A Woman in Berlin

SATURDAY, 26 MAY 1945

Once again the cattle count at the factory yard took forever, though our Viennese should have mastered it by now. And once again the day started off with some hot barley soup; the women were pleased to see whole pieces of meat. And I’m happy not to have Herr Pauli keeping track of every bite I put in my mouth.

In vain I looked around for my co-washer, but the small, pert woman from Danzig didn’t show up. So I persuaded two other women – one very young, the other around forty, both friendly looking – to join me at the washtubs. The uniforms were waiting, having already been put to soak. They were covered in oil stains, since this is a motorized unit.

The day passed just like yesterday. The new washerwomen were nice and hard-working. Once again the Russians crowded round us. We fended them off with our elbows and silly laughter. One slit-eyed individual was determined to provoke us. He took a few tunics already hanging on the line to dry and tossed them back in the tub, pointing out several stains that were still visible. Of course the stains were still there. The pitiful bit of soap we had wasn’t enough, and all our brushing couldn’t make up for that. Other men were friendlier, placing pieces of bread next to their tunics.

Towards noon our boss rigged up a kind of dining room in front of the building, consisting of a crate and two overturned drawers. He asked us to sit down and served us a large pot of the rich stew – always with the same friendly but deadpan expression. We sat in the sun and took our time eating, enjoying the meal greatly. Both my fellow washers gave evasive answers to my usual question about how often it had happened to them. The older of the two, a spirited woman with bad teeth but humour very much intact, said that it was all the same to her – as long as her husband didn’t find out about it when he came back from the western front. Apart from that she subscribes to the saying, ‘Better a Russki on top than a Yank overhead.’ She’s in a position to know, too; her building was hit head on and she and the other residents who had retreated to the basement were buried in rubble. Several people were wounded and one was killed. It took two hours for help to arrive and dig them out. She became very agitated when she started speaking about the person killed, an old woman. ‘She was sitting by the wall, right in front of a mirror.’ The builders had hung the mirrors low because the basement was originally intended as a shelter for the children from the kindergarten housed in the ramshackle building next door. When children were evacuated from Berlin, the kindergarten was dosed and the basement was freed up for the people in the building. ‘The mirror exploded into a thousand pieces, which flew right into the old woman’s back and neck and head. And in the dark and with all the to-do, no one noticed she was quietly bleeding to death.’ Still outraged, she waved her soup spoon in the air. ‘Fancy that, a mirror.’

An amazing death, no doubt about it. Presumably the children for whom the basement shelter was designed were supposed to comb their little locks in front of the mirrors each morning after the nightly air raid – a luxury clearly installed back when the raids first started, back when the shelters still offered a measure of comfort as well as confidence.

We scrubbed the afternoon away, rubbing tunics, trousers and caps with our wrinkled, swollen hands. Around 7 p.m. we were able to sneak out onto the street through a side gate. A wonderful feeling of freedom – a combination of finally getting off work and playing truant.

At home the widow, Herr Pauli, and I drank what was left of the burgundy I’d stolen from the police barracks. Tomorrow is Sunday, but not for me. The Viennese gave a little speech today, the gist of which was that if we didn’t show up for work tomorrow, they would come to our apartments and take us to the factory by force.