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Marta Hillers

    This author, a German journalist, is renowned for her stark and unflinching memoir documenting immediate experiences during and after the Battle of Berlin. Her work, initially published anonymously, offers an uncompromising look at survival under extreme duress and the psychological toll of wartime trauma. Through diary entries, she delves into complex themes of sexuality, resilience, and moral compromise in the face of violence and chaos. Her writings provide a unique and often unsettling perspective from a woman's viewpoint in a world undone, contributing to vital conversations about history and the human condition.

    A woman in Berlin
    • A woman in Berlin

      • 311 pages
      • 11 hours of reading

      Between April 20th and June 22nd of 1945 the anonymous author of A Woman in Berlin wrote about life within the falling city as it was sacked by the Russian Army. Fending off the boredom and deprivation of hiding, the author records her experiences, observations and meditations in this stark and vivid diary. Accounts of the bombing, the rapes, the rationing of food and the overwhelming terror of death are rendered in the dispassionate, though determinedly optimistic prose of a woman fighting for survival amidst the horror and inhumanity of war. This diary was first published in America in 1954 in an English translation and in Britain in 1955. A German language edition was published five years later in Geneva and was met with tremendous controversy. In 2003, over forty years later, it was republished in Germany to critical acclaim - and more controversy. This diary has been unavailable since the 1960s and is now newly translated into English. A Woman in Berlin is an astonishing and deeply affecting account.

      A woman in Berlin2007
      4.3