A Woman in Berlin

WEDNESDAY, 6 JUNE 1945

Once again it’s evening, and the walking machine has come back home. The rain is streaming down outside, and inside – oh joy! – the water is streaming from the tap in my apartment. I fill the bath and shower myself with water. No more lugging those heavy buckets up the stairs.

Another day hard at work. I went with the Hungarian to look into renting office space. Our first stop was the Rathaus, where he obtained some official papers, stamps and signatures that are meant to authorize his plans and attest to his clean record. There were a number of amazing characters there, types you haven’t seen for years, people who’ve been staying out of sight and are now crawling out of the woodwork everywhere you look. I saw young male dancers, a Jewish woman who’d gone underground and was talking about her nose operation, an older man with a bright red Assyrian’ beard who was a painter of ‘degenerate’ art.

After a cup of real coffee, use and her husband had a heated discussion about whether he should accept a job in Moscow They’re offering him a high-level position, good pay. But use is dead set against it, if for no other reason than he would have to make the move by himself at first. He doesn’t want to go either. He’d prefer to keep breathing western air, our publishing plans have helped him take heart and he’s hoping to get back in the usual boys’ game of money and power and big cars.

Today the Allies are conducting negotiations. The radio is spitting speeches, brimming with the tributes our ex-enemies are paying one another. All I know is that we Germans are finished. We’re nothing but a colony, subject to their whims. I can’t change any of that; I just have to swallow it. All I want to do is steer my little ship through the shoals as best I can. That means hard work and short rations, but the old sun is still in the sky. And maybe my heart will speak to me once more. One thing’s for sure: my life has certainly been full – all too full!