A Woman in Berlin

Once again I feel oppressed by our German disaster. I came out of the cinema deeply saddened, but help myself by summoning things that dull my emotions. Like that bit of Shakespeare I jotted in my notebook, back then in Paris, when I discovered Spengler and felt so dejected by his Decline of the West. ‘A tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.’ Losing two world wars hits damned deep.

THURSDAY, 14 JUNE 1945

And once again the walking machine was back in Charlottenburg. If only our firm were already in operation and I had my Group II ration card, with 500 grams of bread per day so that I could save a little of it for the evening. As it is I sacrifice all six of the rye rolls I get every morning for breakfast. That is to say, I pack two with me and eat them at the two breaks I allow myself; otherwise I’d give out. Despite my ‘frying’ them in coffee substitute, the rancid-tasting potatoes are difficult to get down. I should pick them over again; the little pile is melting away at an alarming rate.

Dozens of telephones were lining the hallway outside the engineer’s apartment. They’re being collected from everywhere, supposedly for the Russians. Berlin without phones! Looks like we’ll go back to being cavemen.

The evening brought a nice surprise. I finally procured my ration of fat for the past twenty days at the corner shop – 20 times 7 equals 140 grams of sunflower oil. Reverently I carried back home the little bottle I’d been toting around all week in vain. Now my apartment smells like a Moscow stolovaya – one of those cafeterias for ordinary people.

FRIDAY, 15 JUNE 1945

I went down very early to get my six daily rolls. They’re dark and wet – we never had anything like them before. I no longer dare buy a whole loaf, because I’d eat up the next day’s portion.

Today we broke into my old employer’s basement. The Hungarian, the engineer and I slipped in through the back, through the laundry room. We had managed to prise open the crate, which was standing untouched in the shed, when the wife of the company’s representative appeared on the basement stairs. They’re still living in the building. I mumbled something about having left some files and papers lying around. The men hid behind the crate. Then we broke off the frames, tore out the pictures – photographs signed by young men decorated with the Knight’s Cross – and stacked the glass panes; we had brought some packing paper and string with us. After that we were able to make our getaway through the back entrance. I don’t really care if they notice the loss; after all, I lost my camera and all my equipment, which I had left at work at my boss’s request, when the place was destroyed by a bomb. What are a few panes of glass compared with that? We absconded with our loot as fast as we could, each of us lugging a heavy stack of glass to my place where the men had parked our two valuable company bicycles. I was given four panes as commission. I could have glazed one whole window in my attic apartment – if I’d had any putty.

In the evening I read some of the rather random selection of books belonging to the apartment’s rightful tenant. I found a copy of Tolstoy’s Polikushka and read that for the umpteenth time. Then I ploughed through a collection of plays by Aeschylus, and came across The Persians, which, with its lamentations of the vanquished, seems well suited to our defeat. But in reality it’s not. Our German calamity has a bitter taste – of repulsion, sickness, insanity, unlike anything in history. The radio just broadcast another concentration camp report. The most horrific thing is the order and the thrift: millions of human beings as fertilizer, mattress-stuffing, soft soap, felt mats – Aeschylus never saw anything like that.

FROM SATURDAY, 16 JUNE TO FRIDAY, 22 JUNE 1945

I haven’t been writing. And I won’t be either – that time is over. It was around 5 p.m. on Saturday when the doorbell rang. The widow, I thought to myself. But it was Gerd, in civilian dress, suntanned, his hair lighter than ever. For a long time neither of us said a thing; we just stared at each other in the dim hallway like two ghosts.

‘Where have you come from? Have you been discharged?’

‘No, I just sneaked off. But now would you let me in?’ He was dragging a sled behind him, mounted on small wheels and loaded with a trunk and a sack.