Suddenly, they were out. The wreckage was all behind them, and they both turned around to look at what was left of the the Hindenburg. The proud silver airship was now a smouldering black skeleton enveloped in thick black clouds of smoke, and they could hear the screams of those still trapped within. Leonhard would later write:
"Something drew me toward [the wreckage]; I cannot say whether it was the feeling that I must try to save others, or that demon-like urge of self-destruction which drives the moth into the flame. My wife called to me, called more urgently and ran back to me. She spoke persuasively; took me by the hand; led me away."
The Adelts turned away from the horrible sight, walking hand in hand along the edge of the wreck and finally toward the hangars in the distance.
A man came up to them (Gertrud would always remember how strange he looked in his white Panama hat with everything else around them scorched and smoke-stained) and led them to one of the large limousines that had been onhand to ferry the passengers away from the mooring area. Now they were being used as ambulances. As they approached the car, a harsh voice from deep in the back said, "There's no more room in here!" Gertrud looked into the car and recognized Mrs. Doehner. She was sitting there clutching her two badly-burned sons to her "like a lioness", as Gertrud would later recall.
Gertrud and Leonhard Adelt are led from the scene of the Hindenburg wreck.
They were taken to the air station's infirmary, which was in utter chaos, being far too small to handle the sudden influx of badly injured patients. Horrified nurses ran to and fro trying to ease everyone's pain as best they could, using whatever they had onhand, including bottles of whiskey and, according to Leonhard, "a morphine syringe the size of a bicycle pump."
Gertrud found a wicker chair to sit in, and then noticed a horribly injured member of the crew laying at her feet, obviously dying. He said that his shoes were too tight, and she removed them and his heavy woolen socks for him. A priest appeared suddenly and heard the man's confession. Gertrud noticed that the injured man was speaking in German with a Schwäbisch dialect, and she was sure that the priest didn't understand a word of it. "Only God understood him," she later remarked.
Meanwhile, Leonhard had found Captain Lehmann sitting on a table. Lehmann was burned terribly, and was blotting at his wounds with a large piece of gauze soaked in picric acid. Leonhard was at a loss for words, and said the only thing that came to mind: "What happened?" Lehmann, in shock, could reply only, "Blitzschlag"… lightning. The two men looked silently at one another for a long moment and then Leonhard, overcome with emotion, had to leave the room and walk outside.
Gertrud had left the young crewman with the priest, and one of the medics came up and wanted to give her a shot of morphine. She refused, however, thinking, "Nobody's going to be able to find me if I'm laying here asleep."
Finally, Leonhard's brother found them and got them into his car and through the cordon around the airfield.
Leonhard and Gertrud Adelt both survived the disaster with relatively minor injuries. Leonhard had some burns on his scalp and was suffering from smoke inhalation, so he was taken to State Colony Hospital in Pemberton, New Jersey, where he stayed for ten days before being released. Gertud only had minor burns, (including one on her right hand that forced her to write left-handed until it healed) and did not require hospitalization.
Gertrud Adelt (center) with family members during her recovery in May’s Landing, NJ.
The Adelts stayed the summer at Leonhard's brother Karl's home in May's Landing. Gertrud would later recall that the Gestapo in Germany continued to take an interest in them while they were out of the country. As she told author A.A. Hoehling some 25 years later, a woman from Philadelphia showed up and offered her services as a secretary. Leonhard naturally wanted to record his recollections about their flight on the Hindenburg and their escape from the fire. The woman was an excellent secretary, and asked for an unusually low amount of money. She would take her shorthand notes home every night to copy them, and given his and his wife's less than stellar reputation with the German government, Leonhard suspected that the woman was probably connected to the SD or the Gestapo. He was very careful about what he said around her, just to be on the safe side.
Gertrud, on the other hand, was definitely being investigated by the Gestapo. While she recouperated at Leonhard's brother's house, the Gestapo showed up at her mother's home back in Dresden. They insisted that Gertrud was spreading stories about the Hindenburg disaster that were not consistent with what the Propaganda Ministry had ordered German journalists to convey. The Gestapo agents demanded to read all of Gertrud's correspondence with her mother since she had been in the United States, found nothing in the letters that Gertrud's mother had received from her, and they let the matter drop.
Gertrud and Leonhard Adelt at the seaside with their son, Christian. Photo taken circa 1940.
The Adelts returned to Germany later that summer. They moved to Dresden, where they lived throughout the Second World War. Gertrud eventually got her press card back, and resumed her career as a journalist. On the night of February 13th, 1945, as the Allies firebombed Dresden, Leonhard and Gertrud and their son, Christian, escaped from their house as the flames began to consume it. Then Leonhard remembered an unfinished manuscript that he wanted to save, and ran back into the house after it. He was badly injured in the process, and was taken to a medical facility in Dippoldiswalde, about 11 miles south of Dresden. Leonhard Adelt died of his injuries a week later on February 21st, 1945. Years later, Gertrud would tell her family of how she and nine year-old Christian fled through the blazing streets of Dresden, dodging bullets as low-flying airplanes strafed them.
Interestingly enough, given Gertrud’s having once had her press card lifted for not being supportive enough of the Nazi regime, she found herself in a similar bind after the war ended. Because she had continued on as a journalist throughout the war, she wound up on an Allied list of German citizens who had to undergo denazification. She was prevented from writing professionally for a year, after which she was allowed to continue with her career. Gertud and her son moved to Hamburg, where she wrote for a variety of different German newspapers, including Die Welt, which was established by British occupational forces in 1946.
In 1949, Gertrud wrote an account of her escape from the Hindenburg disaster for the Hamburger Abendblatt. Published in the Sunday edition on August 27th, 1949 and titled Mein Sturz aus dem brennenden Luftschiff (My Fall from the Burning Airship), Gertrud’s article presented her perspective not just on the disaster itself, but also on various moments from throughout the voyage.
Gertrud Adelt continued to live in Hamburg, and passed away following a sudden heart attack in 1985 at the age of 82. Her son, Christian, had passed away three years earlier in 1982.
Gertrud Adelt in 1981
