“Hello, I’m calling from Berlin. I am probably the last survivor of the bombing raid on Weilheim train station on April 19, 1945.” Some time ago, Gerhard Gnadl reported these words to the local newspaper - and then talked about the day in April when bombs fell on Weilheim.
Weilheim
– Gerhard Gnadl kneels in a cellar in Weilheim and prays. Between shelves full of jams and preserved fruit and vegetables, the then 12-year-old got down on his knees and folded his hands. The three other children who fled with him and ten nuns from the English Misses to their dining cellar also folded their hands in prayer. Outside, the air raid alarm sounds over the mid-morning city. The roar of the bombers is getting closer and closer. “I was so scared,” says Gnadl today, 79 years later. His voice becomes quieter and wavers as he says this. Maybe he still feels that fear today.
“Where are my parents? Am I getting out of here alive?”
What followed that morning in 1945 in the basement of the English Misses were impacts, detonations, very close, loud, shocking, threatening. Where are my parents? Will I get out of here alive? A thousand thoughts go through the Weilheim boy's head. After three quarters of an hour, the siren from before sounds continuously. All clear. The children and the nuns know: It's over, they survived. The bombing raid on Weilheim on April 19, 1945. Apart from a smaller one in February, it was supposed to be the only one on the city. 24 people died and most of the station was destroyed. Less than a month later, the Second World War ended in Europe.
Gerhard Gnadl is really fit. You can't tell he's 91 years old on the phone. When he talks, his memory is crystal clear. Can he send photos of himself by email? Also photos from before? No problem for the Berliner. Gnadl is a contemporary witness who is worth his weight in gold. Because he was there when Weilheim was bombed. Because he remembers and talks about it too. And because he is aware of the importance of his memories - and has come forward.
His father's job saved him from the battlefield
The telephone conversation with Gerhard Gnadl is a trip to Weilheim at the end of the Second World War. Gnadl lives with two sisters and his parents at the train station in Weilheim. He is the youngest of five children. The sisters go to the school for senior girls in Munich, the two brothers are at war. The father is a signal repairman, responsible for the maintenance and repair of the signals and switches. Gerhard Gnadl was born in Dorfen in 1933. The father, an “original railway worker”, wanted to advance his career with the railway and was transferred to Weilheim in 1936. His job protects him from the battlefield: railway workers are not drafted. The family lives in the immediate vicinity of the Güterhalle. There are railway offices downstairs at Bahnhofstrasse 13 and the Gnadls' apartment upstairs.
It was a wonderful childhood at the train station
It was a nice childhood there at the train station, says Gnadl. The boy often observes how goods are loaded at the transshipment point. From Munich you either go on to Garmisch, Augsburg or Schongau. Or they are transported to the city by horse-drawn cart. When the Munich Circus Krone comes to town, elephants march down the loading ramp and on to the Volksfestplatz. Gnadl learned to cycle here on the loading ramp. And there he also sees the soldiers who are being sent to the front “loaded into cattle cars”.
The people of Weilheim are still lucky in misfortune
On April 19, 1945, this front suddenly moved very close to the Weilheimers. It is “brightly beautiful weather,” remembers Gnadl. He doesn't get much out of it; he has to study math and English at the English Misses at Schützenstrasse 10. The nuns offer tutoring after they were no longer allowed to run their girls' school under the Nazis. At 10 a.m. the air raid alarm sounds. Nothing special for Gnadl anymore. “How often do you think I sat in the basement as a ten or eleven year old?” However, 99 percent of the bombers that appeared over Weilheim during the war years flew on, coming from Italy towards Munich. But this time it's different. And the people of Weilheim are still lucky in misfortune. The Americans sent their heavy bombers to the Brenner that day, and planes flew to Weilheim with “only” 250 kilo bombs attached under the wings.
Gnadl's parents are at home at the train station when the first of these bombs fall. Father and mother immediately flee into the coal cellar under the house. But the father suspects: “The American bombers are specifically targeting the Weilheim train station.” After the first wave of attacks - two more were to follow - Gnadl's parents rush out of the basement and run towards the city center. “They told me afterwards that they just wanted to get away from the train station, no matter where.” They were then shot at with machine guns from the plane. “Although they were clearly identifiable as civilians. The visibility was very good,” says Gnadl. “Nobody was interested,” he is certain. Finally, that day the Americans also bombed a hospital train from Hungary that was parked at the station. “And there were red crosses on it.” The parents manage to get to safety somewhere, Gnadl doesn’t know where. In any case, they survive the second and third waves of bombs - like the son in the English Misses' food cellar.
Everyone is fine, but the house is uninhabitable
When parents and son see each other again at the house after the all-clear, there is great relief. Everyone is fine. But the house is uninhabitable, damaged by machine gun fire. “We took out a few things, like our parents’ bedding,” remembers Gnadl. It's not much. The Gnadls are moved to Wielenbach to live with a farming family. “Five of us lived in the living room and shared the kitchen and everything else with the farmers.” A bombed-out Munich family already lives in the next room. The people of Wielenbach welcomed everyone warmly – “back then they stuck together.”
Also read:
After the closure of a popular restaurant in Weilheim: the music scene finds a new home
Today Gerhard Gnadl fondly remembers Weilheim
Now, all these decades later, Gerhard Gnadl remembers Weilheim fondly, despite that frightening morning in April 1945. From the 1950s onwards, his career took him to Bayreuth, Stuttgart and Berlin, where he still lives today. “But I actually always wanted to go back.” It didn’t work out because of work, he says. And now it's too late and moving is too difficult. Gnadl's second wife will be 80 years old in the fall. Then the two want to travel to Munich and celebrate their birthday with Gnadl's daughter, who lives there. Maybe they'll also visit Weilheim, he says. The old home, the place of his childhood and youth. Where Gnadl marveled at elephants – and escaped the bombs.
Veronika Mahnkopf