? Was it really his plan? For years, the Nazis had persuaded her that there was no God and that faith was just an illusion. But in the midst of the inferno, reality seemed to speak a different language …
“Does he really exist?”
Source: hoffnung HEUTE, issue 9
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