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A review by emj03
A Woman in Berlin: Eight Weeks in the Conquered City: A Diary by Marta Hillers
5.0
I couldn’t give this book less than five stars, the horrors that many German women faced in the weeks and months during the post-war era was astronomical. The Russian ‘liberation’ of Berlin came with other horrors, taking advantage of mothers and their daughters - not taking their age into account. The anonymous author of this book did not want it to be published until after her death, as the first attempt of publishing her diaries did not go down well. Imagine writing about the experiences you went through just to be shut down by others.
Page 162 states that ‘Russian soldiers helped themselves to what was left of the alcohol’, and a woman described her Russian encounter in complete, heart wrenching detail.
Yes a lot of these women followed the Hitler regime, but that does not take away from the fact that these women did not face struggles. Some also denounced their German propaganda once they realised the extent of how things were exaggerated, but it was a bit late for that as the damage of Nazism had left its mark on a war-torn Germany.
There was one quote I found that stuck with me, it was on page 283, the author wrote that the people she saw were ‘Half-dead sacks of bones’, on 297 the stench of death was a common thing as bodies were ‘exhumed [...] to be reinterred in a cemetery’ and disease such as typhus and dysentery were rife.
If you have any interest in war/social history this is the book to read. It’s heartbreaking and you sympathise with the people and what they went through.
Page 162 states that ‘Russian soldiers helped themselves to what was left of the alcohol’, and a woman described her Russian encounter in complete, heart wrenching detail.
Yes a lot of these women followed the Hitler regime, but that does not take away from the fact that these women did not face struggles. Some also denounced their German propaganda once they realised the extent of how things were exaggerated, but it was a bit late for that as the damage of Nazism had left its mark on a war-torn Germany.
There was one quote I found that stuck with me, it was on page 283, the author wrote that the people she saw were ‘Half-dead sacks of bones’, on 297 the stench of death was a common thing as bodies were ‘exhumed [...] to be reinterred in a cemetery’ and disease such as typhus and dysentery were rife.
If you have any interest in war/social history this is the book to read. It’s heartbreaking and you sympathise with the people and what they went through.