The German-Russian Dictionary

Notice the word for kaput on the page. Self would have loved to blow it up even more. The narrator thinks kaput is a good substitute for the word ‘dead,’ which apparently was censored out of the dictionary because the target readership was soldiers (The narrator’s delicious sense of irony is intact, even after undergoing the unspeakable).

A German critic wrote that A Woman in Berlin could not be considered an accurate work of literary witness but should be treated as a literary creation of the 1950s. Self has never heard anything so absurd in her life. Anonymous kept a diary for eight weeks in 1945. Because it was not published until the 1950s, it can’t be considered accurate?

Was anyone publishing rape stories in 1945? 1946? Ever heard of that hot-selling genre in the post-war period? No doubt publishers were falling all over themselves to be the first to put out this searing portrayal of men abasing women — notwithstanding the fact that all the heads of publishing houses in that period were men, and might have felt a little embarrassed.

And as for the critic who said this work could not be an accurate portrayal of war-time, could he just shut up? The critic said he was not denying that rapes occurred, just that Anonymous could not have been writing accurately about it.

Of course he would know first-hand about rape stories? Him being such a connoisseur?

Stay tuned, dear blog readers. Stay tuned.

The Break

Self keeps dreading that moment when something really bad happens to Anonymous. This evening, she decided to skip ahead a few pages (to prepare herself) and saw that, in a few pages, instead of daily diary entries, we have: “Looking back on ____________.” And it continues like that, the rest of the way till the end.

Oh . . . it’s happening soon, then. The Russian army is about to enter Berlin. The women in the narrator’s building seem somewhat resigned. They even say things like, “Well, at least we aren’t virgins.” (!!!) One asks another woman to read her cards, and the card-reader says, “In the short run you will experience disappointment in connection with your husband.”

In the meantime, the narrator hauls buckets of water, lines up for hours each day just to get a scrap of food, lugs 50 lbs. of coal in a knapsack, tries to snatch two hours of sleep in her own bed, keeps writing in her journal . . .

She’s damn heroic.

Here it is, the very last entry of Before:

Friday, April 27, 1945:

It began with silence . . . Around twelve o’clock Fraulein Behn reported that the enemy had reached the gardens and that the German line of defense was right outside the door . . . I finished dressing and combed my hair. Within minutes the whole basement was on its feet.

A Woman in Berlin, p. 44

Stay tuned, dear blog readers. Stay tuned.

Anonymous, p. 15

Self knows who Anonymous is (It’s easy to find out: Her name was revealed by a German editor in 2003) but self will keep using the name under which the author preferred to write.

Self has been going back over the sections she has already read. Why? Because this woman is so alive, so present, so determined. It’s awesome!

. . . I’ve never seen anyone actually die. I expect that won’t be long in coming. Not that I think it could happen to me. I’ve had so many narrow escapes; I feel I lead a charmed life. Which is probably the way most people feel. How else could they be in such high spirits, surrounded by so much death? What’s clear is that every threat to your life boosts your vitality. My own flame is stronger; I’m burning more fiercely than before the air raids. Each new day of life is a day of triumph. You’ve survived once again. You’re defiant.

A Woman in Berlin: Eight Weeks in the Conquered City, by Anonymous

Quote of the Day: Last Monday of 2021

Self is not ready for this to be the last Monday of 2021, but it is what it is.

Tuesday, Apr. 24, 1945:

A shell hit outside Hefter’s meat market, right in the middle of the line. Three dead and ten wounded, but they’re already lining up again.

A Woman in Berlin, p. 26

AWIB, pp. 10 – 11

Saturday, April 21, 1945, 2 a.m.

Bombs that made the walls shake. My fingers are still trembling as I hold my pen. I’m covered in sweat as if from heavy labor. Before my building was hit I used to go down to the shelter and eat thick slices of bread with butter. But since the night I helped dig out people who’d been buried in the rubble, I’ve been preoccupied, forced to cope with my fear of death. The symptoms are always the same. First the sweat beads up around my hairline, then I feel something boring into my spine, my throat gets scratchy, my mouth goes dry, my heart starts to skip. I’ve fixed my eyes on the chair leg opposite, and am memorizing every turned bulge and curve. It would be nice to be able to pray. The brain clings to set phrases, fragments of sentences: “Pass lightly through this world, for it is nothing . . . and each one falls as God desires . . .

Note to Anonymous: My dear, you write so well. Don’t let the troglodytes destroy your spirit. You can’t possibly know what’s coming, but my gut twists with dread. Just don’t let them destroy your spirit. That is all.

Stay tuned.

“No Books or Songs to Celebrate This Deed”

Self realizes this book is not exactly Christmas fare. Neither was Ship of Ghosts, which she finished reading yesterday (She was so affected that she couldn’t sleep after putting it down. After this, she will stick to mysteries).

The Introduction to A Woman in Berlin, by Antony Beevor, divulges a grim fact: twelve women in the narrator’s building, including the narrator herself, were raped. Multiply that by the number of apartment buildings in Berlin, and the number of rape victims was likely well over 100,000. It is important to underscore the scale of the atrocity. Also, this was happening not just in Berlin, but all over Germany as the Soviets became occupiers.

The narrator accepted a position of responsibility, which put her directly in harm’s way when the Soviet troops entered the city. She was keeping a journal to be able to share with her boyfriend, Gerd, “if he comes back.” (Self thinking: Woman, that is the worst idea. No boyfriend wants to hear about his girlfriend’s rape. No boyfriend can stand to hear it. Self would like to direct you to a Leonard Michaels short story about a young college student who tells her boyfriend about her rape. It’s a terrific short story that will destroy you. Oh, but that story was written 30 years after the events of this book. Onward!)

p. 37:

We followed orders blindly, without looking to save our skins. Except that there will be no books or songs to celebrate this deed, and no one will receive the Iron Cross. Still, I now know one thing: in the heat of battle, in the thick of the action, you don’t think — you don’t even feel afraid because you’re so distracted and absorbed.

Were we brave? Most people would probably say we were . . . I have to rethink my ideas about heroism and courage under fire. It’s only half as bad as I thought. Once you’ve taken the first step, you just keep charging ahead.

Berlin, Friday, April 20, 1945

11 p.m., by the light of an oil lamp in the basement, my notebook on my knees. Around 10 p.m. there was a series of three or four bombs. The air raid siren started screaming. Apparently it has to be worked manually now. No light. Running downstairs in the dark, the way we’ve been doing ever since Tuesday. We slip and stumble. Somewhere a small, hand-operated dynamo is whirring away; it casts giant shadows on the walls of the stairwell. Wind is blowing through the broken panes, rattling the blackout blinds. No one pulls them down anymore — what’s the point?

A Woman in Berlin, p. 6

Self wonders who the translator is? Because this reads very smoothly, I almost forget it was originally written in German.

The translator’s name is Philip Boehm.

Stay tuned, dear blog readers. Stay tuned.

Berlin, the Conquered City

How the narrator reacts to food:

The gas is running on a tiny, dying flicker. The potatoes have been cooking for hours. The most miserable potatoes in the country, good only for distilling into liquor, they turn to mush and taste like cardboard. I swallowed one half-raw. I’ve been stuffing myself since early this morning. Went to Bolle’s to use up the pale-blue milk coupons Gerd sent me for Christmas. Not a moment too soon — I got the last drops. The saleswoman had to tilt the can; she said there’d be no more milk coming into Berlin. That means children are going to die.

I drank a little of the milk right there on the street. Then, back at home, I wolfed down some porridge and chased it with a crust of bread.

A Woman in Berlin: Eight Weeks in the Conquered City, pp. 3 – 4

from the Introduction to A Woman in Berlin

The lack of electricity and gas has reduced modern conveniences like lights and stores and hot water boilers to useless objects. “We’re marching backwards in time,” she writes, “cave dwellers.”

Introduction by Antony Beevor to A Woman in Berlin: Eight Weeks in the Conquered City

A Woman in Berlin: Eight Weeks in the Conquered City

She vividly evokes the civilians trapped in Berlin and deprived of meaningful news. They know only that information from the western front, where the Americans have just reached the Elbe, is by then irrelevant. “Our fate is rolling in from the East,” she writes.

— from the Introduction, by Antony Beevor