When I first saw this book in the bookstore, I was immediately intrigued. I have always wondered as to the fate of everyday Germans after their country's defeat by the allies in world war 2. This book seeks to answer that and is made even more haunting by the fact that it is a true story.

The author is a journalist before the war and is now unemployed and living on rations at the start of her journal. For eight weeks she details with excruciating accuracy the fall of her city and the consequences on its inhabitants. By the time that the author begins writing, it is clear that Germany is on the brink of defeat despite all assertions to the populace that an upswing is at hand. The author and her neighbors are forced to endure almost daily jaunts into the basements to take refuge from the bombardments of the allies. But this is the life they have become used to and they just take it in stride.

As the war ended, the nightmare of the peace began for the women of Berlin. The Russian soldiers billeted in their neighborhood decided that it was time to claim the spoils of war, human beings(specifically the women) being their chief prize. Whereas the neighborhood had to previously worry about air raids and hunger, the biggest fear now became who and which of them would get raped and how many times. Early on the author realizes that if she is not shrewd, she will end up being violated by several different soldiers. She decides that perhaps it would serve her better to find one soldier, preferably of a high rank, and have him be her constant defiler. It is a horrifying way to think or live but this is her new reality and she must live with it. After reaching this agreement with the officer, she remains relatively protected and the officer also provides food and company for her and her room mates.

When the Russians finally leave and the men begin to return home, the women find that they(i.e the men) do not want to discuss what has happened in their absence. It is obvious that they are ashamed that they have failed to protect their women but some of them seem to blame the women. In fact, one of the only critics who reviewed this book in Germany when it was first published seemed to imply that the author should be ashamed of herself for what he saw as her wanton behavior.

Something that I really wanted to hear the author say was what her position was in regards to the Nazi party and its goals. Was she a supporter? Was she a dissenter? She never says and it seems to me like she purposefully avoided that perhaps fearing that if/when the journal was one day published and her readers were to hear of her sufferings, they would temper it with knowledge of her support for the Nazis if she has been one of them. This is speculation on my part and I have no real evidence to prove her allegiances.

Regardless of whatever side she fell on Hitler's views, no one deserves what she and the other women were forced to endure. It was brutal, degrading and barbaric. This is a haunting book that keeps you thinking long after you have put it down. When will we as a world rid ourselves of self destruction?

On a side note, I have seen some articles that debunk or deny the voracity of her claims. But what is important for me in reading this book is the universality of her story. Even if this particular woman did not experience all that she has detailed, the truth is many women did and many more women since and in other wars have experienced same and worse. ( )

A Woman in Berlin is the true story of one woman’s experience living in Germany in the country’s final 8 weeks of World War II; the 8 weeks after Russian troops reached the outskirts of Berlin, and conquered the city in 1945. The only people in the city were the elderly, women, children, and a few injured soldiers.

There was no running water and no electric. Surrounded by bombed out buildings, and living in a home with no window panes, holes in the roof, and nightly air raids that prompted everyone to rush to basement shelters, this anonymous writer kept a journal of daily events. She was an educated woman; a journalist with basic Russian language skills. Her diary vividly describes the city streets, the apartments, the clothes, the hunger and the fear, the pain and the isolation, the animosity felt towards Hitler and the failed political regime, and the contempt felt towards their own men, the hushed intimate conversations between the woman, and the intense intimidating communication with the Russian soldiers.

Above all, this is a documentary of the human capacity for survival. The Russian soldiers had just three things in mind: food, alcohol and sex. No woman was safe from rape. In fact, there was estimated to have been more than 100,000 rapes after Berlin was conquered. Women had little choice; hide in an attic somewhere and starve to death, or barter with the soldiers, sex for a loaf of bread.

It was all horrible, but near the end of the book I found myself thinking, okay, the war is almost over. The citizens of Berlin must have known by this time what happened to the Jewish people. At worst they approved and participated in turning the Jewish families in to the SS, robbing them of their lives and confiscating their belongings. At best, they stood by and did nothing, and with an animalistic instinct for survival, they tolerated and accepted. The anonymous writer expressed no theory, no opinion, no thoughts, no conversations, no inner psychological guilt, no remorse, and no spiritual angst - nothing - over what was done to the Jewish people. Her big complaint was over retreating German soldiers leaving all liquor stores intact for the advancing enemy “because alcohol impairs the enemy’s strength to fight. Now that’s something only men would think up. If they just thought about it for two minutes they’d realize that liquor greatly intensifies the sexual urge.”

The written message: war is barbaric and even the German’s suffered untold atrocities. My conclusion: at the end of World War II Berlin was a city of amoral people. Well written, unique, authenticity verified by experts, scathing documentary. ( )

Difficult to read in places, and very sad at the end. But pretty much a must-read. We need documents such as this. We need to read about the horrors of war in order to prevent it in the future. We need to be constantly reminded. ( )

Des livres sur l'horreur de l'avancée russe en Allemagne, j'en ai lu un certain nombre, mais celui-ci est particulier, l'histoire d'une survie, dans pathos, ni effets. ( )

tells the truth about what happens to women and non-combatants in war. ( )

A terrific WWII story about a woman surviving however she can when Russian troops invaded Berlin. It isnt a pretty story but one that is very important. ( )

4106 A Woman in Berlin Eight Weeks in the Conquered City A Diary, by Anonymous translated by Philip Boehm (read 15 Dec 2005) This is a diary of a German woman in Berlin covering the time there from April 20, 1945, to June 16, 1945. It is not a fun read, telling of a horrendous time especially for women in Berlin, and was well worth reading. ( )

The story starts out with a woman who is living in a friend's apartment in Berlin since her own place was destroyed by the air raides.
The time line is from April 20, 1945 to Mid-Late June 1945. The woman who wrote the diary was a journalist in Berlin before and after the war. It's been documented that the diary is not a fake and has been authenticated. This alone makes the story feel more real. And knowing what happened in World War II, Hitler's madness, control and destruction - this sheds new light on some of the actual people of Berlin, an insight if you will, on how some of the German people felt about the fall of Germany to the Allied troops.
I was never one to think about the individual people who are left in the cities that have been invaded, but after reading this, I will think of them - the elderly, women and children. Knowing that in all war, there is rape and pillage going on with the areas invaded - but to have a real account of it, makes one think twice about war.
The author talks about the concentration camps that are found and liberated, how the people there were killed and used as fertilizer, soaps, matress stuffing etc. All the while she writes with a sort of coldness, like she is a witness to the things going on around her. That she has had to become cold to survive - and survive she did.

Well worth the read, an interesting and thought provoking book! ( )

A riveting account of a woman's life in Russian-occupied, post WWII Berlin. ( )

My reading this summer has been some particularly depressing work. “A Game of Shadows” detailing the rampant drug use among elite athletes in major sports (Romanowski), Olympic athletes (Marion Jones), and among some of baseball’s biggest stars of the 1998 and current all-time home run race (McGwire, Sosa, Bonds). “I Am No One You Know” by Joyce Carol Oates was another work of short stories that were particularly disturbing and dark. “A Woman in Berlin” by Anonymous may have been both the darkest and yet most hopeful of the three. Post World War II Berlin is the setting for this diary. I enjoyed her candid and honest writing and her simple style of relating her observations. I was truly unaware that this is the fate of all women in conquered cities after war. Rape, starvation, humiliation, and a constant struggle to survive, or in some cases to give in, give up, or commit suicide is their fate. This writer is a survivor, keeping her sanity, her humor, and her life. “All I can do is touch my small circle and be a good friend. What’s left is just to wait for the end. Still, the dark and amazing adventure of life is beckoning. I’ll stick around, out of curiosity and because I enjoy breathing and stretching my healthy limbs.” That a woman can survive with so little despite the crushing and devastating experiences she suffered makes our lives seems so much more blessed and full. Sadly, recent stories out of Iraq are now detailing similar injustices by American soldiers on Iraqi citizens including, rape, murder, and mutilation. I thought we studied history to learn from our mistakes. ( )

A memoir by a woman journalist relates her experiences in Berlin during a critical eight weeks in the life of that City. It progresses from the beginning of the final Russian onslaught; to the capture the city at the end of WW II; through the capitulation of Germany; to peaceful but hard times again under the Russian Occupation, as German soldiers begin to trickle back from the front. The memoir was first written by candlelight, in bomb shelters, with stubs of pencils, as people, mainly older and younger women, huddled together and, not knowing what to expect, feared the worst from the approaching Russian Army. Later re-typed into the more flowing and graceful narrative that we have here, the memoir nevertheless conveys a sense of the horror, desperation, loneliness, fear, hunger, uncertainty and despair that characterized life within the narrow horizon of neighbors who had to accommodate to each other to survive. The book echoes other stories that we know of privation during the war, and the Russian Army did arrive with consequent looting, raping and pillaging, as one might expect. The author survived by her wiles, successfully soliciting quasi-permanent arrangements with a succession of Russian officers, wherein she bartered her charms and companionship for desperately needed food that fed her and the members of her communal survival circle, for want of a better term. The alternative, as she saw it, was to be exposed night after night to wanton and multiple rape at the hands of soldiers who went out 'on the hunt' every night as the sun went down. Life was lived at or below survival level during those weeks, with people doing what they had to do, as much as they could bring themselves to do it.
From a larger perspective, the story is almost a morality tale. As the Russian front at first approaches, then encompasses, and then passes beyond Berlin, one reads of the progressive collision of moral standards against the need for survival and the blurry accommodations that are made. Afterward, as her boyfriend miraculously arrives back from the front, unharmed, that story is too much for him to absorb and he judges the survivors' behavior against re-emerging moral standards. He moves on and abandons her. This is a story of hardship and life as it was. To me, the ages old plea cries out from the heart, let he who is without sin cast the first stone. ( )

This is a fascinating account of a woman in Berlin during the fall to Russian forces at the end of WWII. ( )

exceptionallly moving and powerful book by a non-jewish german woman at the end of wwII and showing the fear of rape and murder,the devastation, the dangers of the shelters, the rubble. All of the wwII books i have read are from the jewish victim's point of view. this is from the german victim's point of view. i think it is an incredibly moving story and wonderfully written even in translation. ( )

A day to day retelling of the experience of women and some men when the Soviet Army invaded Berlin in April-May 1945. The story explains how German women acted and felt during indiscriminate rape and brutalization as Soviet soldiers and officers took over and lived in a Berlin neighbourhood. ( )

Compelling, moving, disturbing, thought provoking. This book paints a vivid picture of life in a conquered city and the struggles and privations associated with living with war. It's one woman's diary written in an unblinking way, hiding little. The only thing I wanted after reading this work was to discover who the unknown author really was, and what had happened to her after the war. One hopes, something nice. ( )

unbelievable story of survival as Berlin was being approached by the Russians at the end of WWII. ( )

A Woman in Berlin is an excellent book. At some points, the horrors it describes are hard to read but it is, at the same time, a testimony to intellectual honesty, strength of character, and if not exactly an optimism, at least an indomitable spirit. Anonymous was a journalist who, pre-war, had traveled extensively and who spoke some Russian (which became very useful). She was in Berlin when the Red Army swept in and then, in the first couple of weeks, engaged in mass rape; the best estimates are that 100,000 women were raped in Berlin, many repeatedly in gang rapes or in other incidents. Anonymous was herself raped several times until she found refuge, as did many, in attaching herself to one "protector" with whom she would have sex (rape by another name) in exchange for protection from marauders. There was an added ‘benefit' in that the protectors, as victors, had access to foodstuffs that Berliners could only dream about, and which, in many instances, made the difference between life and death. Anonymous had three or four protectors and each time she managed to raise the bar in terms of the education and finesse of the man involved. For one of them she even developed a certain fondness. But with one or two of these, in particular, one was always walking on eggs because, especially in their drink, the Russians could go off and become extremely violent in a time and place when life, especially German life, was not even cheap, it was insignificant.

Anonymous also had very strong powers of observation, and the memoir is an excellent description of the last days of the Nazi regime in the crumbling city and disintegrating social system, the sweeping in of the Red Army, the rebuilding of community services and infrastructure, the relations between people themselves undergoing incredible tensions, the good, the bad and the ugly of personal behaviours (she refers a few times to homo homini lupus), and the effect of war, crushing defeat and destruction on individual lives. Small wonder that the book had a difficult time finding a publisher post-war and when published, it did not do very well; it aroused too many emotions.

Anonymous is honest. She notes at one point that everyone is "turning their backs on Adolf, no one was ever a supporter. Everyone was persecuted, and no one denounced anyone else". And then she asks: "What about me? Was I for.....or against? What's clear is that I was there, that I breathed what was in the air and it affected all of us, even if we didn't want it to".

Despite the despair, which would be so easy to give into, Anonymous has the strength to face her situation and her future:

"I feel that I belong to my people, that I want to share their fate, even now. But how? When I was young the red flag seemed like such a bright beacon, but there's no way back to that now, not for me;...And I long ago lost my childhood piety, so that God and the Beyond have become mere symbols and abstractions. Should I believe in progress? Yes, to bigger and better bombs. The happiness of the greater number? Yes, for Petka [one of her Russian protectors] and his ilk. An idyll in a quiet corner? Sure, for people who comb the fringes of their rugs. Possessions, contentment? I have to keep from laughing, homeless urban nomad that I am. Love? Lies trampled on the ground. And were it ever to rise again, I would always be anxious, could never find true refuge, would never again hope for permanence.

Perhaps art, toiling away in the service of form? Yes, for those who have the calling, but I don't. I'm just an ordinary laborer, I have to be satisfied with that. All I can do is touch my small circle and be a good friend. What's left is just to wait for the end. Still, the dark and amazing adventure of life is beckoning. I'll stick around, out of curiosity and because I enjoy breathing and stretching my limbs."

A remarkable woman. A book well worth reading. It is a very great pity that she did not write more in later years about her own personal journey and the reconstruction of German society; based on this memoir, it would have been excellent.

(April/06)