“A Woman in Berlin: Eight Weeks in the Conquered City: A Diary by Anonymous translated from the German by Philip Boehm 940.5343 WO (also DVD FOREIGN WOMAN)

I would not have read this book on my own (war wearies me), but the German American Heritage Center book group chose it to discuss and I acquiesced.  I ended up reading most of it at the University of Chicago Reynolds Club while my husband was at a conference (on happiness, of all things!)  It was so powerful and moving to me.  I was immersed in the WWII German homefront in defeat and how very harrowing that was.   Despite the author’s being my country’s official enemy at the time, I related to her humanity and especially to her being a woman.  She was a journalist and used to observing details and recording events.  For eight weeks she wrote a lot because it helped to preserve her sanity.  She (and most every woman around her) was raped repeatedly.  How does one survive that?  She did and she tells the reader how.  It wasn’t easy, but it’s possible through force of will and thought.  She writes, “What does it mean–rape?  When I said the word for the first time aloud, Friday evening in the basement, it sent shivers down my spine.  Now I can think it and write it with an untrembling hand, say it out loud to get used to hearing it said.  It sounds like the absolute worst, the end of everything–but it’s not.”   But it’s not.  After reading that, anonymous became my hero.    Despite everything bad that was happening to her, she exhibited hope and a fundamental sense of decency for herself and for all of us.

Of course, this diary wasn’t all about rape–it was about surviving with no food or water and no electricity in the midst of  bombings, and finally, invasion.  Physical, mental, and emotional anguish.  How does one react and relate to the invaders and then to the returning German soldiers?

One of the things that really appalled me was the reaction of the German public to this diary.  It was published outside Germany first in 1953 because no German publisher would take it on.  Within Germany, anonymous was castigated, criticized, made to feel immoral, and treated as a traitor–to Germany, to German men, and to her own gender.  She was so shocked and downtrodden by this, she refused to allow the book to be reprinted in her lifetime.  A half-century later, it was republished to international acclaim.  And she became a hero to me.

I wrote the above review last May for the BPL Adult Services “Find a Good Book” blog.  Here’s one about World War II that I read in 1995 and have remembered, lo, all these many years:

“The Good War: An Oral History of World War II” by Studs Terkel, 940.54 TE

The inimitable Terkel was a master interviewer.  He encouraged people–the most ordinary, average, nondescript people–to say the most insightful, profound, humorous, revealing things.  He compiled these memoirs for the 40th anniversary of WWII.  I read them for the 50th anniversary.  They were compelling then and would be now during this time of the Honor Flights to Washington, D.C., for the last remaining WWII veterans.  There often has to be a time lag after an intense event for people to realize how their lives have been affected.   The variety of effects was astonishing.  No two experiences were alike. 

One Iowa farmer said, the war was good for the economy.  But he paid for it with his son’s life.  And then that farmer wept.

The most common and important topic of conversation among the troops was said to be food.

Here’s a couple of quotations from two different interviews:  “You might get hurt in the process, but you’re privileged.  You’re a participant and an eyewitness.  To see fascism defeated, nothing better could have happened to a human being.  You felt you were doing something worthwhile.  You felt you were an actor in a tremendous drama that was unfolding.  It was the most important moment in my life.  I always felt very lucky to have been part of it.”  And: “The war brought some changes for the good: blacks in defense industries, training they might not otherwise have received.  Social gains.  We’ve come a long way.  But racism is just as alive today, maybe even more virulent.  It was the war to end fascism, okay?  Do you realize that most blacks don’t believe the atom bomb would have been dropped on Hiroshima had it been a white city?”

Provocative stuff!