During the last days of World War II, a woman in Berlin kept a diary. She wrote of the daily struggles of existence in an utterly destroyed city. Of days spent hiding in cellars. Of starvation and sickness. Of mass rape and sexual assault of German women by occupying Soviet soldiers. Of surviving by any means necessary.
Her story is not easy to read, but it is one that many German women (perhaps as many as 100,000) lived through and were too ashamed to tell. Her accounts of the daily humiliation are straightforward and matter-of-fact, as are her descriptions of how women learned to survive, both physically and psychologically.
Living in today’s Berlin, it’s almost possible to forget the atrocities that took place here almost 70 years ago. But her tale in the midst of the city’s destruction and reconstruction stays with me as I walk down the streets of my new home.
If you’re fascinated by WWII or a lover of Berlin, I would encourage you to read this little known piece of history (also available in English). If you’re more the visual type, the diary has also been turned into a very moving film, which you can watch in its entirety through the youtube link below.
Have you read this diary? Or seen the film? What are your thoughts about it?
I read that book a few years ago and it’s one of my favorites. The writing is stark and no-nonsense and there are no excuses given for what she does except to say that all she does is in order to survive. I’d recommend it as an honest account of post war life endured by many.
I agree completely!
This topic is the reason I landed in Germany in the first place so of course, I adore (bad word) both the movie and the book. What’s actually the most interesting thing pointed out to me about it, though, is how the book addresses the rejection (by the returning German husbands/soldiers) of the women who were raped, which the movie does not do. … fascinating stuff, though hard to take.
You’re right. Although it’s been awhile since I’ve seen the film, I felt like German men in general were not very positively portrayed in her diary. They either didn’t protect the women, or afterwards they didn’t want to listen when the women discussed what happened, or just outright left. It’s sad to think that this rejection even played out in the controversy surrounding the publication of the diary, which was accused of damaging German women’s honor. It breaks my heart that this topic, which unfortunately is not a rare one at all in history, still gets buried and ignored.
This sounds like a tough read, but sometimes the tough reads are the best because of what we get out of them. I will be putting this on my reading list.
It’s definitely worth it.