1 The Dead Need No Water
Edith Schade Krause lived in Dresden during the Second World War and is mentioned as Edith Schade in chapter 7. She lives in Prenzlau with her husband, Walter Krause (see chapters 5 and 6). In April 1991, Sister Krause was the keynote speaker at the Women’s Conference held on the campus of Brigham Young University.
During the war, the large cities like Berlin and Hamburg had been suffering more and more bombing attacks, but up until 1945 things in Dresden were still very quiet. We had no heavy industry that supported the war effort and no military installations or similar targets for bombers. Nevertheless, the most horrible event of the war struck Dresden. On February 13, 1945, Dresden was bombed by the British and the Americans.
This Tuesday began like every other. After we closed the office, which was located next to the large city park, I took the streetcar to Seidnitz to help the Hubold family with some genealogical research. I visited one family or another nearly every Tuesday. So on this Tuesday, I was at their home, which was number 86 Winterberg Street, and they invited me to stay for dinner. After dinner and after completing our genealogy work, I was about to start for home. It was nearly 9:30. But we got to talking about this and that, and I was still there when the air raid sirens went off. They wouldn’t let me leave. We expected to hear the all clear signal any minute, but like good German citizens, we packed a few things together and went into the air raid shelter in the basement of the apartment building. There were no public air raid bunkers in Dresden. While we were sitting there in the cellar, someone suggested that we go take a peek outside to see what was going on. We saw the Christmas trees in the sky [flares dropped from airplanes], and we knew that we were going to be bombed. Everyone was holding their breath. We had never experienced anything like this before. It wasn’t long before we heard the droning of airplanes and then the explosion of falling bombs. We would hear this far-off rumble, and then the earth would shake like we were in an earthquake. After about half an hour, everything grew quiet, but it was very bright outside.
The all-clear signal sounded, and the air raid warden asked if anyone would go through the apartment building with him. I had been trained as an air raid warden and knew what had to be done, so I volunteered. I was the only one who didn’t have an apartment in the building that needed looking into. When we came to the main floor, we found an incendiary bomb lying there that had not exploded—a dud. The man asked me what we should do, and I told him we should open the window and throw it out, which we did.
Scarcely had we finished making our rounds when we saw some new Christmas trees falling from the sky, and we knew that we were about to experience a second attack. Outside a fire storm was already raging, so we went into the cellar again. The second attack was much more furious than the first. In my mind, I was still carrying the picture of the bright red sky, the burning houses and trees, and now the bombs began falling much closer to our house. The noise was horrible. Judging from the sound of the planes, there must have been hundreds of them. The only thing that drowned out this roaring was the exploding bombs. I thought this inferno would never end, but gradually the roar of the planes became fainter and fainter. The air raid warden was the first one to leave the cellar, but he came rushing back to tell us that the apartment building was on fire. Everyone rushed upstairs to help.
On the second floor, an apartment door was open and heavy, black smoke was pouring out. The people who lived there were refugees from Romania, and they were screaming and running back and forth. An incendiary bomb had fallen directly onto a feather mattress, and that was what was causing all the smoke. I couldn’t see any flames, and there was nothing else on fire. Since I was the only one who didn’t live in the building, I was also the only one with a cool head, and it fell my lot to put out the fire. I called for the apartment fire watch—all women. As soon as the other people found that their own apartments were ok, they gave us a hand, and we formed a bucket brigade.
Fortunately there was still some water pressure in the basement, and we got the fire out, but not before one of the people helping me was overcome by the smoke. I knew something about smoke inhalation and told them to bring me a chair and some milk or black coffee. We put the man in the chair and then carried him outside into the fresh air and poured some coffee into him until he came to. We then helped him down into the cellar, and since he spent most of his time screaming that we should save his stamp collection, he remained conscious. His family stood around weeping and wailing, which I could understand, but I had to worry about the fire. The burned room looked terrible and the one next to it looked just as bad. Nothing much had burned, but there was black soot over everything. The fire warden thanked me, and we went outside.
There was a hurricane-force wind blowing, and we could hardly stand. We made our way around the house to see if there were any more fires. The place looked like a battle field. There were stone blocks lying everywhere, tiles from the roofs, and rubble from the buildings that had fallen down. Burning debris was flying through the air. We could not put out any of the ensuing fires because there was no more water, and more and more burning objects were flying through the air and landing everywhere. We tried to pull these away from the houses and the trees, all the time fighting against this howling wind. In the distance, we heard explosion after explosion from the enormous time bombs that had been dropped. The fire and the wind became so furious that there was nothing more to do but go back into the apartment building. I went with someone on an inspection tour of the building once more. After a while, the sounds of the explosions stopped, but the rain of fire grew stronger and stronger. Some of the people from the building came into Hubold’s apartment to thank them and to thank me, but I was only worried now about the burning debris flying about.
About 3:00 a.m., we were all alone in the Hubold apartment, and we knelt in prayer. We had done what we could and had to leave everything else in the hands of the Lord. I was totally exhausted and had lain on the couch to pray in my sorrow when Sister Hubold came in and said it was raining. It was just a short shower, but it wet down the roof and the walls of the building and lessened the danger of more fire breaking out. We were very thankful and offered another prayer, and then I slept for a few hours.
Suddenly it was seven o’clock, and I decided to set out for home to see what had happened to my loved ones. Under normal circumstances that would have been a walk of two or three hours, but these were not normal circumstances. I said good-by to the members. What would I find at home? Would I even be able to get home? Would there be a reunion with my family? If so, when? I put my faith in the Lord and started out.
In this area, most of the houses were still standing, but the streets were cluttered with rubble. Still, it was possible to get through in spite of the bricks and blocks and tree branches. I was just twenty-five and very athletic, so it was not too difficult for me to climb and jump over the obstacles that lay in the street. The sky was dark and murky, but little by little it grew brighter. The streetcars were all damaged or burned out. The further I went, the worse it got. It looked terrible in the large park. The beautiful trees looked eerie with their bare branches. They were all split and broken and black with smoke, ashes, and soot. People were wandering around like they were in a daze. It had been the night of the fasching [carnival] parties, and in spite of the austerity caused by the war, the rich people in this area of Dresden had all been out celebrating. They came wandering by in their party costumes, their faces made up, smeared, and blackened, and in the big park this looked very grotesque. Many of the women had jackets or shawls or even fur coats over their shoulders, many of them with holes burned in them. It was eerie.
I looked at the dead bodies. The crying and the moaning of the wounded tore my heart. Again and again I head the cry, “Water, water.” What could I do? I was not wounded, but I had no water, no medicine, no bandages, nothing, nothing. So I went on, hoping to make it as far as the office where I worked on Franz Liszt Street. The boss’s villa was bombed and burned out. In the courtyard, some chickens were still alive, so I threw them a few handfuls of chicken feed and went on. I had no idea what had happened to the family.
Walking across the large park presented no problem, just a few detours. I could have walked down the broad Tiergarten Street, but the electric cables from the street cars were dangling down, and the street was blocked with burned out street cars. There was more destruction there, but because the street was so broad it seemed somehow softened. In the back of my mind, I heard the animals in the zoo screaming. I made it as far as Stübel Square, and then I came upon the first serious blockade. Bombed out houses were scattered across the streets. I began climbing over the rubble, and then I saw the first corpses that had been burned by the phosphorous bombs. The corpses were about a third as large as a living person, but their skin was tight, and they were brown like they had just returned from a vacation with a suntan. They had no clothes, but they all had hair on their heads. They were in all sorts of contorted positions, squatting, lying, and stretched out. I thought of a scripture from the Bible that describes people lying in the streets.
In the areas where the houses had a yard in front, it was easier to get through because fewer blocks had fallen into the street and I could walk around them. The night was over, but the day seemed like a night, murky and hopeless. I wasn’t alone. There were individual people walking ahead of me and along side me, and we passed people going the other way, hurrying or walking in a daze. I couldn’t think much about my home because I had to be very careful with every step. I asked people who were coming from the other direction if one could still cross the Albert bridge, but they just mumbled, “Maybe,” or shrugged their shoulders. At Saxon Square, I made better progress because the square was so broad, and shortly before I reached the bridge, I asked some people if I would be able to get across. A man told me they had come from “over there.” I assumed he meant the other side of the river, and I felt some relief.
When I was a little girl, I was always afraid to walk across a bridge because I thought the cobble stones would fall out from under me and I would fall into the water. This time my fears were justified, but I didn’t have time to develop any unnecessary fears. I looked over the first section of the bridge and decided it would be best to stay to the right. I said a silent prayer and started across. I met another man and asked him how the bridge was at the other end. He encouraged me and told me that if I stayed on the right side I would get across safely, and I did.
But it was frightening to look down and see the broad, dark, and foaming Elbe, so I just looked straight ahead and tried to forget the threatening water below me. For years I had crossed this bridge every day to get to school and on Sundays to get to church, but the bridge I had crossed all those years no longer existed. Wherever I put my feet I felt danger, insecurity, and fear. When I finally had the bridge behind me, I looked down at the once beautiful grassy meadows that had formed the bank of the river. It was indescribable. Human bodies—or were they corpses?—lay everywhere. During the bombing, many people had run for the river—burning phosphorus torches—hoping to save themselves in the water, but fighter planes had repeatedly come low over the river and strafed these helpless people. This was repeated the next day, and there lay the bodies. Well, the dead need no water. I was glad I had not witnessed the strafing.
I had made it this far, and I was sure now that I could make it home. I had to do a lot of climbing over rubble until I got as far as Bautzner Street and from there on fewer of the houses appeared to be damaged. I was glad of that because I was getting very tired, although I wouldn’t admit it to myself. My only concern was whether or not I would belong to that large group of people who had lost their home and their family. But I felt a sense of relief as I made my way through the familiar streets because, except for the dirt, soot, and rocks that were scattered everywhere, there seemed to have been little major damage done in this area.
I walked and walked until I came to the corner of Sebnitz Street where we lived. Our building was built back from the street, and after a few steps, I saw that it was still standing. I was so overcome and so thankful that I could not even cry. The door to the building was open. I climbed the stairs to the fourth floor, and there I found all of my loved ones safe and sound. Only then did my legs give out on me, and I had to sit down. I took off my coat and discovered that I was exhausted. It was noon. I had been walking and climbing over rubble for five hours, and the only thing I wanted to do now was lie down and sleep. We joined together in a prayer of gratitude that we had all been spared, and then sleep overcame me.
I don’t think I had been sleeping for five minutes when I felt my mother waking me and saying in a very calm voice that we had to go to the cellar again because the planes were coming back. I told her I didn’t care, I just wanted to sleep, but when she said that she needed my help, I got dressed. My sister Hella was standing in the kitchen and said, “Help me. I don’t know what to do.” I told her to get her rucksack with the emergency supplies and we would all meet in the cellar.
Our neighbors, the Lucas family, were in the cellar with us and asked us to say the Lord’s prayer with them. They were good, pious people. The cellar was deep enough that we could not see out, and the sound of the exploding bombs sounded muffled and far away. I looked around to see if I could do anything, but there was nothing to be done. In my heart, I thanked my Heavenly Father that this time I was with my family.
The sirens were no longer functioning, so after the bombing had stopped, we decided to go back upstairs. We had no enthusiasm left as we dragged ourselves up the stairs, but we were happy to see that our apartment building was still standing. When we got to our apartment, we received a shock that brought us out of our weariness. All of the window panes were blown out, and millions of little glass splinters lay all over the apartment and over all the furniture. We shook everything we could off the balcony, and we swept, brushed, and cleaned up the little pieces of glass. It seemed like an eternity before we dared to sit down or to put anything on the table. Then we had to find cardboard or anything we could to cover the open windows. It was, after all, still February and very cold. What despair we would have been in at the time if we would have known that it would be three years before we could replace the glass in the windows. Fortunately there were three chimneys that went up through the walls of our apartment from the apartments below, and whether we were able to have a fire or not, we were never freezing.
There were no more raids, but the news we started getting about the destruction in the inner city was horrible. We spent the next few days trying to take care of the members in our neighborhood and trying to find bread or something to eat. We had no electricity and no water. Over on Bautzen Street was a dairy that had a deep well, and we were permitted to fetch water from there. It was about one kilometer away from our house, but it was fresh, clean water. My brother Helmut and I were assigned to be the water carriers. We had to stand in a long line to get one bucket of water, but we didn’t care about that. Everyone seemed to display a miraculous desire to live, and they were all very inventive when it came to getting water and food. We would fill a bucket and then put little boards over the top so that the water would not slop out on the way home. Every drop was precious.
The city of Dresden looked like a battlefield. The inner city was cordoned off because there was nothing there but ruins and corpses. In order to prevent the outbreak of disease, they laid railroad tracks down in the Altmarkt, piled them high with corpses, and then soldiers burned the corpses with flame throwers. Dresden had been filled with refugees fleeing from the east and with retreating troops.
Those were bad times, but they were also good times. As a family, we grew closer to one another and had to rely more on our Father in Heaven. Our prayers became more intense and our faith became unshakable. Of course the war was still going on, and everyone was preparing to flee to the West. Mother, Hella, my brother Harald, and I all had our rucksacks packed with the necessities for the journey, but we also had them ready in case we had to go into the cellar again. But when we saw the misery among the many refugees, we held a family council and decided that the Lord had not spared our home so that we could leave it. We decided that the Lord could protect us best right within our four walls. We knew, of course, that the Russians would come, and there were terrible stories going around about what danger we would be in, especially the women. But we were united in our faith that the Lord was stronger than the Russians. This strength that began to grow in us became unbreakable, and so we stayed. Earlier, Helmut had come home from the hospital and brought his bride, Lottel Schäfer, with him. They lived in Harald’s room, and Harald moved over into our room.
From time to time during the first days, we heard the explosions of time-bomb capsules which caused more damage. Several brave people went through the rubble and disarmed the duds. Unfortunately, there were also plunderers active, but I could understand. The refugees and the wounded had to get clothing. It was, after all, winter.
At church on Sunday, we were able to determine that we had lost only one sister in the bombings and that the number of those who had been bombed out was limited. We young people of the branch organized an emergency service to get food and supplies to the older members. When the streets became passable again, the members from the Altstadt Branch came over to the [Church] services in the Neustadt Branch. Their branch house on Circus Street 33 had been bombed and was destroyed right down to the cellar. We also visited the members of the Altstadt Branch in their homes and held Bible studies and youth firesides. It was a time of great faith and inner harmony, but the marvelous old city of Dresden was no more and would never again regain its beauty.
It was a time of great testimony because the Lord helped us to help one another. Many refugees from the East were passing through Dresden, and we took up to as many as fifteen people into our small two-and-a-half-room apartment. Everything was shared; many things were sacrificed. Firm friendships were established which still exist today, beyond continents and oceans. We sat in the Church meetings and in the classrooms huddled in coats and blankets—very few brothers there—but we were thankful and full of hope because the Lord will not forsake his own, which includes all humanity.
We did much fasting and praying; we read the holy scriptures, and we sang the songs of Zion. Everyone had to work hard and put forth a lot of energy because the inner city no longer existed. It was often a long distance to the place of work, to the offices of the authorities, and to the stores. We had to go on foot, of course. But each little bit of progress was greeted with great joy. We had identification papers that showed we were employed and could not be taken into the military. That was also a blessing.
In early May, we held a district conference in Dresden. The branch house in the inner city had been bombed out, as I mentioned, and the rooms in the Neustadt branch were filled with refugees, so we held our conference in the rooms of the Evangelical Lutheran Church. As we sat together worshipping the Lord, we heard the droning of tanks. The Russians were approaching the city, but we went on with our conference.
On Monday, May 7, the Russians entered Dresden, and there was some street fighting. Helmut and Lottel went over to the Königsbrücker Street where there were some tank barriers and watched the fighting, but they soon came back. The city was given over to the Russians, but when the Russian tanks came into the city, some of the Hitler Youth set off some antitank bombs, and then there was more serious fighting. But by nightfall everything was quiet. The next day, the word went out that the war was over. There was no celebrating, no tolling of bells, no proud conquerors. Everything was quiet until the first Russian cars and trucks with Russian soldiers came into the city and put up posters everywhere saying that the war was over and that the civilian population should remain quiet.
The military arsenal on Königsbrücker Street was opened up to the public to get whatever food was left there. Helmut went over with a two-wheeled cart and came back after about two hours with a large sack of oatmeal. At the same time, a bombed-out cannery on our street was opened up, and we were told we could dig out the damaged cans of fruit. What a meal we had with canned peaches and vegetables poured over the oatmeal. As we were coming back home from the cannery, Harald wanted to plunder a shoe shop, but I couldn’t permit it. There was no reason for us to give up our ideals now, when we needed God’s blessing more than ever.
We continued going to church, and we went around helping the older people, and the Lord did not desert us. It is wonderful to feel the protection and blessings of the Lord the way we did in those days. It was indescribably beautiful.
The branch had to vacate the large meeting room to make room for the refugees, and so we had to meet in only two smaller rooms. We got going on our genealogical work again, as far as we were able, and in March 1946, two missionaries arrived in Dresden. These were priesthood holders who had been released from the German army and were willing to leave their families a second time, but this time to serve the Lord.
Each day there were streams of refugees passing through the city, and that meant many opportunities for us in Christian service. The missionaries put in a request to the Soviet commander for a new place to meet, and we were given the officers’ club of a former army barrack. It had been hit by a bomb, and we had to rebuild it ourselves. The painters brought us ladders, paint, and brushes, but then they never came back. Two of the members, an artist and a poet, painted the first rooms for us so that we could hold sacrament meeting there after only one week. By the fourth of May, all of the rooms were completed, and we held a conference there.
Edith Krause. Shown on the left some years after the events in this chapter, Sister Krause helped celebrate the ninetieth anniversary of the Primary. Courtesy Edith Krause.
We received many blessings during the remodeling. In spite of the fact that we had very little to eat, and we were mainly women, children, and older people—the young men were all in prison camps. We hauled heavy stones out of the building. Once a big block wall came crashing down. Fortunately, no one was injured, and we had the energy to drag the whole thing outside that same day. With eight women, two deacons, and two older brethren we were able to move a steel beam weighing several hundred pounds into the building and get it up onto the supporting pillars, about three or more meters high. The iron monger who directed the work could only say, “What amazing people you are. That went up there as if invisible spirits were helping.” When one of the beams rolled over the hand of a young man, he was not injured. While taking a flag pole down from the roof, a missionary was saved from serious injury. Instead of falling, he was somehow able to jump from a beam. At night we were exhausted and hungry, but we collected around a little harmonium and sang hymns from the hymnbook with great enthusiasm. We called ourselves “The Builders’ Choir.” We built new benches for the classrooms. There was no way to buy curtains or drapes, so we took leftover rolls of newsprint which one of the sisters decorated with roses. She was a porcelain painter, and the paper drapes looked like they were made of silk. Our artist painted a red tapestry onto a wall as if it were hanging from the balcony. It was painted so realistically that everyone who saw it for the first time tried to straighten it a little and only then realized that it was painted. It was beautiful.
“Lace curtains” were sewn together from strips of gray material that was no longer needed for uniforms. We were very proud of them, even when visitors to a conference made fun of us because we had gray curtains instead of white. For us, they were the most beautiful curtains in the world. We cleaned up the surrounding park-like area, cleaned out the fish pond, and brought in fresh water. The entire piece of branch property was idyllic, and we used it for almost forty years. The city took over part of the property in later years, but we had many visits there from the General Authorities, and in 1977 it was visited by the Prophet Spencer W. Kimball.
The first help to arrive came from Elder Ezra Taft Benson, who visited Germany and directed the welfare relief supplies. We also received a great deal of help from our mission president, Walter Stover, a former German who was not afraid to work in this destroyed country. It is impossible to name all those who participated in this pioneer work. And so this tragic epoch was transformed into a blessed time where we all felt very near to the Lord because we recognized his hand in all things. The authorities supported us, the Church had not abandoned us, and we were able to help others by means of food and supplies from the Church welfare program. Later our brothers began returning home from the prison camps, but there was some mourning for those who did not return, who had fallen in the war.
