With so many people struggling to reach the open spaces, the parks were soon filled with the screams of the injured and the weeping of those who had been forced to leave behind loved ones. One woman describes sitting in what was left of the rose garden in the Stoltenpark, listening to all the terrifying sounds around her:
In front of me was the front of Heidenkampsweg, and I saw building after building collapse. Behind me was the animal sanctuary where the animals slowly burned. On top of the cries from the surrounding burned and wounded, the last calls of the dying, and the cries for help from the collapsing buildings, came the barking and screeching of the cats and dogs. It was enough to drive you to despair. 55
Hans Jedlicka, who was also sheltering in this park, witnessed similar things:
How long we stayed in the Stoltenpark I no longer know. We watched the flaming hell of Hammerbrook. It still surprises me that anyone at all was able to make it through there alive. Again and again people came running over the bridge into the park. Screaming people with dreadful burns. One young woman especially stays in my memory. I still have the picture before my eyes. She came screaming out of the smoke over the bridge. She was completely naked and barefoot. As she came closer I saw that her feet were nothing but charred stumps. As soon as she found safety she fell down and died. 56
Herbert Wulff, who had spent the night huddling between an advertising pillar and the wall of a bridge, remembers the scene the next morning, after the fires had died down. Buildings were still burning, his city was utterly ruined and horribly disfigured corpses were scattered across the Heidenkampsweg:
The most gruesome sight we must have seen was the people, lying on the ground completely naked, no longer recognizable as man or woman, with a centimetre-thick burned crust covering them, seemingly dead, but still giving their last signs of life through guttural sounds and small movements of their arms. This appalling sight will stay with me all my life. 57
* * *
It is impossible to say with any accuracy how many people died that night. At the time rumours put the death-toll at a hundred thousand, and for once the figure was not entirely far-fetched. Because of the chaos that reigned in the aftermath of the catastrophe, German officials were never able to say for certain which deaths had occurred during which air raid, but the official number for the series of attacks that week was eventually calculated at 42,600, 58of whom the vast majority died during the firestorm of 27/28 July.
Terrifying as that total is, it is a miracle that the final figure was not higher. A quarter of the population of Hamburg lived within the bombed area – 427,637 people, according to official figures – and their numbers had been swelled by the influx of people made homeless by the first heavy attack. 59Yet more than 90 per cent of the population escaped with their lives. Many of these people lived beyond the edges of the firestorm, but even in Hammerbrook and Hamm the number who survived still outweighed the number who died. 60
To survive the terrible conditions caused by the firestorm required not only incredible physical stamina, but huge courage and an unwavering determination to survive. Fugitives had to face the combined dangers of fire, high-explosive bombs (many of which were on time-delay fuses), falling masonry and hurricane-force winds. In addition, they had to maintain the presence of mind to battle against the wind rather than let themselves be carried along by it, and seek out shelter in the most unpromising places. Many people refused to give up despite terrible injuries: more than thirty-seven thousand people were hurt during this series of attacks – again, the vast majority on the night of the firestorm. 61
There was a strong element of chance involved in who survived and who did not: sometimes a family would make a sensible decision over which way to run only to find their hopes crushed by the collapse of a building or a sudden change in wind direction. Even so, certain groups were more vulnerable than others. The very old or the very young were often the first to succumb. According to the Hamburg police chief’s report the winds were so strong that ‘Children were torn away from their parents’ hands by the force of the hurricane and whirled into the fire.’ 62Another eyewitness, who described the ‘tornado-like storm’, claimed it was so strong that it was almost impossible to fight it: ‘Elderly people, who were unable to walk well, were obliged to give up this impossible fight, and the flames greedily made their way over this prey.’ 63A man in front of her was set alight like that, and ‘in less than ten seconds he too became a living pillar of fire’.
Their bodies, with hundreds of others, were found where they had fallen. They were nearly always face downwards, arms thrown round their heads as if they were trying to shelter their faces from the heat as they died. 64Most of the bodies were charred and shrivelled to half their normal size. Some were so badly burned that the fat had seeped out to form pools round them. By contrast, others were not burned. Many were naked except for their shoes – the city coroner concluded later that they had probably tried to flee in their nightwear, only to have it torn or burned off in an instant by the heat of the firestorm.
Far more died in the shelters. In the east of Hamburg, there were relatively few purpose-built public bunkers and most people were forced to make do with the basements of their apartment buildings. When some were opened the next day, nobody was alive inside: they had all succumbed to the fierce temperatures generated by the fires. In some basements the heat had been so great that everything inside was charred beyond recognition, including the bodies of the occupants. But the worst killers were smoke and carbon monoxide. One woman remembered afterwards how the lack of oxygen had affected those in her shelter:
The very small children fell asleep first, then the four to six-year-olds, then the slightly older, then the adolescents and finally the old. I knew what this sleep meant. Many never woke up, because our rescue came very late – we could not be saved sooner because of the terrible heat that raged on the street… We owe our lives to an armaments-factory worker who was looking for his flat and his wife, and looked in the Gothenkeller and found us all unconscious. This man then informed the police station on Nagelsweg. Consequently fifty soldiers were sent to carry us out and lay us in the open, first in front of Gothenhaus so we could breathe some oxygen… I regained consciousness as three soldiers lifted me, and a fourth, who stood nearby, said: ‘That is number 238’. 65
It is probable that as many as 70 per cent of those who died were killed by smoke inhalation or carbon monoxide poisoning. 66Their bodies were sometimes found piled up around the exits to the shelters, as if they knew they were in danger but were unable to escape. More often, though, they were found seated at tables, or leaning peacefully against walls, as if they had simply fallen asleep. 67Those men, women and children paid the price for having followed official advice to remain in their cellars until the all-clear sounded. Had they taken their chances in the inferno of the firestorm, many more might have been saved.
* * *
As the storm died down, those who had survived the night began to move. Often their first instinct was to leave the city, but many had become separated from their families during the frantic escape from their basement shelters, and to leave without them was too painful to consider. People milled about, some venturing back towards the fires in the hope of finding friends and loved ones still alive.
Sixteen-year-old Herbert Wulff was one of the lucky ones. He had seen his sister run off several hours before, and had lost his mother in the smoke and chaos of the night. Now, in the gloom of morning, he was trying desperately to find them: