A Woman in Berlin : Eight Weeks in the Conquered City: A Diary

by Marta Hillers

  Shuffling feet. Suitcases banging into things. Lutz Lehmann screaming, 'Mutti!' To get to the basement shelter we have to cross the street to the side entrance, climb down some stairs, then go along a corridor and across a square courtyard with stars overhead and aircraft buzzing like hornets. Then down some more stairs, through more doors and corridors. Finally we're in our shelter, behind an iron door that weighs a hundred pounds, with rubber seals around the edges and two levers to lock it shut. The official term is air–raid shelter. We call it cave, underworld, catacomb of fear, mass grave.

  The ceiling is supported by a forest of rough timbers. You can smell the resin despite the closeness of the air. Every evening old Herr Schmidt – Curtainman Schmidt – launches into a structural analysis to demonstrate that the forest will hold up even if the building overhead collapses– assuming that it collapses at a certain angle and distributes its weight in a certain way. The landlord, who should know about that kind of thing, isn't around to tell us. He took off to Bad Ems and is now an American.

  In any case, the people here are convinced that their cave is one of the safest. There's nothing more alien than an unknown shelter. I've been coming here for nearly three months and still feel like a stranger. Every place has its own set of quirks and regulations. In my old basement they were obsessed with having water on hand in case of fire. Wherever you turned you bumped into pots and pails and buckets and barrels full of murky fluid. And still the building burned like a torch. You might as well have spit on the fire for all that water would have done.

  Frau Weiers told me that in her shelter it's the lungs. At the first sound of a bomb they all bend forward and take very shallow breaths, their hands pressed against their bodies. Someone told them this would help prevent burst lungs. Here in this basement they're all fixated on the walls. They sit with their backs against the outside wall – except in front of the ventilation flap. At the first explosion they move on to the next obsession: cloths – everyone has a cloth handy, to wrap around their mouths and noses and then tie behind their heads. I haven't seen that in any other basement. I don't know how the cloths are supposed to help. Still, if it makes people feel better!

  Apart from these ticks it's the usual cave dwellers on the usual chairs, which range from kitchen stools to brocade arm chairs. We're mostly upper and lower middle class, with a sprinkling of workers. I look around and take stock.

  First is the baker's wife, two plump red cheeks swaddled in a lambskin collar. Then the pharmacist's widow, who finished a training course in first aid and who sometimes lays out cards on two chairs pushed together and reads them for the other women. Frau Lehmann, whose husband is missing in the east – and who is now a pillow for the sleeping infant on her arm and four–year–old Lutz asleep on her lap, his shoelaces dangling. The young man in grey trousers and horn–rimmed glasses who on closer inspection turns out to be a young woman. Three elderly sisters, all dressmakers, huddled together like a big black pudding. The refugee girl from Königsberg in East Prussia, wearing the few old rags she's managed to piece together. Then there's Schmidt, who was bombed out and reassigned here, Schmidt the curtain whole saler without curtains, always chatting away despite his years. The bookselling husband and wife who spent several years in Paris and often speak French to each other in low voices...

  I've just been listening to a woman of forty who was bombed out of her home in Adlershof and moved in here with her mother. Apparently a high–explosive bomb buried itself in her neighbour's garden and completely demolished her own house, which she had bought with her savings. The pig she'd been fattening up was flung all the way into the rafters. 'It wasn't fit to eat after that.' The married couple next door to her also met their maker. People retrieved what parts of them they could from the rubble of the building and the mess in the garden. The funeral was very nice. An all–male choir from the Tailors' Guild sang at the graveside. But every thing ended in confusion when the sirens cut in during the Rock of Ages and the gravediggers had to practically throw the coffin in the ground. You could hear the contents bumping about inside. And now for the punchline, the narrator chuckling in advance, although so far her story hasn't been all that funny: And imagine – three days later their daughter is going through the garden looking for anything of use, and right behind the rain barrel she stumbles on one of her papa's arms.'

  A few people give a brief laugh, but most don't. I wonder: did they bury the arm as well?

  Continuing with my inventory. Across from me is an elderly gentleman, a businessman, wrapped in blankets and sweating feverishly. Next to him is his wife, who speaks with a sharp Hamburg 's', and their eighteen–year–old daughter, whom they call Stinchen, with the same 's'. Then comes the blonde who was recently reassigned here and whom no one knows, holding hands with her lodger whom no one knows either. The scrawny retired postmaster and his wife, who is forever lugging around an artificial leg made of nickel, leather and wood – a partial Pieti. since its owner, their one–legged son, is (or was, nobody knows for sure) in a military hospital in Breslau. The hunchbacked doctor of chemistry from the soft drink company, slumped over in his armchair like a gnome. Then the concierge's family: a mother, two daughters and a fatherless grandson. Erna and Henni from the bakery, who are staying with their employer because it was impossible for them to make their way home. Antoine the Belgian with his curly black hair, who puts on a big show of being a baker's apprentice and has something going with Henni. The land lord's housekeeper, who got left behind, and who in open defiance of all air–raid regulations is carrying an aging fox terrier. And then there's me, a pale– faced blonde always dressed in the same winter coat– which I managed to save just by chance– who was employed in a publishing house until it shut down last week and sent its employees on leave 'until further notice'.

  One or two other people, colourless, unremarkable. A community of discards, unwanted at the front, rejected by the Volkssturm, the civil defence. A few of our group are missing: the baker who's gone out to his allotment plot to bury his silver (he's the only one in the building with a red Class III ticket), and Fräulein Behn, a brash spinster who works in the post office, who just raced off to get today's news–sheet during a lull in the bombing. Another woman left for Potsdam to bury seven of her family who died in the heavy bombardment there. The engineer from the third floor is also absent, along with his wife and son. Last week he boarded a barge that was to take him and his household goods along the Mittelland Canal to Braunschweig, where his armaments factory has been moved. The entire workforce is heading for the centre of the country. It must be dangerously overpopulated– unless the Yanks have already arrived. We no longer know a thing.

  Midnight. No power. An oil lamp is smoking away on the beam above me. A sudden surge in the constant drone outside sets off our mania, and we all wrap our cloths around our mouths and noses. A ghostly Turkish harem, a gallery of half veiled death masks. Only our eyes are alive.

  SATURDAY, 21 APRIL 1945, 2A.M.

  Bombs that made the walls shake. My fingers are still trembling as I hold my pen. I’m covered in sweat as if from hard labour. Before my building was hit I used to go down to the shelter and eat thick slices of bread with butter. But since the night I helped dig out people who’d been buried in the rubble, I’ve been preoccupied, forced to cope with my fear of death. The symptoms are always the same. First the sweat beads up around my hairline, then I feel something boring into my spine, my throat gets scratchy, my mouth goes dry, my heart starts to skip. I’ve fixed my eyes on the chair leg opposite, and am memorizing every turned bulge and curve. It would be nice to be able to pray. The brain clings to set phrases, fragments of sentences: ‘Pass lightly through this world, for it is nothing’... ‘and each one falls as God desires’... ‘Noli timere...’ And so on, until this wave of bombers passes.

  As if on command, everyone starts chattering feverishly, laughing, joking, shouting over one another. Fräulein Behn steps up with the newssheet and reads Goebbels’s speech in
honour of the Führer’s birthday (the date had slipped most of our minds). She reads with a new intonation, a mocking, sarcastic voice we haven’t heard down here before: ‘Golden fields of grain... a people at peace...’ ‘How about that,’ say the people from Berlin. ‘That would be nice!’ High–blown phrases that now fall on deaf ears.

  Three in the morning. The basement is dozing away, several all–clears sound, immediately followed by new alarms. No bombs, though. I’m writing. It does me good, takes my mind off things. And Gerd needs to read this if he comes back – if he’s still – no, cross that out, I mustn’t jinx things.

  The girl who looks like a young man just snuck up and asked what I’m writing: ‘Nothing special. Just some private scribbling. Gives me something to do.’

  After the earlier wave of bombs ‘Siegismund’ turned up, an elderly gentleman from the neighbourhood. His nickname comes from Sieg, victory: he keeps talking about the victory at hand, the certain victory. Sieg this and Sieg that, which is presumably why he was kicked out of his own basement. Siegismund genuinely believes that salvation is at hand, and that ‘that man’ (as we now call A.H.) knows exactly what he’s doing. Whenever he talks the people sitting nearby exchange silent, meaningful glances. No one challenges Siegismund. Who wants to argue with a madman? Besides, madmen can be dangerous. The only person who agrees with him is the concierge’s wife, and she is fervent in her support, pronouncing through her fang–like teeth that you can count on ‘that man’ as if he were God himself.

  Nine in the morning, up in the attic apartment. (I can only guess at these times, as long as there’s no clock in sight my life is timeless.) Grey morning, pouring rain. I’m writing on the windowsill, using it as a standing desk. The all–clear sounded shortly after three. I came upstairs, took off my shoes, slipped out of my dress and collapsed onto my bed, which is always turned back and ready. Five hours of deep sleep. The gas is out.

  Just counted my cash: 452 marks. No idea what I’ll do with all that money – the only things left to buy cost no more than a few pfennigs. I also have about a thousand in the bank, again because there’s nothing to buy. (When I opened that account, in the first year of the war, I was still thinking of saving for peacetime, maybe even taking a trip around the world. That was a long, long time ago.) Recently people have been running to the bank – assuming they can find one that’s still open – to withdraw their money. What for? If we go down, the mark goes with us. After all, money, at least paper money, is only a fiction and won’t have any value if the central bank collapses. Indifferent, I run my thumb over the wad of bills, which probably won’t be worth anything except as souvenirs. Snapshot of a by gone era. I assume the victors will bring their own currency and let us have some. Or else they’ll print some kind of military scrip – unless they decide not to give us even that, and force us to work just for a helping of soup.

  Noontime. Endless rain. Walked to Parkstrasse and got some more paper money to add to my wad of souvenirs. The head clerk paid me last month’s salary and made my ‘vacation’ official. The whole publishing house has dissolved into thin air. The employment office has also breathed its last, no one is looking for help any more. So for the moment we’re all our own bosses.

  Bureaucracy strikes me as a fair–weather mend. The whole civil service shuts down at the first sign of shrapnel. (By the way, it’s very peaceful just now. Alarmingly peaceful.) We’re no longer being governed. And still, everywhere you look, in every basement, some kind of order always emerges. When my house was hit I saw how even people who’d been injured or traumatized or buried in the rubble walked away in an orderly manner. The forces of order prevail in this basement as well, a spirit that regulates, organizes, commands. It has to be in our nature. People must have functioned that way as far back as the Stone Age. Herd instinct, a mechanism for preservation of the species. With animals they say it’s always the males, the lead bull, the lead stallion. But in our basement lead mares would be closer to the truth. Fräulein Behn is a lead mare, so is the woman from Hamburg, who keeps very calm. I’m not one, and I wasn’t in my old basement either. Besides, back there we had a lead bull bellowing around, dominating the field, a retired major who brooked no rivals. I always hated having to huddle together down there, always tried to find a comer of my own to sleep in. But when the herd leader calls I follow willingly.

  I walked alongside the tram. I couldn’t get on, since I don’t have a Class III ticket. And it was nearly empty, too, I counted eight passengers in the car. Meanwhile hundreds of people were trudging right next to it in the pouring rain, even though the tram could easily have picked them up – it has to run anyway. But no – see above under: Order. It’s rooted deep inside us, we do as we are told.

  I bought some rolls in the bakery. The shelves still appear to be stocked, you don’t see any panic–buying. After that I went to the ration–card office. Today they were stamping potato coupons 75 to 77 for people with my last initial. The line went surprisingly quickly, although there were only two women on duty with rubber stamps, instead of the usual group. They didn’t even look at the coupons, just stamped them automatically, like machines. Why all this stamping? No one knows, but we all go there, assuming that there’s some sense in it. The last group – X to Z– is to report on 28 April, according to the posted schedule.

  Carts covered with sopping wet canvas were trundling through the rain into the city. Under the tarpaulins are soldiers. That was the first time I’d seen men from the real front line – dirty, grey–bearded, all of them old. The carts were pulled by Polish ponies, dark–coated in the rain. The only other freight they’re hauling is hay. Doesn’t look much like a motorized Blitzkrieg any more.

  On the way home I went behind the black ruins where Professor K used to live and broke into his abandoned garden, where I picked several crocuses and tore off some lilac branches. Took some to Frau Golz, who used to live in my old apartment building. We sat across from each other at her copper table and talked. Or rather, we shouted above the gun fire that had just resumed. Frau Golz, her voice breaking: ‘What flowers, what lovely flowers.’ The tears were running down her face. I felt terrible as well. Beauty hurts now. We’re so full of death.

  This morning I wondered how many dead people I’ve seen in my life. The first was Herr Schermann. I was five at the time, he was seventy, silver–white hair on white silk, candles at his head, raised casket, the whole scene full of meaning. So death, then, was something solemn and beautiful. At least until 1928, when Hilde and Käte P. showed me their brother Hans who’d died the day before. He lay on the sofa like a bundle of rags, a blue scarf tied high around his chin, his knees bent – a piece of dirt, a nothing. Later came my own dead relatives, blue fingernails among the flowers and rosaries. Then the man in Paris who’d been run over and was lying in a pool of blood. And the frozen man on the Moskva river.

  Dead people, yes, but I’ve never seen anyone actually die. I expect that won’t be long in coming. Not that I think it could happen to me. I’ve had so many narrow escapes, I feel I lead a charmed life. That’s probably the way most people feel. How else could they be in such high spirits, surrounded by so much death? What’s clear is that every threat to your life boosts your vitality. My own flame is stronger, I’m burning more fiercely than before the air raids. Each new day of life is a day of triumph. You’ve survived once again. You’re defiant. On one hand you stand taller, but at the same time your feet are planted more firmly on the ground. When the first bombs started to hit I remembered a verse from Horace, which I pencilled on the wall of my room.

  Si fractus illabatur orbis,

  Impavidum ferient ruinae

  Should Nature’s pillar’d frame give way,

  that wreck would strike one fearless head

  Back then you could still write to people abroad. I quoted those lines in a letter to my friends the Ds in Stockholm, flexing my muscles – in part to make myself feel strong– by telling them how intense it was to live here amid all t
he danger. I felt a kind of forbearance writing that, as if I were an adult initiated into the deep secrets of life, speaking to innocent children in need of protection.

  SUNDAY, 22 APRIL 1945, 2A.M.

  I was upstairs in bed, dozing away as the wind blew through the shattered panes. I had a brick at my feet that had taken hours to warm over a tiny gas flame. Around 8p.m. Frau Lehmann knocked on the door. ‘Come on down, the alarms are out, no sirens any more. Everybody else is already in the basement.’

  A breakneck rush down the stairs. I was scared to death when my heel got caught on the edge of a step. I barely man aged to grab hold of the railing in time. My knees went weak. but I went on, heart pounding, slowly groping my way through the pitch–dark passage. Finally I found the lever to the basement door.

  Our cave looked different. Everybody was bedded down. There were pillows everywhere, eiderdowns, deckchairs. I just managed to squeeze my way to my usual spot. The radio’s dead: no signal, not even from the airport. The kerosene lantern is flickering dimly. A cluster of bombs, then things go quiet. Siegismund shows up, still waving his flag, claiming that the tide’s about to turn – even as Curtainman Schmidt is muttering something about Russians in Bernau and Zossen. We stay put, the hours crawl by, we listen to the artillery thudding away, sometimes far off, sometimes quite close.

  The pharmacist’s widow turns to me. ‘You’d better not go back to that fourth–floor apartment of yours,’ she warns. She offers to let me spend the night in her apartment on the first floor. We clamber up the back stairs – formerly designated ‘for servants and deliveries’ – a narrow spiral staircase. The glass shards crunch underfoot, wind whistles through the open windows. She shows me to a small room next to the kitchen, a couch by the door welcomes me in and grants me two hours of sleep under an unfamiliar–smelling woolen blanket. Until sometime around midnight, when bombs start hitting nearby and we take refuge back in the basement. Long, miserable hours in the middle of the night. Right now I’m too tired to go on writing, down here.