A Woman in Berlin

MONDAY, 14 MAY 1945

Last night the noise of motors tore me from my sleep. Hearing shouts and honking, I stumbled to the window and lo and behold, there was a Russian truck full of flour. The baker already has coal, so now he’ll be able to bake, to accommodate the ration cards and numbers. I heard him shout for joy and saw him hugging the Russian driver, who was also beaming. The Russians enjoy playing Santa Claus.

Then this morning at dawn I was wakened by the sound of chattering people queuing for bread. The line wound halfway round the block and it’s still there now, in the afternoon. Many women have brought stools along. I can literally hear the hiss of gossip.

For the first time we have water from a proper hydrant, not far away at all. It’s a mechanical wonder, an automatic pump with three taps that deliver the water in a thick stream. Your bucket is filled in a flash. And you don’t need to wait more than a few minutes. That really changes our day, making our lives easier.

On the way to the hydrant I passed a number of graves. Practically every front garden has these silent billets. Some are marked with German steel helmets, some with the gaudy red Russian stakes and white Soviet stars. They must have hauled along whole trainloads of these memorials.

Wooden plaques have been set up on the kerbs, with inscriptions in German and Russian. One of them quotes Stalin to the effect that the Hitlers disappear, but Germany remains. Losungi – that’s the Russian word for such slogans, from the German Losung.

Now a bulletin has been posted next to the door of our building: ‘News for Germans.’ The last word sounds so strange in this context, almost like an insult. You can read the text of our unconditional surrender, signed by Keitel, Stumpff, Friedeburg, along with reports of arms being surrendered on all fronts. Göring has been captured. One woman claims she heard on a crystal set that he cried like a child at his arrest and had already been sentenced to death by Hitler. A colossus with feet of clay.

But there’s another sheet posted up, which attracts far more attention and sparks more debate. Evidently the Russians are introducing new rationing regulations with larger allotments, but allocated according to group – heavy labourers, blue-collar workers, white-collar workers, children and others. Bread, potatoes, concentrated foodstuffs, coffee substitute, real coffee, sugar, salt, even fat. Not so bad, if it’s true. In some cases the rations are more generous than we had lately under Adolf This information is making a profound impact. I hear people say things like, ‘There’s another example of how our propaganda made fools of us all.’

It’s true too: the constant forecasts of death by starvation, of complete physical annihilation by the enemy were so pervasive that we’re stunned by every piece of bread, every indication that we will still be provided for. In that respect Goebbels did a great advance job for the conquerers: any crust of bread from their hands seems like a present to us.

This afternoon I queued up for meat. There’s nothing more instructive than spending an hour like that. I learned that trains are back up and running to Stettin, Küstrin and Frankfurt an der Oder. On the other hand our local public transport is apparently still shut down.

One woman enjoyed telling the story of why the Russians chose to leave their building alone: on their first brief visit, they found one family poisoned in their beds on the second floor, and another, one floor up, all hanging from the transom of the kitchen window. The Russians took off terrified and never came back and the residents keep everything the way it was, as a kind of scarecrow, just in case… Anyway I was able to get my meat without a hitch. All beef, no bones – that will help us out.

‘Tenants’ meeting in the basement – 4:30 p.m.’ – the word went from door to door. At last the basement barricade is being dismantled. A good thing, too; we’ll be able to get to the rest of the widow’s potatoes. We formed a chain along the hallway. A small candle stuck onto a chair gave a faint glow as bricks, boards, chair and mattress parts passed from one hand to the next.

The basement was a complete mess. The smell of excrement. Each person packed up his things. Unclaimed goods were supposed to be placed in the light well (despite this, the widow let some silk underwear that didn’t belong to her quietly vanish into her sack. Later she remembered the Ten Commandments and put the piece of clothing, which had an embroidered monogram indicating the rightful owner, back where it belonged, claiming she had taken it ‘by mistake’.) But all notions of ownership have been completely demolished.

Everyone steals from everyone else, because everyone has been stolen from and because we can make use of anything. So the only unclaimed goods were ones not worth the taking: threadbare slips, hats, a single shoe. While the widow kept poking around bitterly for the pearl tie-pin – she’d forgotten where she hid it – I lugged the potatoes upstairs and dumped them next to Herr Pauli’s bed. The widow followed me up and immediately started in like Cassandra with warnings of how we’d starve to death as soon as we finished the last of their potatoes. Herr Pauli vigorously seconded everything she said. This makes me think that the household is beginning to view me as a burden, one more mouth to feed, that they’re counting each morsel I consume and begrudging me every single potato. Meanwhile Pauli is still happy to dip into my major’s sugar. Nevertheless I want to try to get back on my own feet, as far as food is concerned – only how?

I can’t bring myself to be angry with the two of them. Not that I’ve had to, but it could well be that in their situation I wouldn’t be too happy to share my food either. And there’s no new major on the horizon.