Ulrich Vogt

Born:                     1941
Home:                   Paderborn, Germany (grew up in Soest, Germany)
Familiar place:      Pürting (cloister) in the cathedral

We were bombed out on St. Nicholas’ Day, 1944. I was three and a half years – my first memory. My father had digged us out of the rubble with his bare hands. I can still see it today, how I run with my sister barefoot through the burning city of Soest, in pyjamas, and the smell of burning bodies and of burning wood lingers in my nose. Soest was also destroyed, just like Paderborn. Hence my close connection to the cloister here in the cathedral: You have survived, and those poor children of Ipenberg, they have not survived, they were killed.