Firefighter Helps Even During Air Raids

Česlav Roubíček was assigned for forced labor in Germany shortly after his grammar school leaving examinations in 1942. He was trained by the so called Lutfschutz – in aircraft defense, and worked as a firefighter in both Hamburg and Kiel. “Firefighter’s life is the same everywhere. Cleaning the car, cleaning the fire hydrants in the winter, and other responsibilities are the order of the day. We had to do all that, but the difference was that we had to do it under more complicated circumstances. Once an air-raid began – and there was a great deal of them – all Germans immediately had to hide in their cellars, but we, the firefighters, had to get dressed and run to our cars. We were out there as soon as the first fires broke out, notwithstanding the bombs. The things we saw were not always nice. There were corpses lined up on the street; they were not necessarily burned or singed, the people simply suffocated in the terrible heat. Next to each corpse was an envelope with all the things the particular people had on them when they were found - like that I came to know the German thoroughness. After us, special cars came, loaded the corpses and took them to pre-dug holes, where they buried them.”