Remarkable, Touching Story by a Woman Who Endured Hell

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	• A Woman in Berlin: Eight Weeks in the Conquered City: A Diary Anonymous Picador, 2006 - 288 pages average customer review:based on 57 reviews view larger image
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highly recommended

best read

I must admit after reading this woman's diary, I was enlighten by the nature of her situation and the sheer impact of Nazi Germany after the fall of Berlin. The writing style is so "descriptive-of-the-events", it was personal and direct. I highly recommend this book to anyone who is missing their soul as a writer, this woman really speaks about truths in unique way where her words paint a vivid picture of harsh reality.

In Your Face

Despite all of my attentions paid to the history of man's cruelty to man,
(and women), over the course of the past few decades, I have never exper-
ienced a more poignant accounting of same than that which "A Woman in Berlin" had to offer. The author's physical survival and psychological victory over the most tragic circumstances imaginable is a testament to the power of applied intellect in the face of mindless savagery. Truly, this literary work is a wonderful testament to the strength of the female spirit and the durability of a pure human sole.

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A first-hand look at Hell

This diary is a chilling first-hand account of a German woman's horrific ordeal under the occupation of the Red Army in 1945 Berlin. The main reality of that occupation was, of course, rape- brutal, nightly gang rape of every German female that could be caught- no matter her age, infirmity or physical appearance. The dustjacket blurb was incorrect when it said that this diary details the "...shameful indignities to which women in a conquered city are always subject." The Germans never behaved like this in conquered cities, nor did the Americans or British or French. In its almost unbelievable scale- an estimated 2 million victims- the rape of the eastern German women is an event unprecedented in Western history, even in our modern, crime-ridden hellholes of "diversity". Certainly, the idea of a whole population being violated was something that hadn't been seen since ancient times. That's why those who recorded their experience of the horror, like this anonymous author, can tell us something new and unique about humanity- specifically women: about the depths to which we can sink and the resilience with which we can survive.

The author admits to the expected feelings of shame and uncleanness, but in the jungle existence of defeated Berlin, those feelings paled next to the necessity for survival. Rape was a risk one had to run in the search for food, and shame was a feeling one could suppress when prostituting oneself to a single Russian officer meant protection and sustenance. There was a unique solace found in the collective nature of the violation, which helped the women cope, commiserate and recover. They were able to talk about it openly and matter-of-factly. When the author visited a friend for the first time since the occupation, her first words of greeting were, "How many times were you raped?" Men at the front could easily understand how gallows humor and callousness help a soldier deal with the barbarities of war, but the men couldn't understand the similar way their women were dealing with the experience of rape. When the author let her returning fiance read her diaries, and told him about her and her neighbors' experiences, he exploded: "'You've all turned into a bunch of shameless b*tches, every one of you in this building. Don't you realize?' He grimaced in disgust. 'It's horrible being around you. You've lost all sense of measure.'" The relationship between the sexes was altered. The author writes that the women of Berlin viewed their defeated men with pity and scorn, as the weaker sex which needed protecting since they had so obviously failed at protecting their women. The long term effects can only be imagined.

The attitudes of both men and women were surprising. For fear of antagonizing the Russians, the German men made no attempt to defend their women, and the women were in agreement with that decision, in the interests of everyone's physical survival. I have to admit that, like the author's befuddled fiance, such modern and pragmatic attitudes seem strange to me. It's one thing to cope with life's tragedies stoically; it's another to embrace masochism and submissiveness. I was surprised at some of the self-flagellating and apathetic attitudes expressed by the author and her neighbors in this book. She records her neighbors as saying things like "We can't complain. We brought it on ourselves" and "We shouldn't look at what happened too personally". She reacts with utter equanimity when a German Communist (one of many degenerates who crawled out of the woodwork in the days after the Russian takeover) speculates with glee that the German people will be nationally exterminated and the people scattered to the four corners of the USSR as slave labor.

Maybe such impassivity was just a natural reaction to all the suffering the people had gone through. Maybe the decadence and degeneracy of the Weimar Republic and modern Western society had not been effectively extirpated by 12 years of Nazi propaganda. Maye Goethe (or maybe it was Nietzsche) was right with his metaphor of Germans as pigeons (when they're up they crap on your head; when they're down they eat out of your hand). Maybe Hitler was right when he said, to justify his scorched earth policy in the last days, that only the weak would survive the war. In any case, this diary describes the birth of a new German people: defeated, passive and self-hating. They survived, but only to be colonized, physically and mentally. Perhaps some day nature will take its course and their nation will throw off the spiritual shackles imposed on them in 1945.

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Remarkable, Touching Story by a Woman Who Endured Hell

An intelligent, resilient, compassionate, resourceful woman chose to keep a diary during the dark days of the end of World War II in desolate, bombed-out Berlin, when the Soviet Red Army's `liberation' of the city included the rape of an estimated 100,000 German women, including the author herself. She chose to remain anonymous, and also shielded the identities of most of the fellow Germans around her.

The attitudes of the `Ivans' who arrived in Berlin ranged from the ruthless bullies who gang-raped German women from age 14 to 74 at one extreme, to the older, more senior, more refined Red Army officers who treated the German vanquished with respect and even compassion. Alcohol consumption by the Red Army was a catalyst for rape, pillaging and destruction. The Nazis consciously left behind stores of alcohol, believing that an inebriated Red Army would be a less effective fighting force. The Nazis clearly failed to realize that the alcohol would fuel a wave of revenge and violence against its own female civilians.

The author and most Berliners were without water, electricity and decent food for weeks on end. Red Army soldiers would wander in and out of the Germans' apartments, at all hours of the day and night, stealing whatever they wanted, grabbing and abusing the women, and defecating everywhere, indoors and out.

On the one hand, the Germans realized that they had this abuse coming to them, after the Nazi atrocities. "Our German calamity has a bitter taste - of repulsion, sickness, insanity, unlike anything in history" (page 257). On the other hand, the Germans fear and resent their liberators, who force them to work twelve hour days dismantling factories for shipment to Russia, with the only compensation being meager food rations. Out of hunger, many German women succumbed to the offer of food from the Red Army soldiers, in exchange for sleeping with them.

Despite living amid rubble and a largely hostile occupying army, the Berliners were remarkably calm and organized. Certainly there was looting by locals, and skirmishes in queues for water and food, but by and large the vanquished cooperated with one another. As the author wrote, she wanted to get busy in a constructive way, re-connect with herself spiritually, try to return to a normal life, to whatever extent that was possible. Berliners were mindful that they would no longer be masters of their own realm; rumors flew around that Germany was going to be converted into one huge field of potatoes. Berliners lived with discomfort and uncertainty during this period.

Gender roles were turned upside down at the end of the war. Erstwhile pompous Nazi men were now either dead, or emaciated and humiliated prisoners of war, or deserters in hiding, or elderly, hapless and hopeless as they watched or listened to their wives and daughters being raped. By contrast, the women took a lead role in cleaning up the ruined city, forming work crews to remove rubble.

Antony Beevor, author of "The Fall of Berlin 1945", states of "A Woman in Berlin" "... this book is one of the most important personal accounts ever written about the effects of war and defeat." I share his admiration for this book, and recommend it highly.

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Diary that brings you to Berlin

The diary records how a German woman lived, felt, thought, ate, slept, saw, heard and survived when Berlin fell in 1945. The descriptions are vivid. The language shows sophistication yet is easy to read. The author was a journalist. The diary records her first hand experiences as a person, not a journalist as a third party.

The diary records how ordinary civilians were paying the price of the crimes committed by their national leaders.

There are also reflections by the author, which are deep and thought provoking. The diary shows the strength of the author and other survivors and people's abilities to adapt.

A good account of history and memories for later generations to reflect on.

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reviews: page 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10

A New York Times Book Review Editors' Choice

For eight weeks in 1945, as Berlin fell to the Russian army, a young woman kept a daily record of life in her apartment building and among its residents. "With bald honesty and brutal lyricism" (Elle), the anonymous author depicts her fellow Berliners in all their humanity, as well as their cravenness, corrupted first by hunger and then by the Russians. "Spare and unpredictable, minutely observed and utterly free of self-pity" (The Plain Dealer, Cleveland), A Woman in Berlin tells of the complex relationship between civilians and an occupying army and the shameful indignities to which women in a conquered city are always subject--the mass rape suffered by all, regardless of age or infirmity.
A Woman in Berlin stands as "one of the essential books for understanding war and life" (A. S. Byatt, author of Possession).

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