A Woman in Berlin: Diary 20 April 1945 to 22 June 1945
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 | Product Details: Paperback 311 pages Release Date: 06 April 2006 Publisher: Virago Press Ltd ISBN: 1844081125 Rating:  Sales Rank: 29531 | | Look for similar books by subject:
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| | Customer Reviews: Powerful and frightening true diary. (07 December 2008)You can't help but be moved by this diary - written by a professional woman in the last days of the Second World War and beyond as Germany sinks to defeat and Berlin is iver-run by Russian soldiers. In places it is brutal as the Soviet soldiers seek to reek their revenge on the populace in general and on the female population in particular. A warning. There is raping and pillaging aplenty. There is also incredible squalor and horrendous food deprivation. She explains how and why German women in Berlin "befriended" Russian officers in an effort to gain much-needed food supplies but, as important, to ensure they were not used and abused by countless other Soviet soldiers. It is not easy reading. One can see why it was so unpalatable for the German population (men in particular) when it was first released in the 1980s. No-one wanted to relive these horrific events and, those who were not party to it, did not want to believe it. Only the next generation could accept it as fact and learn from the episode. The author remained anonymous and refused a further printing until after her death. May she now rest in peace.  The other side of war (14 November 2008)A "Woman in Berlin" is the frank and honest diary of a young woman caught up in the dark days during the fall of Berlin in 1945. The book contains an excellent forward from Antony Beevor the historian who wrote the equally compelling "Berlin the Downfall". This extraordinary work has an interesting history. It was first published in 1953 to a German public that was not quite ready to face such brutal truths. It quickly disappeared from view and after many decades slowly re-emerged. It is now an international phenomenon and has recently been made into a film which will only enhance its reputation further. The diary is well written as you would expect from someone who has travelled Europe in the publishing trade. The diary does not tell us exactly what she did. That she is extremely intelligent and articulate there is no doubt. She reads such literary greats as Goethe and has travelled Europe. Those who might seek titillation in such a book will probably be dissappointed. I hope so. The rapes that she endured so stoically are not sensationalised in any way. She accepted that she could not alter the situation and did her best to live through it. There is no doubt that Stalins Red Army raped on a huge scale in the early days. These were men who were out to revenge horrific atrocities against there own population. They were men who had often been on the front for years. No home leave for most of them. They were mainly simple workers with a smattering of intelligentsia. They felt it was their right to treat German women as war booty and they did so with impunity. We follow the diary through the brutal early days and find this well read woman sleeping with a simple Russian peasant. One of the incongruity's that war throws up. She is not beneath sleeping with Russians for food to survive. A fact that would have upset many Germans. Many of the German men at that time were helpless to prevent assaults on their womenfolk and felt emasculated. The matter was best swept under the carpet. The matter was not talked about. Even today there are those that refuse to believe these events ever took place. My own Mother who lived through that era is among them. She believes the diary to be a lie and believes the Red Army would never have behaved in such a way. Having read this account and many others I have long been convinced that these events occurred. I would no more deny this than deny that the world was round. The bulk of evidence is convincing. But what convinced me most was her many descriptions of the more mundane tasks like collecting nettles. I will not give five stars purely on the basis that I am not sure I like the diarist as a person. I sometimes find her comments grate. That is her character and another good case for authenticity. I disliked her comments about the elderly. She describes old age as something to be pitied, not venerated in those desperate times. Often true that the elderly and the very young are the first to suffer at such times. But surely if we behave in such a way then we are no better than the beasts. She quotes the Lapps and Indians as leaving the old to perish when they have gone past usefulness. However it is a fact that many ancient cultures venerate the elderly. As we should. Aside from these small reservations I find this a compelling work that is deserving of its growing reputation. It is the grittier adult version of Anne Franks diary. It is as the hype says a chilling indictment of war. An important and serious work in the can'on of war literature. Read it. A remarkable, even poetic account of a vicious time (02 November 2008)In the middle of chaos, amidst the wreckage of the broken city, the anonymous author marvels at the innocence of a baby girl with copper ringlets of hair. Against the dirt, grime, hunger and rape that have become normal life for Berliners, this chubby, pink baby seems a strange reminder of what normality was before the city was occupied. In a similar vein this diary is a thing of strange beauty, a product of, but completely alien to, the senseless cruelties and world turned upside down Berlin the writer inhabits in those strangest of last days and new beginnings. This is the story of a few weeks, a little more than two months meticulously detailed in a thoughtful, almost detached. It is no surprise that the author had a background in journalism and editing, nor that she had travelled and had little of the xenophobic closed mindset of Nazi Germany. But she still feels. She is humiliated, degraded and afraid, albeit capable of recognising, cataloguing and exploring these emotions and setting them down on paper. The writer is a middle class woman, educated and travelled. She has lived through the Second World War and is now battling on the front line as it sweeps into and takes over Berlin. She is reduced to living with a neighbour, using her body to augment the larder and employing a smattering of Russian she picked up on travels in Russia to intervene on behalf of neighbours and to gain protection of Russian officers. The writer endures and experiences the worse excesses of the occupation. She makes faultless observations about the way life unfolds under encroaching Russian occupation. Her descriptive talent paints vivid portraits of the neighbours, the Germans who share the basement `cave' in a clannish, pre-occupation retreat to before civilisation. She also applies her even handed language to the Russians, marvelling at the variety in personalities, types and manners. By some she is treated almost as an equal, or as a lady. Others smash her to the floor as the spoils of war. As much as the account horrifies as the accounts of rape become an almost flippant daily discussion between the women, there are also touching moments of kindness and humanity, between neighbours and between the occupiers and occupied. But these are small flickers of light in the thick darkness of the Götterdamerung. There is violence, cruelty and vicious retribution for what Germans did in the Soviet Union. It is a remarkable record, a flawless account of the most extraordinary of times and a testament to how people react in the most pressured of situations, the instinct for survival taking over. Without bitterness, recrimination or analysing the event long after it happened, this is raw, urgent yet erudite and poetic. This is an historical record that well deserves the wider audience it will receive following the release of the cinematic adaptation. A fascinating piece of history (19 February 2008)We are very fortunate that this anonymous woman kept a diary of the terrible events that happened to her and many other German women living in berlin at the end of WWII,because otherwise this is a part of history that would forever remain hushed up. The author writed with total honesty and clarity,without any self pity and even with a touch of black humour.This is a really fascinating diary written using the authors journalistic talent.It's a shame she never received the credit she deserved for this important piece of history within her lifetime. An essential book about Berlin in 1945 (05 February 2008)Other than fully endorsing what other reviewers have said about the power of this extraordinary account of the ending of the war in Berlin, from April 1945 and the next two or three months, I would simply draw attention to the immediacy of the writing. It makes highly uncomfortable reading to be taken right into the dusty, half-lit, and stinking basements, where the writer and other people sheltered during the final days, or to travel with her as she makes her way on her bicycle through the rubble of the city, and, yes, to hear of how she copes (and she does cope) with the ordeal of repeated rape. But you finish the book with the strongest possible sense of her dignity, humanity, intelligence and sheer determination to survive. This is essential reading. | |
