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By Root 1076 0

yeast and schnapps at a distillery close to their home. When the teenager was sketching in his room and heard a radio warning of an air raid, he would hang a towel out of the window, as a signal to his father to halt production in the works. They preferred to do this at the last possible moment, because the yeast spoilt if the plant was shut down. In the late afternoon of 13 February 1945, the boy spent some time with his mother at Dresden station, watching the great throng of soldiers, travellers and refugees. They took the streetcar home at 9 p.m. Soon after they reached their house, which stood in the inner suburbs, there was an alarm. The building was owned by his father’s company, which had its offices on the ground floor. The managing director had ordered the cellar specially strengthened as a shelter with steel shutters, rubber seals and a telephone line. The family descended into its safety, and sat there through the storm of concussions which followed. Only twenty-five minutes after the raid began, the planes departed. The Berganders emerged into the darkness to find that no bombs had fallen near by, but a great pink glow suffused the sky above the city. Gotz climbed on to the factory roof, and used sand to extinguish a few incendiaries which had fallen there. The largest local landmark was a big cigarette factory, domed like a mosque, and surmounted by minarets. Everything upon the horizon as far as its gates was burning. Gotz marvelled at the beauty of the flames, reflected in the yellow glass of the dome. He was awed, and afraid. This first attack had been carried out by 244 Lancasters of the RAF’s 5 Group, which had dropped more than 800 tons of bombs.

Even at a safe distance from the vast conflagration engulfing the city, the teenager felt its heat. He descended again to the street, and saw the first trickle of terrified fugitives approaching. “Everything is burning!” they cried. Their coats were covered with ash, and many were coughing violently from smoke inhalation. Some carried bags laden with a few possessions. A small, stunned crowd gathered in front of the Bergander house, discussing the nightmare. Suddenly somebody shouted: “Alarm again!” They looked at each other in disbelief. “Impossible!” said a man. The teenager shouted fiercely at the sky: “Criminals!” It seemed so utterly unjust. They retired to their cellar again, listening in terror to explosions which seemed much heavier and closer than during the earlier wave of bombing. So they were. Five hundred and twenty-nine RAF Lancasters delivered more than 1,800 tons of bombs with deadly accuracy. Just six were lost. The impact upon Dresden was catastrophic.

After forty minutes, the attack stopped. The Berganders emerged from the shelter to find that their own house and factory were almost the only buildings in the area which survived undamaged. When the boy went back on to the roof, he descended to tell his parents that he could see only a white wall of flame. Sporadic explosions persisted, from delayed-action bombs. The lower part of their own street was burning. The crowd of fugitives was swelling constantly. At last, Gotz Bergander tired of the awful spectacle, and sank exhausted into sleep.

Next morning, the residents of Dresden stumbled out into the streets, to behold the utter devastation of their city. Victor Klemperer, a sixty-three-year-old Jewish academic, yearned as much as any man in Europe for the defeat of the Nazis, yet he was appalled by what he now saw before him:

We walked slowly, for I was now carrying both bags, and my limbs hurt . . . Above us, building after building was a burnt-out ruin. Down here by the river, where many people were moving along or resting on the ground, masses of the empty, rectangular cases of the stick incendiary bombs stuck out of the churned-up earth. Fires were still burning in many of the buildings . . . At times, small and no more than a bundle of clothes, the dead were scattered across our path. The skull of one had been torn away, the top of the head was a dark red bowl. Once an arm lay there