A Woman in Berlin

SATURDAY, 9 JUNE 1945

Day off for me. We agreed that for as long as I don’t have anything to eat, I’d make the 12-mile trek only every other day.

In the store where I’m registered they gave me groats and sugar in exchange for coupons – enough for two or three meals. Then with my elegantly begloved hands I picked an entire mountain of nettle shoots, orache and dandelions.

In the afternoon I went to the hairdresser’s for the first time in ages, and asked for a shampoo and set. They washed about a pound of dirt out of my hair. The hairdresser had popped up from somewhere to take over the shop of a colleague who was pressed into the Volkssturm at the last minute and is missing in action. Supposedly the man’s family was evacuated to Thuringia. The place had been pretty well ransacked, but one mirror is still intact and one dryer is still halfway serviceable, if rather dented. The man’s speech was very pre-war: ‘Yes, ma’am. Why of course, ma’am, I’d be happy to, ma’am.’ I find all the overly solicitous and polite phrases somewhat alien now ‘Yes, ma’am’ is for internal use only, a currency of no value except among ourselves. To the rest of the world we’re nothing but rubble-women and trash.