Remembering The Bombing of Hamburg: Ingrid's Story

 

When World War II began, Ingrid Piehl was nine years old, living in the north German port city Hamburg. An only child in a middle class family, her father had been notified of a promotion with the publishing firm he worked for. But the family would not relocate to Bielefeld because her father was drafted into the army. Ingrid and her mother continued to live in Hamburg in an outlying suburb overlooking one of the larger parks. As the war continued, she saw the construction of bomb shelters – bunkers, and her mother began to go through valuables, filling a suitcase with the most important heirlooms and family documents.

 

The air raid bag became the staple of every person rushing from apartments and into bunkers every time the sirens sounded. Hamburg, a prominent port city, experienced hundreds of air raids that did little damage. Air defenses for the city were some of the best in the German Reich. Still, Ingrid watched as her mother agonized again and again what to take out and what to put into the bag.

 

Her father came home once from France after his unit was ordered to Russia in 1941. She remembered trying to sleep that night, hearing her parents quietly talking in the next room. She heard her mother crying. Air raids were increasing in severity and frequency. Like many children at the time, Ingrid was sent out of the city to live in Poland with a family of German farmers.

 

She liked Poland and still recalls the brilliant night skies full of stars, the rabbit hunts, and the potatoes. She also remembers visits to Lotz where her teacher told her not to look into the streets of the Jewish ghetto but to walk on the other side of the street and keep her eyes to the front. She didn’t know why at the time.

 

Hamburg and Operation Gomorrah

 

Ingrid missed her mother and returned to Hamburg in 1943. Her father had been wounded at Stalingrad and evacuated to a military hospital in southern Germany. The summer was unusually hot in 1943. As the weeks went by, rumors began to circulate that the Allies were planning a major bombing mission over Hamburg. People with wagons began to move their possessions out of the city. Ingrid’s mother kept repacking her small suitcase.

 

The bombing began in July. Her suburb was spared during the first nights of the assault. Operation Gomorrah was a multi-day mission involving both British and American planes. The Battle of Hamburg introduced the term “firestorm,” resulting from the phosphorous bombs used in the attack. Ingrid and her mother emerged from their bunker and saw the deep red glow coming from the city center and smoke was everywhere. On the last night, she went to her doll house, put the dolls into their beds, and covered their faces. She didn’t want them to see what was going to happen. Pocketing a small doll, she awaited the siren.

 

They used a different bunker, built under a nearby railroad station. When the raid ended, all of the people in their usual bunker had died. The fury of the raid seemed all around them. Old people were vomiting and some were praying. When the “all clear” sounded, the police told the people to leave the city. The entire neighborhood was in flames. Wrapping wet towels around their heads and putting on sun glasses, they emerged into the firestorm.

 

Ingrid and her mother managed to find their way out of the suburb and board one of the few trains to Schleswig. Over 40,000 people had died in the raid in just one night. At 78 years old, Ingrid still recalls the horrors she witnessed as a child. It caused her to hate war and identify with the innocents: women, children, and old people. She eventually migrated to America to raise a family, but the memories survive. She still has the small doll rescued from the firestorm.

 

Sources:

 

Personal interview with Ingrid Piehl-Streich

 

Also:

 

Keith Lowe, Inferno: The Fiery Destruction of Hamburg 1943 (New York: Scribner, 2007).

Martin Middlebrook, The Battle of Hamburg: Allied Bomber Forces Against a German City in 1943 (New York: Charles Scriber’s Sons, 1980).

Published in Decoded Past, 2012 by M.Streich

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