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Crematorium in Görlitz: "If you think Corona is just flu, you should work here for a week."
Photo: Sven Döring / DER SPIEGEL
The cremator hurries out of the crematorium office into the anteroom.
There is a coffin in the corner, next to it a cart that is used to lift the coffins out of the hearse.
He puts the phone in the hand of the undertaker.
She holds it to her ear, then frowns and snorts.
"I really don't have time for that," she says, "Bye." She nods around and opens the steel door.
"I have to move on." The phone rings again.
The cremator shakes his head, growls.
"I'll turn it off in a moment."
The employees of the crematorium in Görlitz work extra shifts, says the manager Evelin Mühle.
"We work here from six in the morning to eight in the evening, otherwise the coffins would pile up." All cold rooms are currently occupied, and there are six more coffins in the corner.
"COVID 19" is written in black capital letters on a wooden coffin.
Just one in six?
Mill shakes his head.
“There are a lot of corona cases.
It's dramatic. ”In November, they would typically cremate about 130 dead.
This year there were about 100 more.
"And in mid-December we were back at over 200 cremations."
The crematoria work in chord
Maybe she'll have to prepare another cold room soon, says Mühle.
The deceased who are camped here have been dead for a while. “But now more are infected than ever.
They'll come to us in January.
When I think about it, I get scared. «Every day, more comes than Mühle and her team can cremate in regular operations.
Yesterday, however, her men had done well, burned 18 coffins, only 13 new ones were added.
"We're really happy if we can do more than we can in one day," she says.
“It's a race against the dead.
Anyone who thinks Corona is just flu should work here for a week. "
In hardly any other region are as many people dying from Corona as in the Görlitz district.
In the past seven days, more than 662 people have been infected with corona.
Only in Zwickau and Bautzen, both also in Saxony, were there more.
The intensive care units are overflowing, there are no longer enough ventilators and nurses, and patients have to be moved.
Now even the space for the dead is running out.
Hospitals have to expand the cold stores, the crematoria work in piecework.
The region hardly knows what to do with all the dead.
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The cremator stands behind the coffin on the wagon in front of the stove, pulls a lever, then presses a red button.
A flap rises, flames blaze in the hole.
The coffin goes in, the flap closes.
Four more coffins are lined up on the floor.
The man walks past them into the next room and pulls up the next coffin.
"Today the four of us are ahead," he says.
In an hour the person will be burned to ashes in the first coffin.
Then the cremator will push the button again.
Special shifts in the registry office
A lot has been reported in the last few days, especially about the city of Zittau in the easternmost east of Saxony, right on the border with Poland and the Czech Republic.
The medical director of the clinic there, Mathias Mengel, slipped the word "triage" over the lips in a video link in front of around 100 listeners.
The press spokeswoman corrected the statement the next day.
The doctors did not have to decide which patient to connect to the ventilator - and most importantly - which one not.
But you can no longer look after all patients yourself and have to take some to other clinics.
And then you have to consider who can cope with the strenuous transport.
The situation is serious.
So serious that the employees of the registry office in Zittau now even have to work at Christmas - to issue death certificates.
The city crematorium had asked them to.
The dead cannot be cremated without a death certificate.
And the dead cannot be stored until after Christmas.
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Registry office manager Petra Wießner: "You can't keep that away from you completely"
Photo: Sven Döring / DER SPIEGEL
The manager Petra Wießner is 63 years old and has already done her apprenticeship at the registry office in Zwittau.
"But what we're going through right now - I've never seen such a disaster of deaths in 44 years," she says.
You would now have to work overtime to cope with all of this.
Put down the pen at twelve o'clock - that no longer works.
On Christmas Eve she will come to the office for three hours, on Christmas Day a colleague.
"We'd like to celebrate Christmas too, but then the crematorium would overflow."
In the past few weeks she has been falling to bed more exhausted in the evenings.
Recently she even wrote a poem to deal with the whole drama.
“You can't keep that away from you completely.
Especially when I have someone lying there who was born in the fifties - they're as old as me. "
Every leaf is a death
At half past one on Friday noon, the heavy wooden door of the registry office is locked.
An employee opens the door, the desk lamp only burns in her place.
In the corner there are pots of ficus trees, next to them are vases with white and pink roses, on the desks there are shelves, a few books and folders, everything neat and tidy.
No mountains of files, no hectic activity.
How can you tell that so many people are dying right now?
The employee points to the desk next to her, on which there is a thick Leitz folder, the lid barely hooks.
Each leaf is in a transparent sleeve.
Every leaf is a death.
Instead of under the coffin lid, the dead lie under a cardboard lid.
The employee opens a cupboard full of files.
She points to one from 2017 with the inscription: »August, September, October«.
"Normally we only need one folder for two, sometimes even three months." Even on the 18th day, hardly a sheet of paper would fit in the folder from December.
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Undertaker from Zittau: "I don't have any time right now"
Photo: Sven Döring / DER SPIEGEL
There aren't many people in Zittau who want to talk to journalists about dying right now.
The clinic's press spokeswoman blocks all inquiries.
The city crematorium does not comment either.
The city spokesman says that this is not possible in the short term.
On site, the employees shake their heads.
You are not allowed to speak to the press.
Some undertakers also say that their boss forbade them to do so.
You meet one of them just walking out the door with a pile of files tucked under his arm.
Did he have a moment?
He shakes his head.
"I don't have any time right now," says the man, patting the files.
“Four more dead.
I have to go to the registry office, then to the crematorium. ”He says it's been quite a lot right now.
But that you have to stop there now.
You have no other choice.
He doesn't let that get too close.
At least he's trying.
He's already knocking on the files again.
"But now I really have to go on."
In the registry office the light is off in the office of director Wießner.
The desk is tidy like that of your colleagues, an Advent wreath is in the corner.
There is a pile of papers in front of the keyboard - as if she had already laid it out.
There are more deaths.
She will start the week with them on Monday.
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