A Woman in Berlin Eight Weeks in the Conquered City A Diary (Audible Audio Edition) Anonymous Isabel Keating Philip Boehm translator Macmillan Audio Books
Download As PDF : A Woman in Berlin Eight Weeks in the Conquered City A Diary (Audible Audio Edition) Anonymous Isabel Keating Philip Boehm translator Macmillan Audio Books
A New York Times Book Review Editors' Choice.
For eight weeks in 1945, as Berlin fell to the Russian army, a young woman kept a daily record of life in her apartment building and among its residents. "With bald honesty and brutal lyricism" (Elle), the anonymous author depicts her fellow Berliners in all their humanity as well as their cravenness, corrupted first by hunger and then by the Russians. "Spare and unpredictable, minutely observed and utterly free of self-pity" (The Plain Dealer, Cleveland), A Woman in Berlin tells of the complex World War II relationship between civilians and an occupying army and the shameful indignities to which women in a conquered city are always subject - the mass rape suffered by all, regardless of age or infirmity.
A Woman in Berlin stands as "one of the essential books for understanding war and life" (AS Byatt, author of Possession).
A Woman in Berlin Eight Weeks in the Conquered City A Diary (Audible Audio Edition) Anonymous Isabel Keating Philip Boehm translator Macmillan Audio Books
“They make a desert and call it peace”. So wrote the Roman historian Tacitus of imperial conquests in the first century A.D. Two thousand years later, by the final days of World War II, Berlin too, was reduced to a desert containing little more than the bombed out carcasses of buildings and mountains of rubble often strewn with corpses. The remaining population, largely women, children and a few elderly men spent its time huddled in basement shelters.The arrival of the victorious Russians added to the already existing chaos. There was looting, pillaging, and most famously, massive raping. The anonymous author of this eight week diary (the initial entry is on April 20, 1945, the final is on June 22), an attractive German woman in her early thirties, was an educated and well-traveled former journalist who herself was raped numerous times. She also endured forced labor as a washerwoman in a military installation and, like most other Berliners at the time, cold and considerable hunger. Rations were irregular and meagre and had to be supplemented by the picking and cooking of nettles or dandelions. Electricity, heat and transportation were lacking.
This memoir has become a classic due to the manner in which it is recorded. The diarist tells of events in a precise and dispassionate way. There is no whining self-pity, anger, blame or ideological circumlocution, just a graphic portrayal of the grim reality that is Berlin in the spring of 1945. Did German civilians deserve all this? Did they bring it upon themselves by their support of the Nazi regime? The questions are raised tangentially but not answered. The behavior of the conquering Russians is widely regarded as barbaric; otherwise attitudes vary or are stoically suppressed.
The diary ends on a poignant note. The author’s pre-war boyfriend returns unexpectedly from what was the east front but war has disrupted and altered their relationship. He is shaken on hearing of the rapes; she, weakened by hunger, jealously guards her small supply of food while he wants to share it with friends. They part.
This chronicle, first published in Germany in 1953, sank into a long obscurity until reemerging in the early 21st century. The author desired anonymity though her name was published at one point by a German magazine. Seventy three years after it was written, the diary retains its value and relevance as a significant account of the final phase of World War II in Europe. Most of all, it is a compelling and highly readable saga on the horrors of war.
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A Woman in Berlin Eight Weeks in the Conquered City A Diary (Audible Audio Edition) Anonymous Isabel Keating Philip Boehm translator Macmillan Audio Books Reviews
Highly recommended account of the days that followed the arrival of the Red Army into Berlin and ultimate surrender of the Third Reich by a young German journalist.
It was an horrific time, but, although the anonymous writer describes the events in a low-key and non-sensational style, the impact is somehow more powerful. She is a close observer of events, people and the grim landscape without a second of self pity.
If you enjoy stories about the Second World War with a completely different slant I urge you to try A Woman in Berlin.
I can hardly find words. I want desperately to know what happened to this woman. She lived until 2001, how did she survive? Her observations on the decades in Berlin after WWII would have been so valuable. But she wrote this diary as a way to connect and explain herself to her love who was away fighting the war. When he read the diary! And instead of understanding, rejected her, she stopped writing. I hope someday someone tracks her down and lets us know the rest of the story.
I was an exchange student in Germany in the late 1970’s. The woman of my host family had been born in Berlin in 1943 or 1944. She had two older sisters, 12 and 15. The week the Russians arrived she was staying with her grandmother, because her mother had to work. A couple days before the Russians came her mother killed her sisters to save them from the rapists. Reading this, I thought of those two girls and my heart was torn. War is horrible.
This is an outstanding book that makes it possible to understand what Germans went through in Berlin as British and American bombers slowly but surely turned the city to rubble. More especially, it give insight into what German women experienced when the Soviets finally got to Berlin. Not a pretty picture, but an authentic one told through the eyes of a woman who lived through it.
A similar book is "The Berlin Diaries, 1940-1945" by Marie 'Missie' Vassiltchikov. She too lived in Berlin during WWII. The primary difference was that the author of "A Woman in Berlin" was an ordinary German woman, while Marie Missie Vassiltchikov was from a wealthy family with many high-placed friends. Her experiences were difficult, but her friends-in-high-places made it possible for her to survive with much less degradation. However, it was a near thing. It wouldn't have taken much for her to have missed a connection at some point--and to have ended up in Soviet hands. That could have been especially bad, because Vassiltchikov was Russian--White Russian, not Red.
Having lived in Germany, I always wondered how the ordinary people dealt with such a crushing defat, utter destruction, and occupation by their worst enemies, knowing that it was all the consequence of their own actions and avoidable. The unknown author gives a very clear picture of the day to day lives and challenges Berliners faced in the last few days of the war and the first couple of months of defat. Daily challenges like hunger, humiliation, sexual assaults,... Emotional challenges like what has happened to the loved ones and friends, how to deal with certain enemy personnel, and dealing with the changed culture which is new and harsh. Finally, national challenges and future of the city and country which they loved.
I highly recommend this book.
“They make a desert and call it peace”. So wrote the Roman historian Tacitus of imperial conquests in the first century A.D. Two thousand years later, by the final days of World War II, Berlin too, was reduced to a desert containing little more than the bombed out carcasses of buildings and mountains of rubble often strewn with corpses. The remaining population, largely women, children and a few elderly men spent its time huddled in basement shelters.
The arrival of the victorious Russians added to the already existing chaos. There was looting, pillaging, and most famously, massive raping. The anonymous author of this eight week diary (the initial entry is on April 20, 1945, the final is on June 22), an attractive German woman in her early thirties, was an educated and well-traveled former journalist who herself was raped numerous times. She also endured forced labor as a washerwoman in a military installation and, like most other Berliners at the time, cold and considerable hunger. Rations were irregular and meagre and had to be supplemented by the picking and cooking of nettles or dandelions. Electricity, heat and transportation were lacking.
This memoir has become a classic due to the manner in which it is recorded. The diarist tells of events in a precise and dispassionate way. There is no whining self-pity, anger, blame or ideological circumlocution, just a graphic portrayal of the grim reality that is Berlin in the spring of 1945. Did German civilians deserve all this? Did they bring it upon themselves by their support of the Nazi regime? The questions are raised tangentially but not answered. The behavior of the conquering Russians is widely regarded as barbaric; otherwise attitudes vary or are stoically suppressed.
The diary ends on a poignant note. The author’s pre-war boyfriend returns unexpectedly from what was the east front but war has disrupted and altered their relationship. He is shaken on hearing of the rapes; she, weakened by hunger, jealously guards her small supply of food while he wants to share it with friends. They part.
This chronicle, first published in Germany in 1953, sank into a long obscurity until reemerging in the early 21st century. The author desired anonymity though her name was published at one point by a German magazine. Seventy three years after it was written, the diary retains its value and relevance as a significant account of the final phase of World War II in Europe. Most of all, it is a compelling and highly readable saga on the horrors of war.
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