Woman in Berlin

A Woman in Berlin: Eight Weeks in the Conquered City: A Diary by Anonymous, translated by Philip Boehm, 261 pages

A revision of entries from a diary kept by an anonymous female journalist living in Berlin from April 20 to June 22, 1945,  A Woman in Berlin is a story of loss, horror, and survival in a situation unimaginable only a few years earlier, although the author is only too aware that Berlin is experiencing at the hands of the Russians what other cities experienced at the hands of the Germans.  In this personal account of the climax of the long nightmare that lasted from 1914 until 1989, there are many such instances of what the author calls "a logical reversal" - ill-fed German POWs laboring where starving Russian POWs had before, the loot of Germany carted off to Russia by the trainload, swastika flags cut up to make red flags to salute the conquerors.  As the diary begins, it is poignantly revealed how Berliners have regressed to prehistoric conditions - without electricity, telephones, or running water, huddled together in cavernous basements, scrounging for food and water, with only rumors for news, aware only of the immediately neighboring communities living similarly troglodytic existences.  The terrible chaos of the fall of the city follows, and it is as horrible as might be imagined - a time when the bodies of suicides were hurriedly buried in backyard gardens, injured horses were butchered by hungry mobs while still alive, and the number of times a woman had been raped became a subject of her small talk over ersatz coffee.  This is gradually replaced by a seeming return to normalcy, but the author's own personal life reflects the fact that some things are forever changed, which leads into the story of the effect of the war and its aftermath on the German psyche, a story at which this book only hints.

Although, as a result of its narrow timeframe, it only hints at the aftereffects of the war, the book is itself a notable part of that story.  It was first published in 1954 in an English translation in the US, and only after five years was a German-language edition produced by a Swiss publisher.  Not surprisingly, it was criticized by many who would have preferred to forget what they had done and endured, and a controversy ensued in the course of which the identity of the author was revealed against her wishes.  The author requested that the book not be reprinted until after her death, which occurred in 2001, leading to it becoming available again after decades as a rarity.