Women and Children First

Over time my German friends would teach me about life before the fall of the Wall, and tell me the stories of the war handed down by their parents and grandparents.

Many of the stories revolved around survival in 1945, when defeat closed in on both sides of the Reich. With most of the men aged 16-60 dead or away fighting on all fronts, women fought to get or keep men left in the city. Competition was fierce, and death could claim the losers. Some women were forced to beg their husbands to stay to ensure the survival of the children they had fathered.

Some of the worst suffering fell upon the children. Infants starved to death when milk could no longer be delivered, and their mothers became too emaciated to produce their own milk. Older children sent to hand-pump wells across the city to fetch water during and after bombing raids got used to stepping over corpses. Twelve-year-olds were given panzerfausts and sent out to find and kill Russian tanks.

After the war, favorite pets disappeared and ended up in neighbors’ kitchens when food shortages got critical. Women grew tomatoes and other plants on their balconies, desperate for food.  According to the stories it wasn’t unusual, however, as soon as vegetables were ripe, for Russian soldiers to come and forage for the little fresh food the people had grown. People liked to say that skeletons in Russian WWII uniforms were still found in basements unlocked in the 90’s for renovation for the first time after the war.

During the first weeks and months of occupation, some children were forced to watch their mothers being raped and brutalized. Young women, sure they would be assaulted, brought younger brothers or neighborhood boys with them when they had to go out. The young boys could not to stop the rape, but they did run or bike to the nearest Russian base and report the abuse to officers, who had forbidden the behavior under the penalty of death. Reportedly, execution shots could be heard at the bases day and night.

One concert pianist played for a never-ending stream of Russian soldiers who entered her home day and night, drunkenly demanding Tchaikovsky and other Russian compositions in exchange for her honoring her young daughter’s virginity. Some women were less lucky. Gang raped by dozens of soldiers in front of their families and villages, more than a few were cast out and shunned.

Even though the rape eventually stopped, post-war life was very hard for German women. The vast majority of men of marriageable age were gone, either dead or in captivity, and many, many women never had the opportunity to marry and have children of their own. Without enough men or heavy machinery in Berlin, it was up to the women to clear the rubble and rebuild, a back-breaking task.

The trauma of the war and rape often resurfaced, or never left these women decades later as they became frail and old, alone. One day a student of mine who sold hearing aids came in and told me an old woman had broken down in the store that day, sobbing about the rape that had happened to her 50 years earlier.

A Woman in Berlin is the well-written story of an anonymous Berlin journalist who stayed in the city as it fell, and suffered the consequences. Told without self-pity, her story offers one of the best possible accounts of the time, as experienced by a woman.  She describes how Berlin women, with their sense of humor and tenacity, survived times of no food, no running water, shelling and random violence.  The author also acknowledges that both a German solider and Russian soldier testified to her personally that some German troops had committed atrocities on the women and children in the way of the German invasion through Russia, giving rise to the retribution that the Russians took in their triumph.

When the book came out in Germany a few years after the war, it was strongly criticized in for barring so much truth about how the women survived.  Shocked and hurt by the reaction, the hunted author forbid A Woman in Berlin to be republished until after her death. In the last decade the story was republished to widespread acclaim.

She was still alive when I lived in Europe, this anonymous author and I.  I could have passed her on the street, been on the train with her or seen her in a store, and never known who she was, or what she had written. I’m sorry I’ll never be able to tell her in person how brave she was, or how grateful I am that she recorded her experience in such detail so that we could understand what happened to her and the other women in those dark days.  Women’s stories of war are so rare that this work, so exquisitely written and skillfully translated into English, is definitely a must read.