A dark decade

Bielefeld’s population popped over the 130,000 mark shortly before the nazis took control over the city council.
In 1933, 903 Jews lived in Bielefeld, where a Jewish community had existed since the 14th century. At the Reichsprogomnacht (Nov. 10, 1938) the magnificent Bielefeld Synagogue at Turner Street burnt down, lit by the nazis.
Half of the Jews living in the city were able to emigrate prior to the outbreak of war. How many subsequently fell into the hands of the Gestapo is not known. Of 431 Jews who were deported, only 31 survived until 1945. The first of seven transports started from the Central Station for Riga on December 13, 1941. Of the 400 persons deported that day, 47 survived, six of them from Bielefeld.
The beginning of WWII was noticed very reticent by Bielefeld’s residents, who were mainly workers.
The first British air raid on the town started in June 1940, and caused only light damage on a few buildings. In the fifth year of the war, 1944, the strategic destruction of the city began. The historic city centre collapsed under heavy bomb raids—led by the R.A.F. and supported by American B-17s and B-24s—and on a single day in September 650 people died in the fire storm. The Schildesche viaduct in the North was struck after several tries by the first “Grand Slam” bomb used in the war on March 14, 1945, interrupting the four-tracked Cologne-Minden railway.
All the traffic on the streets was disrupted. The heavy industries and ordnance factories in Brackwede and around Kreisbahnhof station took severe damage. Many sick or wounded people died in Germany’s biggest hospital Bethel because of the adverse geographic location between Brackwede an the old town centre near a railway track.
The “final battle” against American ground troops was prevented by Pastor Karl Pawlowski, who pleaded for the capitulation, which was signed on April 4, 1945 without noteworthy resistance.

Bomb run on Bielefeld: The history and destruction of the famous Schildesche viaduct is documented by Axel Frick.