Maria Tepahs

On March 24th, 1945, Maria Tepahs, along with other villagers, found refuge in the basement of her parents' house during the battle for Bienen and witnessed German soldiers being wounded and killed.

The paratroopers did not want to surrender; at most they wanted to retreat to the rear. At some point on Sunday, the soldiers suddenly received the order: "Out!" They had conferred in the basement and were about to leave. They climbed the stairs and gathered in the large hallway of the Aryus pub. At that moment, an enemy tank came around the corner on the church square and fired directly at the door of the room where the soldiers who had sought refuge with us were standing. The grenade exploded in the hallway. There were dead and wounded. Heinz Otto, a soldier quartered with our neighbours and whom we knew well, was one of those killed upstairs in the hallway. He had previously told us that he anticipated his death and had given us his address so we could notify his parents. Another soldier, Mößthaler, fell down the basement stairs, seriously wounded, after the explosion. We tried to treat his numerous, terribly bleeding injuries with torn bedsheets while he screamed for his mother. But he was beyond saving and bled to death before our eyes. Two other wounded men also lay on a bunk in our cellar. In the adjoining cellar, across the hall, there were injured soldiers, too. One of them, whose leg had been lacerated or torn off, was screaming horribly. My sister Hilde and another woman crawled through the hall into the other cellar, cared for the wounded there, and quenched their thirst with water and the juice of preserved fruit.

(Published in: Josef Becker, Bienen 1939-1945. Erinnerungen, Erlebnisse, Berichte, Bienen 1999)