Customer Reviews
The other side of war - By: Bob Salter, 14 Nov 2008 
A "Womanin Berlin" is the frank & honest diary of a young woman caught upin the dark days during the fall of Berlinin 1945. The book contains an excellent forward from Antony Beevor the historian who wrote the equally compelling "Berlin the Downfall".
This extraordinary work has an interesting history. It was first publishedin 1953 to a German public that was not quite ready to face such brutal truths. It quickly disappeared from view & after many decades slowly re-emerged. It is now an international phenomenon & has recently been made into a film which will only enhance its reputation further.
The diary is well written as you would expect from someone who has travelled Europein the publishing trade. The diary does not tell us exactly what she did. That she is extremely intelligent & articulate there is no doubt. She reads such literary greats as Goethe & has travelled Europe.
Those who might seek titillationin such a book will probably be dissappointed. I hope so. The rapes that she endured so stoically are not sensationalisedin any way. She accepted that she could not alter the situation & did her best to live through it. There is no doubt that Stalins Red Army raped on a huge scalein the early days. These were men who were out to revenge horrific atrocities against there own population. They were men who had often been on the front for years. No home leave for most of them. They were mainly simple workers with a smattering of intelligentsia. They felt it was their right to treat German women as war booty & they did so with impunity.
We follow the diary through the brutal early days & find this well read woman sleeping with a simple Russian peasant. One of the incongruity's that war throws up. She is not beneath sleeping with Russians for food to survive. A fact that would have upset many Germans. Many of the German men at that time were helpless to prevent assaults on their womenfolk & felt emasculated. The matter was best swept under the carpet. The matter was not talked about. Even today there are those that refuse to believe these events ever took place. My own Mother who lived through that era is among them. She believes the diary to be a lie & believes the Red Army would never have behavedin such a way. Having read this account & many others I have long been convinced that these events occurred. I would no more deny this than deny that the world was round. The bulk of evidence is convincing. But what convinced me most was her many descriptions of the more mundane tasks like collecting nettles.
I will not give five stars purely on the basis that I am not sure I like the diarist as a person. I sometimes find her comments grate. That is her character & another good case for authenticity. I disliked her comments about the elderly. She describes old age as something to be pitied, not veneratedin those desperate times. Often true that the elderly & the very young are the first to suffer at such times. But surely if we behavein such a way then we are no better than the beasts. She quotes the Lapps & Indians as leaving the old to perish when they have gone past usefulness. However it is a fact that many ancient cultures venerate the elderly. As we should.
Aside from these small reservations I find this a compelling work that is deserving of its growing reputation. It is the grittier adult version of Anne Franks diary. It is as the hype says a chilling indictment of war. An important & serious workin the can'on of war literature. Read it.
A remarkable, even poetic account of a vicious time - By: Ian David Curry, 02 Nov 2008 
In the middle of chaos, amidst the wreckage of the broken city, the anonymous author marvels at the innocence of a baby girl with copper ringlets of hair. Against the dirt, grime, hunger & rape that have become normal life for Berliners, this chubby, pink baby seems a strange reminder of what normality was before the city was occupied.
In a similar vein this diary is a thing of strange beauty, a product of, but completely alien to, the senseless cruelties & world turned upside down Berlin the writer inhabitsin those strangest of last days & new beginnings.
This is the story of a few weeks, a little more than two months meticulously detailedin a thoughtful, almost detached. It is no surprise that the author had a backgroundin journalism & editing, nor that she had travelled & had little of the xenophobic closed mindset of Nazi Germany. But she still feels. She is humiliated, degraded & afraid, albeit capable of recognising, cataloguing & exploring these emotions & setting them down on paper.
The writer is a middle class woman, educated & travelled. She has lived through the Second World War & is now battling on the front line as it sweeps into & takes over Berlin. She is reduced to living with a neighbour, using her body to augment the larder & employing a smattering of Russian she picked up on travelsin Russia to intervene on behalf of neighbours & to gain protection of Russian officers.
The writer endures & experiences the worse excesses of the occupation. She makes faultless observations about the way life unfolds under encroaching Russian occupation. Her descriptive talent paints vivid portraits of the neighbours, the Germans who share the basement `cave'in a clannish, pre-occupation retreat to before civilisation. She also applies her even handed language to the Russians, marvelling at the varietyin personalities, types & manners. By some she is treated almost as an equal, or as a lady. Others smash her to the floor as the spoils of war.
As much as the account horrifies as the accounts of rape become an almost flippant daily discussion between the women, there are also touching moments of kindness & humanity, between neighbours & between the occupiers & occupied. But these are small flickers of lightin the thick darkness of the Götterdamerung. There is violence, cruelty & vicious retribution for what Germans didin the Soviet Union.
It is a remarkable record, a flawless account of the most extraordinary of times & a testament to how people reactin the most pressured of situations, the instinct for survival taking over. Without bitterness, recrimination or analysing the event long after it happened, this is raw, urgent yet erudite & poetic.
This is an historical record that well deserves the wider audience it will receive following the release of the cinematic adaptation.
A fascinating piece of history - By: Chelli, 19 Feb 2008 We are very fortunate that this anonymous woman kept a diary of the terrible events that happened to her & many other German women livingin berlin at the end of WWII,because otherwise this is a part of history that would forever remain hushed up.
The author writed with total honesty & clarity,without any self pity & even with a touch of black humour.This is a really fascinating diary written using the authors journalistic talent.It's a shame she never received the credit she deserved for this important piece of history within her lifetime.
An essential book about Berlin in 1945 - By: H. A. James, 05 Feb 2008 Other than fully endorsing what other reviewers have said about the power of this extraordinary account of the ending of the warin Berlin, from April 1945 & the next two or three months, I would simply draw attention to the immediacy of the writing.
It makes highly uncomfortable reading to be taken right into the dusty, half-lit, & stinking basements, where the writer & other people sheltered during the final days, or to travel with her as she makes her way on her bicycle through the rubble of the city, and, yes, to hear of how she copes (and she does cope) with the ordeal of repeated rape. But you finish the book with the strongest possible sense of her dignity, humanity, intelligence & sheer determination to survive. This is essential reading.
A shocking reminder... - By: Othon Leon, 10 Nov 2007 I read this book keepingin mind not only the described facts by the (anonymous) author, but the terrible circumstances it was written under...in my opinion it is a very valuable document that tells us about the terrible (and wonderful) things we all are capable of under war conditions, perhaps useful to wake up & keepin mind the effects our actions have on other human beigns...in my opinion, a series of facts that must not be forgotten, ever. An excellent reading, no doubt, light & deep at the time...
