Scan barcode
A review by erboe501
A Woman in Berlin: Eight Weeks in the Conquered City: A Diary by Marta Hillers
5.0
This is the kind of book that will haunt you for a very long time after putting it down. The diary of a young woman in the summer of 1945 (from the days before Russian occupation of Berlin through peace) is honest and unflinching in its narration of the atrocities of war. Historians estimate that 100,000 women were raped after the occupation of Berlin. All of those women have names and stories, and this book brings to light some of those women and how they dealt with unimaginable terror, often with gallows humor and resilience.
I don't understand why this book isn't more widely taught in history classes, at least in excerpts. True, teachers need to be sensitive about triggering sexual assault victims. But I think it's important that we think about this topic when we talk about WWII. There is so much complexity here. The Germans were the "bad guys" and the Russians were part of the Allies--but the Russian soldiers' treatment of women is despicable. It's not even as easy as calling the Russians evil, because some of the soldiers our journalist encountered were kind. She admits, as did many of the women who were raped, that their own German soldiers had likely done similar things earlier in the war. The journalist clearly considered herself intellectually superior to the Communist Russian peasants. They're animalistic and uncouth, but they're the victors.
An important thing to take away from this book is that there is so much more nuance to the "good versus evil" battle that WWII is often made out to be. The journalist adds more shades to a black and white picture. The German civilians didn't deserve what they went through, but they also participated in, or at least remained passive during, an atrocious regime. The journalist was shocked and ashamed of her people when she heard about the concentration camps. Most of the civilians she encountered during the occupation blamed Hitler for their current situation and felt like fools for following him.
From a Women's Studies perspective, there's a goldmine of reflections on the degeneration of German masculinity. German men had no power to stop the raping of their women. Many German women began to see men as the weaker sex. As a result, German men didn't want to hear or talk about rape after the war. Because they failed their women, they demanded silence about their failure.
It was sometimes hard to remember, or, in fact believe, that this wasn't fiction. The level of detail makes it seem like a story. But this really happened to real people. What haunts me is wondering what happened to our journalist when she ended her journal. Thanks to a 21st-century reprinting, this story is available to a wider public that, in light of today's rape culture and talk of war, could really use a wakeup call and a reminder that good and evil are a mixed bag.
I don't understand why this book isn't more widely taught in history classes, at least in excerpts. True, teachers need to be sensitive about triggering sexual assault victims. But I think it's important that we think about this topic when we talk about WWII. There is so much complexity here. The Germans were the "bad guys" and the Russians were part of the Allies--but the Russian soldiers' treatment of women is despicable. It's not even as easy as calling the Russians evil, because some of the soldiers our journalist encountered were kind. She admits, as did many of the women who were raped, that their own German soldiers had likely done similar things earlier in the war. The journalist clearly considered herself intellectually superior to the Communist Russian peasants. They're animalistic and uncouth, but they're the victors.
An important thing to take away from this book is that there is so much more nuance to the "good versus evil" battle that WWII is often made out to be. The journalist adds more shades to a black and white picture. The German civilians didn't deserve what they went through, but they also participated in, or at least remained passive during, an atrocious regime. The journalist was shocked and ashamed of her people when she heard about the concentration camps. Most of the civilians she encountered during the occupation blamed Hitler for their current situation and felt like fools for following him.
From a Women's Studies perspective, there's a goldmine of reflections on the degeneration of German masculinity. German men had no power to stop the raping of their women. Many German women began to see men as the weaker sex. As a result, German men didn't want to hear or talk about rape after the war. Because they failed their women, they demanded silence about their failure.
It was sometimes hard to remember, or, in fact believe, that this wasn't fiction. The level of detail makes it seem like a story. But this really happened to real people. What haunts me is wondering what happened to our journalist when she ended her journal. Thanks to a 21st-century reprinting, this story is available to a wider public that, in light of today's rape culture and talk of war, could really use a wakeup call and a reminder that good and evil are a mixed bag.