A Woman in Berlin

MONDAY, 4 JUNE 1945

Up early and off to Charlottenburg, very humid outside. Our magazines are already beginning to take shape. I gathered what I could in the way of texts by banned authors – either from Herr R. or others in the building. Maxim Gorky, Jack London, Jules Romains, Thomas Wolfe, as well as older writers like Maupassant, Dickens, Tolstoy. The only question is how to acquire the rights for works not in the public domain, since none of the old publishing houses are still in existence. But our Hungarian isn’t concerned with minor details like that. He’s all for printing. ‘If someone shows up demanding money then we’ll just pay,’ he says and pats his pocket. He’s got hold of a bicycle and has generously put it at the disposal of the ‘publishing house’, which for the time being exists in name only.

We really did have pea soup for our main meal of the day, although unfortunately it didn’t turn out right. Ilse said she boiled the peas but they refused to soften, so she put the whole mess through the mill. The result was rough as sand, but we managed to swallow it down. She’d cooked it with a bit of bacon; they gave the rind to me since I have so far to walk. I should check my weight – I have the feeling I’m rapidly wasting away. My skirts are getting baggy.

I marched home around 6 p.m. The streets were filled with small, tired caravans of people. Where were they coming from? Where were they going? I don’t know. Most were headed east. All the vehicles looked the same: pitiful handcarts piled high with sacks, crates and trunks. Often I saw a woman or an older child in front, harnessed to a rope, pulling the cart forward, with the smaller children or a grandpa pushing from behind. There were people perched on top, too, usually very little children or elderly relatives. The old people look terrible amid all the junk, the men as well as the women – pale, dilapidated, apathetic. Half-dead sacks of bones. They say that among nomadic peoples like the Lapps or Indians old people used to hang themselves on a tree when they were no longer of any use, or crawl off to die in the snow. Our western Christian civilization insists on dragging them along for as long as they can breathe. Many will have to be buried in shallow graves along the roadside.

‘Honour your elders’ – yes, but there’s no time or place for that on a cart full of refugees. I’ve been thinking about how our society treats the elderly, about the worth and dignity of people who have lived long lives. Once they were the masters of property. But among the possessionless masses – which at the moment includes nearly everyone – old age counts for nothing. It’s something to be pitied, not venerated. But precisely this threatening situation seems to spur old people to action, seems to spark their urge to live. The deserter in our building told the widow that he had to keep every bit of food locked away from his elderly mother-in-law, because she steals whatever she can get her hands on and devours it in secret. Without a second’s hesitation she would eat up all his rations as well as his wife’s. If they say anything to her she starts moaning that they want her to starve to death, that they’re trying to kill her to inherit her apartment. And in this way dignified matrons are turning into animals greedily clawing at what’s left of their lives.