大象传媒

In the last of our series telling stories of the Blitz from around the UK, we travel to Luebeck in Northern Germany for a rather different perspective. We hear about the experience of being bombed from the 'other side,' as we tell the story of the night when one German city came under attack.

The programme is presented by John F Jungclaussen, who is the UK Correspondent of Die Zeit newspaper. John's family come from this part of Germany and his father was born in a village near Luebeck, just a few days before the air raid.

Luebeck was bombed on the night before Palm Sunday in March 1942. The raid marked a change of tactics by the British and led to the destruction by fire of many of the medieval buildings at the heart of the city. Several hundred people were killed, and many more lost their homes.

On his journey into the past, John meets some of those people who were in Luebeck at the time of the bombing. Kurt Adler - a 14 year old schoolboy in 1942 - remembers the terror of the raid and climbing to the top of his family home where he watched the flames of the burning city. He recalls the moment when the bells in one of the nearby churches suddenly stopped ringing - the fire had burnt through the bell ropes sending them crashing to the ground.

Today those molten, twisted bells are preserved where they fell in St Mary's Church as a memorial to the bombing and those who died in it. John meets the pastor of the church who tells him about the work which has gone on in the intervening years to build up reconciliation between the two former enemies. The chapel where the bells are kept also contains a cross from Coventry - given as a sign of peace between the two cities.

Producer: Louise Adamson
A Juniper production for 大象传媒 Radio 4.