People/CharactersMarie Vassiltchikov

Marie Vassiltchikov (1917-1978) was born to a family of Russian aristocrats who fled the Bolshevik Revolution in 1919. She and her sister Tatiana spent the early years of World War II together in Germany, where they got jobs in the Foreign Ministry in Berlin. Many of Marie's close friends, including her boss, Adam von Trott zu Solz, were involved in the July 1944 plot to kill Hitler, and were executed. After the war, she married an American and lived in Paris. Her book Berlin Diaries: 1940-1945, published after her death, is considered one of the best first-hand accounts of the period.