The Lion's Bridge
A Girl's Life In Hitler's Wurzburg
by
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Another month went by of almost nightly bombings here and there, and each time we were afraid of “the big one” and relieved when it wasn’t, and always hoping and praying that we would be spared. Then came March 16th, 1945—a day no one who lived through it will ever forget.
It had started out to be a beautiful spring day, the first one of the year. Some bakery in the neighborhood was baking bread, so Karin and I went and stood in line for a while and actually were lucky enough to get some. The schools were shut down so we had plenty of time to be outside and enjoy the sun. After being cooped up all winter, it was a wonderful feeling. Mama even let us put on knee-highs, a sure sign that spring was here after wearing long stockings and the “harness” that held them up all winter.
With our knees exposed, naturally we had to go downstairs to let them soak up some sunshine. The street was our playground, all we had to do was hang out a little while and soon we would be joined by a whole bunch of neighborhood kids. Traffic was no problem at all, since no one on our street owned a car. Even if they did, no gasoline was available for civilians, so they were useless. There were some strange looking cars that had been “retrofitted” with wood burning heaters that powered the engine, for those who just had to have a car, such as doctors who made house calls and so on, but they rarely came down our street.
Landwehr Strasse (our street) was unique in another way too, unlike all the other streets around us; it only had houses on one side. The upper part between Sanderstrasse and Reurergasse had houses on one side and the huge, forbidding church complex on the other. It was wide enough to even have a sidewalk. The lower, narrower part where we lived stretched from Reurergasse down to the Kasern with a long row of houses on the same side as the church and a very tall long wall covering that same distance on the opposite side. Some kind of a medieval looking gateway reached from the church over to the wall, thereby visually separating the upper from the lower part, which seemed to be its only function.
Every one knew that behind this wall lay a huge garden that reached almost to the Lion’s Bridge where the “brothers” from the church grew enough vegetables and other things to supply all the other brothers and probably the nuns and the priests too. The fact that the wall was so solid and so tall, that there was no way to peek in there, lent a certain air of mystery to the place. Even from our third floor windows, we could only see a small part of the far side, where we would see some monks working sometimes. But, we couldn’t figure out how they got in there.
There was a very tall, solid, heavy wooden gate in the wall just two houses down from us across from the guesthouse, but it was almost always locked from the inside. Only when someone picked up a load of vegetables would it be ajar for a few minutes, but we were shooed away from it then. It was a wonderful place to bounce balls up against and play games such as the German version of Red Rover, and other games.
Having no houses to face across the street definitely mad
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About the Book
This is a book about family bonds and how they endure throughout the worst struggles of the world’s worst war. Rosemarie Scheller grew up in war-torn Germany, in one of the prettiest and most sheltered regions of the country. She watched the progression of the war and its effects on her friends, her family and her country as the war continued to grow worse and worse for Germany and its citizens. She and her family survived those harrowing times as they watched Germany and their hometown be bombed until there was little left to bomb. They were a happy family in simple and relatively primitive times compared to today, until war was thrust upon them. This is her story of her life in those times and it offers a unique view of how a family coped with the deprivation and suspicion of Hitler’s Germany. From watching dear friends and their family doctor who all happened to be Jewish either be forced to leave or disappear, to foraging for moldy potatoes in an effort to keep from starving to death in the waning days of the war, Rosemarie has written a compelling story of what life was like in those times through the eyes of a young girl. As a family, they huddled together from the safety of the far side of the Main River as they watched their beautiful city be reduced to rubble in a bombing and resulting firestorm every bit as devastating and shocking and sadly unnecessary as the Dresden fire. With the help of the Americans, whom they were so grateful to, Rosemarie and her family emerged from this devastation to help rebuild their city and their country and strengthen those loving family ties. This is the story of a family whose love for one another surmounted everything.
About the Author
Rosemarie Scheller was born