Lorenz Zitzmann, 96, first had to work in a concentration camp as a teenager. He was later sent to the front as a soldier. The memories of that time haunt him to this day.
When 96-year-old Lorenz Zitzmann talks about the job he has practiced for half a century, you get an oppressive feeling after just a few minutes. You can see him as a young man, armed with a broom and shoulder iron, climbing into the narrow, sooty chimney shafts of the houses and looking for support. “You shouldn’t have a fear of space or heights if you wanted to be a chimney sweep,” says Zitzmann, “and in the end you always turned dark black.” There are a few pictures of him as a young man standing in a white Upper Palatinate snowy landscape in the post-war years; the contrast to his traditional black sweeping suit and sooty face could hardly be greater. Lorenz Zitzmann from Waldthurn, born in 1927, is much more than an ordinary chimney sweep, but rather a rare century-old witness to the darkest chapter of Germany’s past.