In July of 1943 British bombers conducted massive bombing raids, day and night, on the city of Hamburg.

Those who were known to have experienced unimaginably frightful hours, who had run through fire with their clothes burning, stumbling over charred corpses; before whose eyes and in whose arms children had suffocated; who had seen their houses collapsing right after their father or husband had gone back inside to save something or other; all those who had spent months hoping for news of the missing and who at the very least had lost all their posssessions in the matter of minutes — why didn’t they cry and lament? And why this indifferent tone of voice when they spoke of what they had left behind, this dispassionate manner of talking, as if telling of a terrible event of prehistoric time that would be impossible today, that is almost forgotten except for the shockwaves that still faintly agitate our dreams? This muffled voice, impervious to daylight and so timid, the way one speaks at night, outside, when one doesn’t know where there might be an ear secretly listening.

Hans Erich Nossack, The End, Hamburg 1943, translated by Joel Agee

For more photos by Erich Andres, go here.