Devastated Dortmund

Sven Malmberg is a Swedish orchestra leader. In the blacked-out cities of Germany he played forbidden jazz to nerve-racked citizens of the Third Reich, who wanted hot music to jar them out of their depression. To questioning police. Malmberg and his audience would explain it was Belgian music. Last month Malmberg was playing in Dortmund when the British struck that city with two of the war's most devastating air raids, then cut off its water supply by blasting the Ruhr's Mohne and Eder dams. Malmberg lived through those raids and, returned to Stockholm, told this story to Correspondent Sten Hedman of the Toronto Star:

The Floods. "On the morning of May 17 I was awakened by my hostess. She was very agitated. 'What a horrible catastrophe!' she exclaimed. She said there was no water in the house, and that many people had been killed in districts near the Mohne and Eder dams. . . .

"People in Dortmund had no correct information about the damage done by the floods, but they were convinced that the effects were catastrophic. They talked every day about the destruction of the dams, and the comment was more bitter than that on other bombings. The attack on water-distributing facilities was called 'unworthy warring.' "

Torrents of Fire. "The alarm was sounded every night, and every night we gathered in the best shelter we could find. But May 26, when the alarm sounded, I was so tired I went down into the shelter in the house, thinking it was a false alarm. It wasn't.

"The attack came. An area twice as large as that already hit was bombed out. The center of the city was hit this time, and also the northern part of town, on the other side of the railway station, where industries were located. . . .

"When the first attack lost strength, I asked the guard if I might leave to get my musical instruments. It was difficult to get through the destroyed entrance.

"Dortmund lay there as if in bright moonlight. Suddenly I was aware of the cause. From Allied planes, light bombs fell slowly. Incendiaries in much greater numbers than in the first raid poured down. Many houses were already burning. Now & then air mines exploded.

"I was terribly frightened. I heard the planes but could not see them. Then sud denly the sky became intensely bright. There were torrents of fire from the sky. It seemed as though vessels of flowing fire had been overturned in the heavens. Streams of fire reached the earth and sur rounded the flaming houses. I understood they were phosphorous canisters. The effects were terrible: house after house was set aflame."

In the Ruins. "This second raid was catastrophic, chiefly because of the fires. The police building in the market place was destroyed. The opera house was leveled. Many churches were destroyed. An air mine had struck the central station, tearing up the rails. The ruined station was closed to the public because of an unexploded mine.

"In the northern town, the houses in Brtickstrasse lay blazing in a line. Rumors swept the city that the I.G. Farben-industrie chemical plants had been dam aged. The destruction was the worst I had seen anywhere in Germany.

"I had had enough. The morning after the raid, I went to the south station, also hit by bombs, but from which local trains were still operating. I still had one week of my contract left, but of course there could be no music now.

"The usual 20-minute journey to Hamm took more than an hour."

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