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Ii, unfortunately, could not read your review because I don't understand Dutch, but I have already purchased this book, quite a while ago, and since you gave it 5 stars, I'll read it soon.

This book (actually diary) is a unique boek, Lila. You probably know its story that it was written by an anonymous woman, but much, much later her name was revealed. My book still says that the writer is Anonymous. You never forget it once you have read it. It was a turning point for me to read about the hardship of the people of Berlin (mostly women, of course) in that crucial time frame from April to June 1945. Do read the book! You could copy my review and paste it in iTranslate for translation. It is sometimes nice to read reviews that are in a foreign language.

Hanneke wrote: "This book (actually diary) is a unique boek, Lila. You probably know its story that it was written by an anonymous woman, but much, much later her name was revealed. My book still says that the wri..."

I have a question: Was this woman a Nazi or a non-Nazi? I am a bit allergic about Nazis whining about what happened to them after the Third Reich collapsed.

I don't have an i-phone, but I'll try with Google Translate. (Yet it doesn't always do a very good job.)

I just used Google Translate, and this is what it produced:

"It took a while before I could write a report on this book. I had to let it sink in first, because I found it quite shocking. The diary gives a daily report of the life of a young woman in Berlin in a very dramatic time in the history of this city. The diary starts on April 20, 1945, the time when one can already hear the shelling by the Russians and ends in mid-June 1945. The woman is obviously an intelligent woman, cosmopolitan, well-read. She writes in bright and beautiful prose. She speaks French, English and some Russian. She has traveled extensively and lived abroad, but has nevertheless chosen to obscure reasons to stay in Germany. She worked at a newspaper, although you never get to know what its function was. At the start of the daily diary entries she describes her fear and that of its neighbors, most of them women - men are obviously a rarity - in the shelters. The reputation of the Russians has already raced ahead of them, so we wait in agony off. When the Russians than have actually taken Berlin, the fear of the women is truth and they raped en masse. And daily weather. Old, young, all women. No one is spared. I found it quite shocking to realize how widespread this is done, literally hundreds of thousands of women have been raped in the Russian occupation zone. Our diarist make very rational decisions after some time how they can survive best, can get food and how they can avoid it best to be raped numerous times daily. She chooses the rape by more senior soldiers, she tries to pick out yourself. She succeeds fairly well in there. I suspect this is why she has always wanted to remain anonymous. 65 years later, one can only sympathize with its strategy, but did right after the war, of course, hear no word about the suffering of Germans. Own fault thick hump, which should be obvious! And rightly so, given the unimaginable suffering that was inflicted by the Nazis. But the time has also come to pay attention to the fate of the Germans and not to ignore the terrible consequences they have experienced.

What particularly struck me are her descriptions of the isolation in which people lived. They had no knowledge of what happened a few blocks away, let alone what was happening in the larger context. The closest district was unreachable area. No one dared to leave his immediate surroundings. As our wife points out, they had to be thrown back feel to the time of the cavemen, no water, electricity, heating, radio or newspapers. Find food was the main occupation. The people spoke to each other here in the daylight at the water pump. There was no news. Occasionally a rumor, like the family Goebbels had committed suicide. There was also a rumor that Hitler had gone off in a submarine. Sometime in June, one can read that our author is very shocked by a message about the death camps. Even mid-June, the people did not know that Hitler was dead, but they weathered dominated him. Even the anonymous woman wrote occasionally as a final sentence for the day in her diary, "and this we owe to our Adolf.
In mid-June holds the journal. She is working as one of the many women who are in the rubble clearing. I hope it went well in the new Germany. Probably, they showed great willpower and stamina.
After I had read this book, I wondered how all those women later in the Soviet occupation zone became the GDR, it have reconciled their rapists were the best of their comrades under the new regime. This was probably bypasses ingeniously by ... "

Well, it surely isn't a masterpiece of translation, but it is comprehensible.

Google Translate refused to copy the complete translation. It was a bit too long. So the last sentence was cut off.

Btw, we lived in a small town, 50 km north of Munich (30 km north of Dachau). My family was so glad that the war would soon be over and the tyranny of Hitler and the Nazis was coming to an end. However, my grandmother was terribly afraid that the Russians might reach us first. (It had become known that the Russians were acting in a barbarian way, whereas the British and the Americans were kind.) My grandmother also mentioned the raping of women but did not elaborate. (I was only 5 1/2 years old.) We were lucky. It were the Americans who reached us, and they WERE kind, very kind. One even took the trouble to take the long way over the bridge to give my mother a fish (he had just caught) and me a piece of chocolate. This is when I "fell in love" with Americans.

And now I am shell-shocked that these nice Americans, my husband (a 3/4 German and 1/4 Russian) and I have been so very fond of, cheer a blonde Hitler and want him for President.

Thanks so much that you took the trouble to put my review through iTranslate, Lilo! Not such a bad translation at all, except for a few weird choices of words. Well, what do you think? Are you going to read the book? I really don't know if the woman was a nazi. It was not apparent from the diary, although she must have at least gone along with the flow, seeing that she kept on living in Berlin when she says somewhere she had offers to go abroad.

My parents were liberated by the Canadians in September 1944 since they lived in the south of Holland. As you are probably aware the rest of Holland was not liberated until May 1945, causing 10.000 people to die of hunger.

Hanneke wrote: "Thanks so much that you took the trouble to put my review through iTranslate, Lilo! Not such a bad translation at all, except for a few weird choices of words. Well, what do you think? Are you goin..."

It was Google Translate. iTranslate only works with i-phones.

Yes, I intend to read the book, but it will be a while before I'll get around to it. I have several books lined up that I have to read first.

If the author did not mention her political views, she, in all probability, had been a Nazi. Non-Nazi memoirists would make sure to distance themselves from the Nazis.

However, as you might realize, not all Nazis were alike. Some were fervent followers of Hitler (ready to kill for him), whereas others just ran with the crowd. Nevertheless, they were all guilty--some more, some less.

I would like to point out that the German general public (non-Nazis and Nazis alike) did NOT know about the mass-murder of Jews (later named the Holocaust). I still remember how shocked my non-Nazi family and the other non-Nazi tenant of the duplex we lived in was when the news came over the radio, soon after the war was over. However, everybody knew that Jews were mistreated, occasionally murdered on the streets, and deported (to an assumedly undesirable location somewhere in the East of Europe). So there would have been ample good reasons not to be a Nazi.

The fact that the author did not leave Berlin even though she had offers to go abroad does NOT indicate that she was a Nazi. Germans are very reluctant to move (even from one neighborhood to another, much more so to another country), and were even more rooted, in earlier years. And look, even Jews were reluctant to emigrate, even though their lives were in danger (and many perished as a result of this).

I was NOT aware that 10,000 people starved in Holland. Neither did I know when certain parts of Holland were liberated and by whom.

Our history teachers avoided all of 20th century history like the plague. (We started 3x with the old Greeks and stopped each time around 1900.) The Third Reich and WWII became a conversation tabu soon after the end of the war. (Nazis, understandably, did not wish to talk about it, and non-Nazis did not wish [or dare] to embarrass their neighbors, co-workers and bosses.) Bookstores and libraries must have hidden related books on higher and lower shelves. I never saw any.

It wasn't until I saw the TV-series "Holocaust" (in the 1990s!) that I first learned some details about the mass-murder of Jews. And it wasn't until some 10 years ago that I stumbled across Max Hasting's "Inferno: The World at War 1939-1945", in a bookstore and could start minimizing my ignorance. Only when I discovered Å·±¦ÓéÀÖ and Amazon, in 2012, did I find tons of books on the subject. I bought loads of them and have been reading little else ever since.

So your parents were lucky to get liberated early on.

We weren't close to starving (mainly because we had been able to lease a piece of land to grow vegetables and keep chickens), but we, nevertheless, suffered from deprivation and were always in danger of starving. We were lucky that our potato dealer was able to supply us each fall with a sufficient amount of potatoes to last for a year. Had the harvest failed (or Hitler confiscated more for the fighting troops), things could have been different.

Well, yes, Lilo, I understand what you try to explain to me, but it is not necessary. I was brought up with full and extensive knowledge about what happened in WW-II. We heard it at the dinner table from our parents and at school. It is only in the last 15 years or so that Germans are not treated with suspicion anymore in the Netherlands. Let's not talk about it any longer. I don't feel like it.

Since this book is a diary that was found, you cannot really say that it is an author who wrote it. This diary was written down by the woman who kept it and it was not meant for publication. So naturally, since this was for her eyes only, she did not go into details of how she felt about the Third Reich. She often closes the account of the day saying 'all this we can thank Adolf for', meaning no food, no fire, not anything and the danger to be raped at any time. Doesn't sound like she was a fanatic nazi, I think.
Well, anyway, this is the last I want to say on the subject. Sorry!

In conclusion: You are right. In a diary not meant for publishing, one would not go into details about how one felt about the Third Reich.

And her expression "All this we can thank Adolf for" is typical for a non-Nazi but also for someone who might have started out as a Nazi but changed his or her political opinion, at some time later on (possibly only when the war was lost).

Either way, the author of this book was, obviously, not (or no longer) a Nazi when she wrote this diary. This makes me feel better reading this book. I just can't stand listening to whining Nazis (of for that matter, to any Nazis).

Mmm... dit heb ik blijkbaar destijds gemist. Intrigerend. Ik las de voorbije maanden de boeken van Klemperer (Barre bevrijding) en Kempowski (Zwanenzang), maar ik wist niet dat er ook een vrouwelijke blik op die laatste oorlogsmaanden geschreven en uitgegeven was. Interessant (en vreselijk).

Marc, het zijn dagboek aantekeningen. Ik geloof niet dat het de bedoeling van de vrouw was dat het uitgegeven werd. Ze heeft zich pas decennia later als schrijver ervan bekend gemaakt. Echt dat moeite waard, Marc. Ik vond het echt een eye-opener.

Mooi review van een van de meest realistische WOII-verhalen die ik ooit gelezen heb, nu eens vanuit bezet Berlijn. Dit overleven maakte destijds diepe indruk op me. En dan die reactie van de terugkerende vriend. Voor zover ik weet was het inderdaad niet de bedoeling te publiceren.