- 1944, January 30, Sunday toward evening – In the morning, columns of Hitler Youth marched over the Carola Bridge with drums and music; a parade such as I had previously seen only in films. My thoughts as I watched: If only this were the last time they celebrated January 30! And: How long will it take to remove the National Socialist filth from these children’s heads? **p244
- 1944, April 30, Sunday morning – In the morning singing, drumming, marching, shouts: assembly and lineup and roll call of columns of Hitler Youth and League of German Girls on the Carola Bridge. Some ceremony in the Royal Mews. I abhor such deindividualization and mass dressage. But evidently it is a mark of the epoch as a whole. In Fascist Rome, in Soviet Russia, formerly with the Reichsbanner, also in the democracies, in the USA, partly in Great Britain—the same thing everywhere. **p310
- 1944, September 15, Friday morning – …three relatives of the man, an old district judge, are dead. That shook me, and in the morning—dark, glowing, deep- purple dawn—as I washed myself and looked out at the Carola Bridge and the row of houses on the other side, I could not stop imagining that this row of houses was suddenly collapsing before my eyes—as indeed could happen at any time, as something like it really does happen every day somewhere in Germany. **pp348
- 1942, September 21, Thursday late afternoon – This whitewash article is no doubt related to the recruitment march we saw and heard last Sunday morning, without knowing what it was about: Long columns of troops in field-gray and SS-black uniforms, with two noisily blowing military bands, marched across the Carola Bridge, onto which our kitchen windows look out. Then the next day we read that there had been a propaganda march through town. **p362
- 1945, February 12, Monday morning – There had been disturbances in Berlin, but the rebels had been shot to pieces. — In the coal cellar just now Waldmann added an indisputable report to all of this: He had seen soldiers working at the pillars of the Carola Bridge, had inferred they were mining it. He believes that the next few days will decide our personal fate. He also thinks any attempt at avoidance is impossible. In the hands of fate. [… ] **p403
Credit: AltesDresden.de
Comment:
VK would have seen the bridge from the House in Zeughausstrasse, on this side of the river.
Source:
- **I Will Bear Witness, Volume 2: A Diary of the Nazi Years: 1942-1945, Victor Klemperer, Publisher : Modern Library; Illustrated edition
Purchase on Amazon: