2 I Saw the Opera House Burning

We interviewed Erika Hermann in her apartment near the tree-lined, fashionable shopping area renamed by the Russians the Strasse der Befreiung, [Street of Liberation]. Her tiny apartment is filled with massive pieces of furniture—chests, end tables, a dining room set—all expertly designed and carved by her father (a master wood-carver) in deep-cut designs featuring hunters, shepherds, and animals.

I was standing on the square in front of the post office at about 12:30 on a February day. There was a sharp wind, but it was bearable, and the sun was shining weakly through a sort of milky sky. It was beautiful. Suddenly the sirens gave the early warning signal—three toots for early warning. It was lunch time, and there were so many people coming and going—we still had the old streetcars then—I thought to myself, if anything were to happen here now with so many people moving about, stores open, shops full, it would be terrible. As these thoughts went through my mind, I never really imagined that it would come that very night. 

Erika Hermann. Dresden, 1994. Courtesy Norma and Garold Davis.

Going home from work, I rode on the “perron,” the open platform at the back end of the streetcar, and as I looked back I saw this marvelous picture: Saint Gregory’s Gate, the Cathedral raising its filigreed towers up to the heavens, and the sun, so red, the red beams of light were somehow diffused through the white clouds and spread a reddish glow over everything. I saw the parliament house, then the terrace, the Church of our Lady [Frauenkirche], and the Sekundogene Gate. Everything looked so beautiful. When we were almost across the Augustus Bridge—the one that is now called the Dimitrov Bridge—there to the left was the Narrenhäusel with its wrought iron gate in front. And I saw it all so clearly just before the streetcar turned into the former Main Street [Haupt Strasse] (now called the Street of Liberation [Befreiungs Strasse]). And in the row of houses was the Thomas Fountains. In the middle were two streetlights, where a few of the old trees are still standing. Then the streetcar went through a little street (now called the Rosa-Luxemburg Street) with barely room for the streetcar and crossed over what was called the Kaiser-Wilhelm Square (now it’s the Karl-Marx Square). We went by the Japanese Palace and then turned out toward the area where I lived.

I got home and lay down. Mother just said, “Are you feeling better?” I took a tablet called koffetelin—I remember that was the name—and in an hour my fever was gone. Then suddenly the doorbell rang, and there was my uncle standing at the door. He lived way out in Trachau on Gebler Street in the house my grandfather built. He had come all that way and said, “Guess what! Arno is home from Russia on furlough. He has frozen feet and has to go to an army hospital. He is not well. He has a fever. He is at home and wants you to come out to see him today. Couldn’t you come out to see us this evening? He so wants to see you, and he has no idea where he will be next. He is supposed to go to Czechoslovakia.” “Of course,” said my mother. Arno was her brother. And the uncle—he was the husband of her sister—he lived in the house, too. There were four families living on the old family property.

And so we went. I wasn’t feeling well, but the fever was gone, and we were glad to go. When we arrived, Arno said, “You look so pale and yet a little flushed at the same time.”

“Yes,” I said, “but my fever is gone. I have these wonderful tablets.”

“Can you give me one of your tablets?” he said. “I have to leave before the day’s over. I’m not supposed to be here. I’ve got to be at the Neustädter train station. I’m supposed to report in at an army hospital in Czechoslovakia.”

I said, “Can’t you go to the hospital here in Dresden?”

“No,” he said. “I have my orders, and I have to report there. I have to leave this very evening. I have to be at the station by ten o’clock to catch the troop transport.”

I said, “OK. Then I’ll give you one of my tablets.”

“Good,” he said, and I gave him a tablet, and a short time later, when he took his temperature, the fever was gone. Then he said, “I wish you hadn’t given me that tablet. If my fever is gone, they will ship me back to the front.”

I said, “Oh Uncle, you know you have plenty of time for that.”

The air raid report came over the radio hourly. At eight o’clock, they reported no air activity, but at nine we got the report again, and it said, “Heavy enemy aircraft approaching over northwest Germany. Further information will follow.” My mother and I said, “We’re heading for home.” We had a very strange feeling.

Then my uncle Arno said, “You know what, I’ll just come along with you.”

And my other uncle, the one who had come to see us, said, “I’ll go with you, Arno. I’ll help you get to the Neustädter Station.” So the four of us left and headed for the streetcar, which came right away, and then, just when we arrived at the stop where we had to get off, the early warning sirens sounded.

“Oh, we heard that once already today, at noon,” I said. We said good-bye, and the two men went on.

“We’ll just see how far we can get,” they said.

I said, “Why don’t you come to our place and get into the cellar with us!”

“No, we’ve got to get to the train station; it’s already after nine.” It was about twenty minutes past nine.

So we got home, and then it came. We hadn’t heard anything, but suddenly the sky became pale and then bright. Those were the first flares; we called them the Christmas trees [Christbäume]. I had experienced that in Berlin. When you saw the Christmas trees, then you knew you were going to get it. I said, “Mother, we’ve got to get our emergency packs.”

We always had an emergency backpack with extra clothes, shoes, and toilet paper. When I went to work, I always took my pack with me, over my shoulders or hanging on my bike. Then we had the streetcars, but after the bombing, I had to travel by bike, and I took my pack with me. I always had it stuffed full. You never knew when or if something was going to happen, and you had to have something with you. Of course, the most food you could carry would be a box of crackers or something like that, just for emergency. You couldn’t carry a large supply of food. You were always hearing about those who had been bombed out and didn’t have anything, who were just lucky to get out alive.

So the flares were out, and a moment later, we heard the sirens—full alarm. We headed for the cellar. We took an old lady with us who could hardly walk, and then it started. It was terrible. The window panes were bursting in everywhere, and soot came out of the furnaces. And the bombs that didn’t hit—the ones that went over you—had this whistling sound. You could hear this shrill whistling and then it stopped, and then you heard the explosion. Finally, we were so happy to hear the all-clear sirens, and we went upstairs.

We swept up the broken glass. In the living room, a piece of the ceiling plaster had come down, and we cleaned that up. There was not much we could do about the windows at the time. We put up something—paper or cardboard. It wasn’t long before the first dazed survivors started straggling out from the city. We had gone out into the street, and I even went down to the Elbe to have a look and saw this terrible ocean of fire. But the Church of Our Lady was still standing; I could see it in the light of the flames. And then I said—to show you how stupid we are—I said, “At least the opera house has been spared. Shouldn’t we make some coffee?” I loved the opera.

Many who were coming out from the edge of the city were exhausted. We made malt coffee [Malzkaffee] and some tea and stood outside the front door (the windows in the door were all gone) and distributed warm drinks. But this was nothing compared to what was about to come. The night attack came, and it was much, much worse. We never thought we would survive it. But we did. Our Father in Heaven protected us. But the people who started coming out of the city then! So many fateful events!

Across from us lived an older couple; they had a daughter who had a crippled hand. But through the Association for the Disabled, she had been able to find a husband. The parents were so happy that their daughter was finally able to be married. After the first attack, they went into the city to check on the couple. They never came back. None of the family ever came back.

Another very nice family in our neighborhood had a daughter who had just gotten married; it was Mardi Gras [Faschingsdienstag], February 13. They had had the wedding on the weekend. They lived on Röhrhof Street. The two younger daughters who were still at home said, “Oh, Papa and Mama, let us go over and celebrate with them. The wedding guests will still be there, and we can enjoy a little of the Mardi Gras.” There was no celebrating on the streets then. No one was interested. So the parents let their two girls go, and in a little while, the entire wedding party was dead. Wiped out; nothing left of them. It was a terrible sight. Those were the kinds of things we experienced.

After things had quieted down a bit, another couple we knew came to see us. They were distant relatives, and they wanted to stay with us because all their family had died in the city. So we kept them with us until they were married—married and had a baby—and then they went away. Her husband had been on furlough.

A lot of people thought they would be safe in the big park [Grosser Garten], and so many died there. That is the big park across from our church. Fighter planes strafed them down. So many were wounded and killed there in the big park that they set up a field hospital there. Those were bad times.

We were worried about the two uncles, Mama’s brother-in-law, and her brother. Well, about four in the morning someone knocked, and there was the uncle. He said, “I just wanted to tell you—I came all the way from Trachau—that we are OK. I took Arno to the Neustädter Station in the city.”

There was a bomb shelter in the cellar of the city hall. That’s where my uncle took Arno. In the meantime, his fever had come back. “I wish Erika had given me another one of her tablets, but we’re lucky to be alive,” he told my uncle. Afterwards, my uncle had taken him over to the Neustädter Station. Fortunately, they had not been there during the bombing. So many people were killed there. Everyone was going somewhere, and there were refugees from Silesia. It was very bad.

The next day, February 14, I went down to the Elbe again. It was dark. The sun couldn’t penetrate the smoke. You could not see very well; it was never really daylight—it was a true Ash Wednesday. There had been a storm during the night, a fire storm. The oxygen had just fanned the flames. I could smell the burning, and the people came wandering, wandering, wandering by.

There were some things one could do to help. We took in a woman the second night after the attack. She had been on night duty. She lived on Güterbahnhof Street. She said, “I couldn’t get into my apartment. I have some things in the basement, but there was a dead woman lying across the stairs, and I had to turn around. Could I spend the night with you?”

“Yes, of course, you can stay here.”

“Maybe I can try it again tomorrow?”

I said, “Yes, you can do that. You can leave your backpack here with us.”

“Good,” she said. “I probably won’t be able to carry much. Then I’ll be back.” She tried, but she couldn’t do it. The dead woman was still there, but someone had taken the ring off her finger. She was all burned, but the place where the ring had been was white. “It was horrible,” she said. Then she said good-bye and thanked us. “There’s no sense in my staying here in Dresden. I don’t have anyone here anymore. I’m going somewhere else. I’ll go to my relatives in the West.”

“Yes, yes.” And Mama and I just stood there with our tea. But there were many who were not so well off. Their hair was burned off; all their things were burned. They just wanted to get somewhere to relatives or friends, anywhere, just to save themselves.

After the second attack, the Church of Our Lady was still standing, but it collapsed on the afternoon of the fourteenth. The Nazis had set up a film archive in the catacombs, and the films had burned so violently that the building could not stand the heat, and the dome had collapsed. The next day I walked down to the river again, and I saw the opera house burning.

On May 6, 1945, as we were sitting at home eating lunch, we heard the frightful roar of cannons. What was that? We didn’t know. Could that possibly be artillery? No, it couldn’t be. It was like a drum roll of cannon fire, so powerful that the cupboard doors in the kitchen flew open; the dishes and the windows rattled. It lasted for about an hour; then everything was suddenly quiet. We couldn’t explain it. The newspapers had said that our army would liberate Saxony, where we lived, from the advancing Russian army.

On the morning of May 7, I rode my bike to work as always, took the ferry across the Elbe, and rode on to the office. The bridges were still damaged, and I could get to work faster with the ferry. It was very quiet in the office, but suddenly our boss was called out. He had to go to the winery in Lockwitzgrund. It was a bombproof shelter, and there he was to receive instruction from the Gauleiter [Nazi term somewhat equivalent to mayor] Mutschmann. After about an hour, he returned and said, “Saxony has been liberated from the enemy. We can all relax.” But Gauleiter Mutschmann had not been there, only his representative. We all went back to work. Saxony was safe. That was about noon. About one o’clock, a car came driving into the courtyard. It was the engineer who was responsible for electrical power. He had a red chevron on his white license plate. He came into the office and said to me, “You live in Neustadt?”

“Yes,” I said.

“See that you get yourself across the Elbe as quickly as you can. The Russians are already in the forest behind Radebeul. Just drop everything and get home, right now.” Our offices were in the Altstadt. I didn’t say good-bye to anyone, just slipped out the back door of the office, got on my bike, and started home.

It was not easy. The SS [the elite Nazi officer staff] had taken over the Marien Bridge and wouldn’t let anyone cross because they were about to blow it up. So I thought, the only way to get across is on one of the ferries, not the big one, but the little one; it was closer. When I got to the ferry, I could see that it was not going to be big enough. There were lots of people on the move. They had closed down the slaughter house, and the workers were trying to get across the river. The little ferry would hold only about thirty people at the most. On the other side of the Elbe was a group of German soldiers driving a herd of cattle. The soldiers demanded that the ferryman bring them over the Elbe to our side—to the Altstadt—immediately. The people weren’t about to let him go off empty. They said, “You have to take us over. We want to get to our homes.” We stormed the ferry—I with my bicycle—and when the ferry began listing badly, I thought we would all be dumped into the water. But the ferryman got us across, and we landed safely at the other shore. I got on my bike as quickly as possible, but it was pretty hard because we were pushing through soldiers and cows who were trying to get on the ferry, and no one was there to direct the loading and unloading.

I peddled down Leipzig Street, then turned into Rehefelder Street, and there I saw white flags flying from all the windows. I rushed into the house and locked the door because I could hear motors, heavy motors, like tanks. My mother was at home. Suddenly the power went out. We were in the dark. We had turned on the hall light because I had just come in and brought my bike in with me, which normally went down in the cellar. Then the power went out. We ran to the window and saw the first tanks coming from the direction of Radebeul, from the area Wilder Mann. The white flags were all out. We quickly closed the windows and pulled the curtains so that no one could look in. We didn’t know what to expect. And the tanks stopped, some right in our area. And the women, several women with children went out and cheered the Soviet soldiers. The soldiers even handed out pieces of bread or things like that to the children. Bread was scarce at that time. I couldn’t understand it; neither could my mother. But they were our occupation troops, the Soviets.

We couldn’t sleep all night. We were especially afraid because we were on the ground floor. What’s going to happen now? It was a wild night. Then they started coming, the stragglers, so to speak. They were partly Mongols and from other countries. Maybe Armenians, you couldn’t tell exactly. Many of them had bicycles and wore large, white coats. You couldn’t see what they had under their coats, and the bicycles were loaded down, too. This went on all night long and into the afternoon of the next day.

On the day after, that was then the ninth of May, we heard on the radio that we had capitulated and that Herr Dönitz—he had been put in as Hitler’s successor—that Herr Dönitz would sign the capitulation papers. But we didn’t know. We were afraid and kept the doors locked because we had heard a lot of things. And at night we didn’t sleep downstairs but up on the third floor because several houses had been broken into on the first night. The next day we opened the door, and then some soldiers came.

One went from apartment to apartment and demanded, “Watch, watch!” I had my father’s watch on my wrist because my golden watch had been at the jewelers on the thirteenth of February. The jeweler told me it had been burned up, but it was not burned up. They were able to save their safe which was in the basement. I learned about that years later. Everything in it became their beginning capital, including my watch. Naturally, they claimed I had never asked to have it back. “You’ve still got your apartment; be happy. We have to start all over again, outside Dresden, in Heidenau. Surely you can find yourself another watch.” I wasn’t so desperate to have it back, but I was curious to know what had happened to it. So, now my father’s watch was gone. I gave it to the soldier, and then he saw another one. I told him, “That one is broken.”

“No matter, broken. Watch, watch!” and he took that one. Oh well, he can get it repaired himself.

But then no one else came into our house because we had an old man in the apartment building who locked the door and put a piece of a tree trunk under the latch so that it wouldn’t open. We had replaced the windows that had been blown out during the bombing—partly with glass and partly with boards. Mostly with boards until we could get real glass again. Yes, those were the first weeks.

But every night you heard things, and then the people began helping one another. Someone struck an air raid gong whenever any of the occupation troops were trying to get into our houses. And not far from our house was the commander’s headquarters, so whenever anything was wrong someone came running fast. After that it was pretty quiet in our neighborhood.

After a while, we could go shopping again, but there was no meat. Bread, but no fat, not even sausage. So we helped one another again. If someone had some flour, we mixed it with cooking oil. It is good when you have a food supply. I think a lot about our instructions in the Church to have a year’s supply of food. We had that idea also, but we couldn’t store much variety. During the war, it was bad. We had a butter substitute we jokingly called Affenfett [ape’s fat], a slang term, but that’s about all we had. So we would mix flour with oil and cook it with some onions if we had them, and then we would spread it on our bread. After several weeks, we had the first “fat rations.” And of course the first thing one wanted to do was take a slice of bread and smear it with this fat. But it didn’t set well with all of us. We got diarrhea. Our bodies weren’t used to it.

My relatives, the four families who lived out in Trachau in the house my grandfather built in 1898, had to go through a lot. There were disturbances every night. So my uncle got a big ladder long enough to reach the roof. It was then May, and it was a very warm springtime that year. He put the women and the two children to bed on the roof. There was a flat part of the roof—it was steep only on the sides—and that is where they spent the night. He always got them down again early in the morning. So at night the soldiers never found any women in the house.

One morning they waited for the uncle to come, and he didn’t come, and he didn’t come. They called down to the people on the street and asked them to see if the uncle was in the house. “And if he isn’t in the house, come back out and put the ladder up. And if the door is locked, you will have to break in.” They were afraid that the uncle might have been taken away, but they found him lying on the floor. He had been beaten and was only semiconscious. One of the men found the front door open, went upstairs, and opened a door to the roof. Then they could come down that way. The uncle had to be treated by a doctor, had to have his wounds bound, and had to have an injection. These things happened, at least until they were assigned to quarter troops in their house—a lieutenant and his men from the Red Army.

Some distant relatives of ours out in Radebeul had bad luck because they had to quarter ordinary soldiers. If there was anything in the house any of the soldiers wanted, my relatives had to carry it out to the truck, and it was taken away. The soldiers didn’t take the big pieces of furniture like a walnut sideboard. They took other things they thought were more valuable. But the heavy furniture, they couldn’t take that. But the family had some good luck later and got into a nice apartment and were able to buy some furniture. So the family had to start all over again. Yes, those were the first weeks.

And then we were, for all practical purposes, unemployed. I couldn’t get to my office. The company had been taken over by the Red Army because it contained a production section including a meat market, a bakery, and a large motor pool—that is, what was left of the motor pool after the war. But the production section had been taken over, and we wanted to go back to work. We hadn’t done anything to cross the authorities, even though our directors were not around anymore; at least they were not to be seen. And what was funny, a Red Army officer sat in my swivel chair in the closed section of the building and hosed us down because we wouldn’t go away. He sprayed us with a fire hose and told us to go home: “This business is now occupied, and you don’t work here anymore.” They had let some of the people go back to work—transportation workers and those who were responsible for the supplies. But those of us who had worked in the office, nothing doing.

After half a year, I finally got a work permit, but everything had changed. In the meantime, I made a living as a “rubble woman.” Since our business was closed, we had to report to a so-called employment office that was set up in front of the old city hall, right in the open. We had a work card; they stamped it, and we were put in different work details, like cleaning up rubble. On one occasion, we had to walk all the way across Dresden to the Altstadt, and on the way, we ran into a group of workers who were heading for Neustadt. Those things happened. But still, we were happy to be working. We thought we were going to be paid, but the first work details were not paid at all!

Then one day we were standing around the employment office, a big truck rolled up, and we were all loaded in. “You’re being taken out to the industrial area. You must disassemble a turbine factory which will be sent to the Soviet Union as reparation payment.” So we had to climb into this big truck and were taken to the industrial area. When we got there—it was the former Brückner, Kadis, & Co.—they opened big iron gates, and there stood a Soviet major with his red stripes and some other big officials. We had a little orientation, and then we had to start removing fiberglass insulation from the pipes. It was very unpleasant work because the fiberglass got into your skin, and the first day I didn’t even have a jacket. After that I took an old jacket and heavy work gloves with me, and it went better.

A Russian work party was also there, about nine men, who were forced laborers. One day we were sitting in the soup kitchen having our breakfast. We had a German boss who was in charge and told us what to do. Suddenly the door flew open, and one of these forced laborers looked in. He was a young man, but he looked much older than he was. He came in with an iron rod and told us to get out; we had to work; we couldn’t sit around and eat breakfast all day. The old German boss said, “Now listen. None of that here. These women are not used to this heavy work, and they have to eat.”

“I don’t see why.” I must say, he spoke very good German. Then suddenly he said, I can’t repeat the exact words, but he made it clear that he hated us, because—he ripped off his shirt—because he had been tortured by the SS. They had burned a Star of David into his chest. We could also see that his ribs had been caved in and he had only a few teeth left in his mouth, in spite of his youth. It was terrible to look at. Then I could understand his hatred, even though we should not hate one another. But it says in the Bible, “An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth.” Someone there recited that. It was terrible. We couldn’t be angry with him when we saw that, and who knows what the others had gone through. That was one of the most lasting impressions I took with me from those days.

We worked. But I also got to know a very nice, young Russian. His parents were teachers; he was educated; he could even speak English. With my schooling, I could converse with him a little now and then, even though I didn’t know Russian. He was very nice. His name was Ivan. He was our overseer and looked in on us because we were not working in the underground levels anymore. All of the basement rooms had been cleaned out; they were empty, and we were working above ground. We had to paint pipes and help label them with a number. This went on for a long time, and we were supposed to get some pay. But I didn’t like it. I experienced so many things there that I never thought were possible for a woman to experience. I can’t be more specific. But when you have children, you never know if you might not someday be put into a situation where you would have to behave that way just to get something to eat for the children. But I couldn’t understand it. I had a different point of view.

Finally, I asked if I could quit. I had to go to the major’s office— he had an interpreter—and I had to tell him why I wanted to quit. I said, “We are almost through, and I want to go back to work in my own profession.”

“Yes, but try to understand. We need every able-bodied person. Come back tomorrow.” And then the next day, “Are your reasons the same?” Of course, they were the same; what else could I say? Then he said, “OK, you can have your release papers.” It may have been a few days later, but I got my release papers along with another woman who lived in my neighborhood. We were happy to get away from there. Even though those are things you don’t forget, you can’t be angry. We had been protected and had survived it all. That was the main thing. We learned from the experience, but it was sad.

It was sad because I didn’t even know whether my father was alive or dead. There was no mail in those days. There were many who didn’t know. But I went on working as a “rubble woman” in various work details. Eventually, we started getting paid for our work on the disassembly details. It wasn’t much, but at least we were getting paid. That had not been the case on the first details when we were doing nothing but removing rubble.

On one occasion, I had a detail on Arnold Street that lasted for several days. We had to tear up the street which was partly covered with asphalt and partly covered with large, heavy cobblestones. That was hard work for women, but there were also some men there, older men, who helped with the very heavy labor. We had to take up the large gas pipes because they were needed by the Russians—part of the reparations debt. It was so quiet there. There was not a house standing in which people could live, so this demolition was somewhat understandable. We worked under guard. Soldiers walked back and forth, and there was also a big boss who joined us on occasions for breakfast. He told us of atrocities that the SS had committed in his homeland. They had driven his family out of their home, wife and children, and his daughter who had a small baby. I don’t know if I believe it or not, but he told us that the SS had thrown the little baby up in the air and caught it on a bayonet. That was incomprehensible to us, and he said, “You’ve got to believe me; I’m not lying. We want to make things better for you here.” Well, we heard it, and whatever the others thought of it, they kept it to themselves. We weren’t free to express our opinions, but we had to listen to everything.

Sometimes we had to unload coal cars with gigantic shovels. They were so big you could load a ton on them. That was men’s work. But we had to unload them and then shovel the coal back into trucks. That was very, very hard. Everyone got back pains from doing this kind of labor, which we weren’t used to. There was even a “rubble train” in the city for a while into which I helped shovel rubble. Oh, we learned such a variety of things. That was our difficult postwar period, but I was happy just to have survived.

In 1949, I was finally able to return to my profession, and I was happy to be doing real work once again. Of course, the rubble work had to be done, even in West Germany, but they finished it a lot sooner than we did. It was 1952 before we began the first reconstruction. One of the first projects was the Zwinger [a famous Baroque palace-art gallery].

There are a lot of people here who have experienced all of this who could tell you much, much more. There are just certain things that have stayed in my memory. I don’t know if I did everything right in those days, the way I would now. But that is what our earthly existence is. We learn from all our experiences, and then we grow spiritually.

As I said, I never felt the stability in the Lutheran-Evangelical Church that I felt from the first time I was able to attend our Church on the Dr.-Kurt-Fischer Allee [Allee means boulevard, street]. Years before, I learned about the Church from relatives, but then I thought, no, I can’t go up there on the Dr.-Kurt-Fischer Allee, that was a bad area. So many things had happened there in the past. The army was right next door. Once I was halfway there but then turned around. Then I asked Sister Heldmann to pick me up. That was on June 19, and I will never forget it. June 19, 1983. It was so wonderful; I could hardly believe it. I started going to church, and one day Sister Karin Zwirner said to me, “Why don’t you come at 9:00?”

I said, “I thought it began at 10:50.”

“No,” she said, “at 9:00 we have our women’s organization.” I knew nothing about Relief Society until then. Later, when the missionaries visited me regularly, I began to learn. That was so lovely. I have never regretted it, quite the contrary. And even though I was somewhat older, I am so happy that I found my way to the Church. Just last Sunday, I was moved to tears when the two missionaries said good-bye. It was so sad; we had learned to love them so much. Nothing like that had happened to me before. I had never learned to love the people I became acquainted with from the first moment on. It is a strange experience for me.

Today the two young sister missionaries arrived. I have become acquainted with many people through my profession, but this is a wonderful atmosphere, and I don’t want to miss any of it, even though my health prevents me from attending sometimes.

There are times when I am weak, when I can’t concentrate, when I let my problems get the better of me, when I am inattentive. Then I lose a bit of the security I have from my faith. But somehow I am able to stay on the straight path and not be led astray. My faith has preserved me until now, and I have to work with myself; I have to overcome myself. Then here comes a feeling of guilt because I don’t get to the temple often enough. But I can’t risk going because I have these doctor’s treatments every two days, and that requires a strictly regulated diet so that my digestive system will be in order to visit the doctor. If I would have to leave the session—that would be terrible; it would disturb everyone in the session, and I don’t want that on my head.

I still have much to do for my other ancestors. Unfortunately, I don’t have all the dates together, but I am working on it, and I hope very, very much that I can take care of it. I was baptized on February 2, 1984, and in 1985, I went to the temple for the first time. It was wonderful to be sealed to my parents, just wonderful. I had the feeling that my parents were in the room and that they accepted it. That was very strange. There were proxies there, a male and a female proxy, but that was such a wonderful feeling, as if they were right there in the room with me. I would never have thought it possible that someone could feel something like that. And I know for sure that if my parents had been alive they would have been baptized.

My father was a Christian, and he told me many things that I have since forgotten. But occasionally I find some passage in the Bible and say to myself, “My father told me about that.” For example, Christ said, “What thou must do, go and do quickly”; my father was always saying that. He used so many expressions that came from the Bible, but I had forgotten them over the years. As I mentioned, I have had to relearn how to think, and now I remember so many things and say to myself, “My father knew that already.”

My mother would have been baptized in any case. Probably the only thing that would have bothered her would have been going under the water at her age, but she would have done it. She would have loved to have been a member.

But my other relatives over in Leipzig have never understood, nor have those in Pinneberg. My cousin let me know she felt I had betrayed my religion when I was baptized. I did not betray my religion, quite the contrary. I deepened my religion. I know of nothing more wonderful; there could be nothing more wonderful than my religion. One has to treasure that, and one has to keep the commandments—that’s the essential thing.

I pay a full tithing, and I am blessed for it again and again. Before, when someone would tell me that, I would think to myself that can’t be true. But it is true. One receives so many blessings from tithing; it is wonderful. Many people won’t believe you when you tell them that, but it is really wonderful.

There are so many things buried in my memory, some that are valuable to relate, some that are useless. But I am thankful that I am a member of the Church—very, very thankful.