Advent, Advent .... December 4, 1943.

Advent, Advent! December 4 is an important date for Leipzig, the city that was home to Bach, Luther, and Goethe, and whose former mayor Carl Goerdeler had been executed by the Nazis for being in the resistance. On that day in 1943, the city was bombarded by the American and British air force, a strike that destroyed or damaged many buildings, including the church of St. John, the church of St. Matthew and the church of St. Thomas, where Bach played the organ, and killed 2000 people. Here is more from our book: Leipzig. One Thousand Years of German History, by Sebastian Ringel.

On December 3, 1943, at 3:58 a. m., a cascade of light and so-called Christmas trees—lights hung on parachutes to mark bomb targets—lit up the city. A spectacle ceremoniously announcing the beginning of the destruction. In the next moment, the first flight squadrons crossed a sky that was lit up as bright as day, from north to south, dropping bombs to break up the roofs. The entire city center shook with the resulting concussions. The force of countless detonation store windows and doors off their hinges and crumbled the mortar in basement walls, where men, women, and children clung to each other in the dark, seized by mortal fear. When the hellish noise waned twenty minutes later, silence descended. There was no all-clear signal since the sirens had been destroyed. Despite the explosive power, only a few buildings collapsed. The actual destruction was yet to come. In a corridor three miles long and almost a mile wide, from Uferstrasse in the north down to Connewitz, about five thousand fires were blazing.....

Your publisher, Eva C. Schweitzer