A Woman in Berlin

In all the chaos of departure the cook didn’t serve us from his own shores today; we had to report to the canteen and slurp down the barley soup. There the word was going round that we’d never see the 8 marks per day we’d been promised, that the Russians were taking all the money with them. Then there was a second, even wilder rumour on top of that. Supposedly the radio had warned of a Mongolian horde about to pour into Berlin, men so fierce even Stalin was unable to keep them in check and had been forced to grant them three days’ of freedom to plunder and rape, and had advised all women to hide in their homes. Utter nonsense, of course. But the women believed it and kept jabbering and moaning, all worked up, until our interpreter intervened. A battleaxe of a woman who addresses everyone with the familiar form and sings the same tune as our overseers, even though she was sent here to do forced work just like the rest of us. She wangled her position thanks to her scanty bits of Russian (she’s from Polish Upper Silesia). Well, I passed her level of ability long ago, but I’m very glad I didn’t let them know it. I would have hated having to translate all the orders and shouts of our taskmasters. The whole group is afraid of the woman. She has pointy canine teeth and a piercing, malicious gaze – exactly how I imagine a female guard in a concentration camp.

In the evening they announced in the canteen that we were being dismissed. They also told us we could pick up our pay next week – room number such-and-such in the town hall. Maybe it will be there, maybe it won’t. I shook hands with little Gerti and the other woman – gingerly, since the three of us are very sore – and wished them all the best. Gerti wants to go back to Silesia, where her parents live. Or lived. No one knows anything for sure.

THURSDAY, 31 MAY 1945

Today I began my solitary hungry existence in the attic apartment. It must have been some instinct that made me eat the way I did at the widow’s, with no holding back. After all, I knew it couldn’t last. That’s why I stuffed myself with as much food as I could. They can’t take that away from me now. But the shift from the good life to nearly nothing is all the harder. I have no supplies laid up, and as of yet they’ve hardly doled out a thing. That leaves bread, which we do receive promptly – in my case 300 grams, i.e. six rolls of grey rye bread, which I easily eat up just for breakfast. As it happens, today there weren’t any rolls, so I had to take a kilogram loaf. I made a cross over it the way my mother’s very devout mother used to do. May I never lack for bread up here. I notched the crust to mark off three daily portions. There’s no fat of any kind to spread. The widow gave me some dried potatoes and the remaining pea flour, but those won’t last more than two midday meals. For supper there’s really nothing except for nettles. It makes you so listless. As I write this I feel as if my head were a balloon that might fly away any minute. I get dizzy if I bend over; the change is too drastic. Nevertheless I’m glad I had those few fat weeks. They’ve left me some strength. Presumably food will be doled out sooner or later. I can’t count on a Russian provider – that’s all over.

I spent the whole day slaving away in the attic, a day of complete silence and solitude, the first in a long time. At one point I noticed that the real tenant’s radio had disappeared. There were handprints on the whitewash where the radio should have been. Proper fingerprints, too – good specimens for a Sherlock Holmes. I deduced that the roofers were expanding their own inventory, taking one piece here, one piece there. Well, I intend to give them a piece of my mind. I can get their address from the housekeeper of the landlord who took off towards the west. She’s running things on his behalf, already collecting rent for June. The May rent was cancelled: in the official records for 1945, that month won’t count.

FRIDAY, 1 JUNE 1945

The chervil in my balcony flowerboxes is sprouting in curly shoots; the borage has little round leaves. The bit of green brightens my morning. For breakfast I had three pieces of bread, spread with a paste I made from dry yeast and water. Pretty short rations.

Despite that I set off on a long trek, this time to Steglitz, to visit a young secretary from my old firm.

Berlin is cleaning up. Children are looking scrubbed again. Everywhere you see caravans of families with handcarts – refugees from outside the city heading home. Here and there notices are pasted on the walls and lamp posts calling on the Sllesians and East Prussians to join the group transports for the trip back east. They say it’s more difficult to travel west, since the Elbe is still impassable. That’s where the Russkis met up with the Yanks: according to the radio they’re still celebrating and fraternizing.