Wormser Strasse/ Schlüter Factory

  • 1943, April 18, Sunday morning – Yesterday with the morning post the order to report for labor service from Monday, April 19. I had to go to the Community, where I was told the name of the company: Willy Schluter, 30c Wormser Strasse, working hours from 2:00-10:00 p.m. daily; it was very light work, weighing and packing teas. I do not care about light or heavy, only about the irretrievable loss of time and the deadly dullness of these eight hours. When I was ordered to shovel snow, there was the hope of being released in the spring, now I am irredeemably cheated of my days for the duration of the war. **p214
  • 1943, April 25, Easter Sunday morning – This spring is as beautiful, early and complete as in 1920, when we passed into Dresden through fruit blossom. And the luxuriant splendor on the opposite bank— when I walk to the factory, there are flowers in all the front gardens, on a plot of land below street level on Wormser Strasse, blossoming fruit-tree crowns at eye level, at the edge of the park here at Lothringer Weg a glowing red and delicate cedonia bush—the threat of death ever closer and more suffocating: Juliusburger, a bit superior (Lewinsky says “oberchochem”), but nevertheless full of life and a good fellow, my coworker at Schliiter for two days, arrested on Wednesday, dead on Friday; **p215
  • 1943, June 23, Wednesday midday – Yesterday evening in Wormser Strasse an older worker—as far as I could discern in the twilight—cycles right up to me from behind, and says in a kind, fatherly voice: “Things will turn out differently in the end, won’t they, comrade? … Let’s hope very soon”—at which he circles back and into a side street… The day before yesterday, on the other hand, a family comes toward me, father, mother, little boy, evidently the “better class of people.” The father says instructively (and loudly) to the little boy, presumably responding to his question: “So that you know what a Jew looks like!” **p240
  • 1943, June 24, Thursday midday – Vox populi: At ten o’clock in the evening on Wormser Strasse, a group of boys on bicycles, fourteen to fifteen years of age. They overtake me, shout, wait, let me pass. “HeTl get a shot in the back of the head … I’ll pull the trigger … He’ll be hanged on the gallows—stock exchange racketeer …” and some other muttering. It soured me much more profoundly and lastingly than the words of the old worker had cheered me the previous evening. **p241
  • 1943, August 25, Wednesday afternoon – Admittedly most of us will be transferred to Mackensenstrasse, which is less well liked, but it is very possible, that I shall stay at Wormser Strasse, which is more conveniently located for me and less supervised. (At Mackensenstrasse the feared foreman and half boss, Hanschmann, holds sway.) […] **p255
  • 1943, September 17, Friday morning  – Gloomy. My mood both yesterday and today, the autumn weather, the military situation, the reallocation of my factory work—all as depressing and dismal as possible. I was at Wormser Strasse for almost five months to the day (starting April 19), and it had become my familiar pigsty. — At the “roll call” at Mackensenstrasse yesterday it was all tom apart, and one was as quickly alienated from it as under similar circumstances in barracks or at school. Schliiter, the boss, sat behind a little table in the work room at Mackensenstrasse, the workbooks in front of him, the Jews to his left, the Aryans to his right and “divided up.”
    …
    We, the old “we,” were back at Wormser Strasse toward four, were supposed to continue filling, indeed herbal baths in big 13-ounce bags, managed about two dozen, stood around as if we were in a barracks, clearly and rapidly becoming strangers to one another, felt bored until after nine o’clock, left the radio on one last time. **p259
  • 1943, September 21, Tuesday afternoon – At Schliiter I changed in an inhospitable cellar room, as cramped as a cloakroom and with unappetizing washing facilities, a long gutter with a row of faucets above it and a platform in front. I don’t wash there but change my shirt. The work is no harder or dirtier than the mixing at Wormser Strasse. Except that everything is simply more factory-like. **p260
    …
    A certain romance, more marked than on the night shift at Wormser Strasse, a certain masquerade of factory work, masquerade as far as I am concerned, has a comforting effect and makes the time pass more quickly; or, rather, had, because the spell is already wearing off, and the dreariness remains. I stand by the rocker. **p260
    …
    In contrast to Wormser Strasse there is only one proper break, which is spent in a decent room next to the kitchen and lasts exactly thirty minutes […]. Most have their food delivered “privately,” as they say, from a “Bohemian kitchen”; a female clerk takes the orders in the morning. I myself have settled for the “Russian food,” which is fetched in pails from the “public welfare.” It is a “dish of the day,” without any fat, but the amount is large and it costs only 30 pfennigs—”privately” costs 50 pfennigs or more, and coupons as well—I intend to take it regularly during all three shifts, since we are suffering a shortage of potatoes at home. The greater coziness, but also the greater boredom of Wormser Strasse is gone. **p261
  • 1943, September 24, Friday morning – My new work does after all exhaust me far more than that at Wormser Strasse. Shoveling, shoveling, shoveling with spade and fork onto the cutting table, or shoveling into sacks what has been ground. Knoch, the chargeman, sets not only a murderous pace, he often also drives us, and then my heart cannot keep up. On top of that there is no break from two until six. **p262
  • 1943, September 27, Monday toward evening  – On Friday I was told I would be going back to Wormser Strasse. On Saturday, however, I remained on my cutting shift. The work that day was easy, nor was it too much of an effort today, not at all. I held sacks that were being filled with herbs, in the open air of the courtyard at that. Nevertheless, I remain very exhausted. My heart suffers, my mood suffers. **p263
  • 1943, October 7, Thursday morning – During the meal break at six, while the Berger group remains silent and plays cards, our shift is debating passionately, and about quite different things than we talked about at Wormser Strasse. Not about food, also very little about the military situation; rather always in principle about Germans and Jews. Muller is vehemently German, without being anti- Semitic, although he has an aversion to eastern Jews; he disputes the existence of a Jewish race, he disputes that the German people are universally anti-Semitic, he disputes that Hitler and his regime completely correspond to the character of the German people. **p267
  • 1943, October 11, Monday toward evening – Today a pale, blond, and likeable-looking young man, Hirsch, reported to our shift; he will now be put with the packers at Wormser Strasse. Six months ago he was arrested with Leipziger and others supposedly for concealing the star. Of the others, some are dead, some are in concentration camps. He is the only one to be released. He is said to owe it to his wife, who managed to see some senior officials in Berlin. **p268
Wormser Straße 22-30/ ca 1930
Image Credit: AltesDresden.de

Source: 

  • ** I Will Bear Witness, Volume 2: A Diary of the Nazi Years: 1942-1945, Victor Klemperer, Publisher ‏: ‎ Modern Library; Illustrated edition

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