It was 1943, late July, and I was 8 years old. I remember it well. It was already dark when the air raid sirens went off. At first we went into the basement and then somebody said: "They are bombing Hamburg." We went into the garden to watch and saw the tracers of the German antiaircraft guns and the Christmas trees--huge flares on parachutes dropped by the enemy scouts--falling to the ground.

The sky was a strange orange red that seemed to be alive. It was increasing and decreasing in intensity but it did not stop until daybreak. In the distance was thunder. The firestorm that was generated burned thousands and we found entire books from the libraries that had been catapulted the 15 miles from the center of Hamburg to our house. We boys collected bomb fragments, barely aware of the horror of what was happening.

These night air raids continued for 3 nights and totally destroyed Hamburg, only factory chimneys remained standing. Forty thousand people died, mostly women and children. One million civilians were left homeless. --Wilhelm Johannes Kiesselbach