{"id":9123,"date":"2022-02-15T13:55:25","date_gmt":"2022-02-15T17:55:25","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.paulepictures.com\/blog\/?p=9123"},"modified":"2022-02-15T13:55:25","modified_gmt":"2022-02-15T17:55:25","slug":"renate-baum","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.paulepictures.com\/blog\/2022\/02\/15\/renate-baum\/","title":{"rendered":"Renate Baum"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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\u201cMy family was living in the Dresden Neustadt at the time of the firebombings.\u00a0 I was the eldest of five children and attended the Dresden Neustadt School.\u00a0 For about a year my mother and all the children stayed with relatives outside the city because they thought it would be safer during the war.\u00a0 In December 1944, we returned to Dresden because there had been no major attacks on the city.\u00a0 Our family hoped that the war would end because they believed Dresden would eventually be attacked.<\/em>\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n


At the time of the bombing we rushed into the cellar.\u00a0 The house next to us suffered a direct hit and nine people died.\u00a0 When the bomb detonated it had such an intense impact I thought the entire city was gone. \u00a0We spent all night in the cellar.\u00a0 There was another family, who were artists, that had a flat in the building but they weren\u2019t home at the time.\u00a0 They returned in between bombing waves and told us what was happening in the city.\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

In the morning our aunt from Heidelberg came by bicycle to check if we were alive.\u00a0 Dresden Neustadt wasn\u2019t hit badly compared to the rest of the city but still when we went outside there were fires raging.\u00a0 The wind was carrying sparks everywhere.\u00a0 Flames came out of the windows of buildings, filling the air with smoke.\u00a0 Some men were putting water on roofs to prevent the sparks from igniting more fires.\u00a0 We prepared a wagon and passed Alaunpark, the big park which was used by the military, on the way to Heidelberg.\u00a0 There were many people leaving the city and even horse wagons pulling burnt and dead people.\u00a0 We thought that nothing would be left and we would never see the city again.”<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

-Renate Baum, Dresden firebombing survivor\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Renate Baum is photographed in the cellar where her family experienced the firebombings 77 years ago. <\/p>\n\n\n\n


On February 13th, 1945 the baroque city of Dresden, Germany was firebombed into cinder by the British Royal Air Force and the United States Army Air Force. The attack was divided into three bombing raids dropping over 4,500 tons of high explosives, including incendiary bombs, onto the city known as \u201cFlorence on the Elbe.\u201d\u00a0 This portrait is a part of my From Above project which featured portraits of atomic bomb and firebombing survivors from WWII. My limited edition book is available at https:\/\/www.photoeye.com\/bookstore\/citation.cfm?catalog=I1040&i=&i2=<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n


A selection of From Above portraits taken in Dresden and also including portraits of firebombing survivors from Coventry, Rotterdam, Tokyo and atomic bomb survivors is now being exhibited in Dresden at the outdoor display case in front of the Gewandhaus Strasse from February 12th-March 26th. Eight portraits will be displayed along with short testimonies. The photographs will change every two weeks.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u201cMy family was living in the Dresden Neustadt at the time of the firebombings.\u00a0 I was the eldest of five children and attended the Dresden Neustadt School.\u00a0 For about a year my mother and all the children stayed with relatives outside the city because they thought it would be safer during the war.\u00a0 In December […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[173,110],"tags":[588,214,576,734],"class_list":["post-9123","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-dresden","category-from-above","tag-dresden","tag-dresden-firebombings-february-13-1945","tag-from-above","tag-renate-baum"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.paulepictures.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9123","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.paulepictures.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.paulepictures.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.paulepictures.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.paulepictures.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9123"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/www.paulepictures.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9123\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9125,"href":"http:\/\/www.paulepictures.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9123\/revisions\/9125"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.paulepictures.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9123"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.paulepictures.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9123"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.paulepictures.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9123"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}