Book Description
An astonishing find-the landmark journal of a woman living though the Russian occupation of Berlin-which has already earned comparisons to diaries by Etty Hillesum and Victor Klemperer For six weeks in 1945, as Berlin fell to the Russian army, a young woman, alone in the city, kept a daily record of her and her neighbors' experiences, determined to describe the common lot of millions.Purged of all self-pity but with laser-sharp observation and bracing humor, the anonymous author conjures up a ravaged apartment building and its little group of residents struggling to get by in the rubble without food, heat, or water. Clear-eyed and unsentimental, she depicts her fellow Berliners in all their humanity as well as their cravenness, corrupted first by hunger and then by the Russians. And with shocking and vivid detail, she tells of the shameful indignities to which women in a conquered city are always subject: the mass rape suffered by all, regardless of age or infirmity. Through this ordeal, she maintains her resilience, decency, and fierce will to come through her city's trial, until normalcy and safety return.At once an essential record and a work of great literature, A Woman in Berlin not only reveals a true heroine, sure to join other enduring figures of the twentieth century, but also gives voice to the rarely heard victims of war: the women.
Customer Reviews:
History Is Still Going On!.......2007-10-14
A few months ago the city fathers in Talinn, Estonia, moved a World War II era statue of an angry-looking Red Army soldier which had been placed in a military cemetary in the city. The statue was supposed to depict the rage the soldier felt as he contemplated all of his fallen comrades.
Not all Estonians saw it that way. Local wags dubbed the statue the "Monument to the Unknown Rapist" and it was moved to a less prominent location. This outraged the Russians. Their army still wears the Red Star insignia to comemorate their hard won victory in what Soviet authors call "the Great Patriotic War" (World War II to the rest of us.)
Russia lodged official, menacing protests and Lithuania and Latvia responded with official support to Estonia. This diplomatic shoot-out is still percolating along. History isn't over. It's still going on around us.
The conduct of the Red Army toward civilians, especially women, has been a hot button issue since 1944 when Nemmersdorf, East Prussia, was briefly occupied, then abandoned to the Wehrmacht. Goebbels propaganda machine immediately accused the Red Army of spectacular atrocities including mass rape of women and girls and nailing some of them to barn doors and farm wagons as if they'd been crucified. Goebbels' documentary was shown to terrified audiences throughout Germany.
Intended to spur the Volkssturm, and other last-ditch home guards, to fight harder, the films panicked those who realized that they were on the Red Army's line of march into Berlin. They also started a controversy about the cruelties visited upon women by Red Army liberators.
Anonymous' excellent diary, A WOMAN IN BERLIN, gives a balanced insight into their conduct in Berlin when it fell in 1945. Available in several translations and editions, the author is sometimes thought to have been Marta Hiller, a prominent Berlin journalist who passed away in 2001.
Her account avoids melodrama. It is straightforward and describes what she experienced in matter-of-fact tones. She is raped herself. She sees it happen to others.
Yet, some Red Army soldiers are humane and helpful. The Red Army does not try to exterminate the battered population of Berlin as she feared they might in retaliation for Nazi attempts to exterminate the Slavs in some areas they'd occupied.
She learns that the conquerors can be decent, but that Red Army soldiers can also be brutal and dangerous when they are drunk. Nights become times of great danger for her, and other Berlin women.
Her account is one of survival in a time of catastrophic defeat. It is interesting to compare this memoir to Alexandra Orme's COMES THE COMRADE! which was written a few years later and deals with the Red Army's occupation of Hungary, an Axis ally. Orme's treatment of the Red Army strives for humor in the face of unavoidable adversity. Her treatment of the Red Army is much more sympathetic than most other accounts and it shows low long the Red Army's conduct has been an issue.
A WOMAN OF BERLIN is well-written and available in a number of editions and translations. If you're interested in World War II, the Red Army, or accounts of survival in desperate situations, you'll want to read this book. I gave it five stars because of the quality of the author's writing.
A subtle reminder..........2007-10-01
Not just a woman in Berlin at the end of WWII, but in any city, at any time, under armed conflict, this book reminds us of the atrocities derived out of human incomprehension, irracionality, ambition, etc. as anonymous as the author is, the actors are too, given the fact, they're all gone today, but not so their legacy... which has stayed with us (and hopefully with future generations). Interestingly, the way the author describes every infamous episody will make you notice the way things have changed too, for even physical abuse under war circumstances had certain brush of "decency" inexistent among today's savagery.
A just in time wake up call you can't afford to miss...
Powerful but Uplifting.......2007-08-08
I read this book together with An Underground Life: Memoirs of a Gay Jew in Nazi Berlin (Living Out: Gay and Lesbian Autobiographies) in anticipation of a trip to Berlin. They are both relatively short reads, and the combination of the two seemed especially powerful.
I thought that "A Woman in Berlin" might be too harrowing to endure (it _is_ a relation of the plight of defenceless women facing a conquering, vengeful, rapacious (yeah, like, RAPE) male army. However the author's determination to survive and to make the best of what quickly becomes her powerfully oppressive circumstances salves the reader. It's an enlightening description of what happens to an advanced western civilization when completely reduced for a time to life and death armed confrontation.
The author has interesting observations on the 'feminization' of Berlin _in extremis_ -- all the able-bodied men were at the fronts. Other than women of all ages, there were only disabled or very old men and children left in Berlin. [Of course there were also a few remaining men of the rapidly crumbling elite ruling class and their camp followers buried in Berlin bunkers who were utterly irrelvant to life in Berlin in April/May 1945.]
A Woman in Berlin confronts female / male sex in the context of armed male oppresssion and a woman's enlightened understanding of how to maximize her limited opportunities under very straightened circumstances.
An Underground Life: Memoirs of a Gay Jew in Nazi Berlin (Living Out: Gay and Lesbian Autobiographies)celebrates male homosexual sex in the context of unimaginable oppression and tragedy. The author's exuberance about his sexual encounters and conquests in the face of this oppression and tragedy lightens what might otherwise be a harrowing read -- this book is part of a series celebrating the lives of gays and lesbians, after all, and so may not have been intended for the general heterosexual reader -- worth it, nevetheless.
I can't put into words the impact on me of reading in close proximity these two stories of "sex in wartime Berlin". I still ponder that impact.
Raw, Ragged Reality.......2007-07-11
Some books appeal to your intellect, others to your heart. This one hits you hard right in the gut. The author's shock, fear, suffering and revulsion are delivered relentlessly through her perceptive eyes, with poetic expressiveness and biting wit.
Along with the horrific experiences she recounts, some of the most searing passages are the reflections of her heart and soul. In the original German, they are particularly touching and thought-provoking. Her character, humanity and indomitable spirit transcend the pages that she wrote.
At the end of the nine-week period covered in the diary, I was struck by this true "Triumph des Willens" - the will to survive.
stepping into her shoes.......2007-07-03
perhaps because this is a diary, it is raw and allows one to step into the shoes of the author. It gives one a first hand look at what life was like for the German citizens living in Berlin immediately prior to and during the Soviet troops occupation. Although hard to read it times, it is as though one is right there. Very true first-hand look. A book one can't put down, and leaves one thinking about the suffering of the masses.
Customer Reviews:
A "Must Read".......2002-12-23
Memoirs of a 1000 Year Old Woman is a book that should be read by everyone. It details everyday life in Nazi Germany through the eyes of a young girl. Ms. McBride meticulously takes us through her day-to-day activities with careful attention to detail. We see what life was like for the ordinary citizen, caught up in the maelstrom of war.The author relates the problems of living with rationing, bombing raids, restrictions imposed by the government, etc. Ms. McBride's courage, strength, humor, and independence shine through the pages. This book is a wonderful historical record of the times. I highly recommend it!
Not only for history buffs.......2001-03-17
Memoirs is an easy to read account of a girl growing up in Berlin during WWII. The book includes contemporary news sources, song lyrics, recipes, and other interesting information about that time. A good read for those interested in women's history.
A Must Read!.......2001-01-24
Memoirs of a 1000-year-old woman is a compelling account of life in berlin during WWII. The author provides a wealth of fascinating information about life in Nazi Germany. By taking the perspective of an ordinary girl growing up in berlin, the author enables the reader to imagine what it would have been like to live at that time and place and gain an understanding of the psyche of the people of WWII berlin. Memoirs is an important historical and sociological text that will be of great interest to readers.
Book Description
The story of Stella Goldschlag, whom Wyden knew as a child, and who later became notorious as a "catcher" in wartime Berlin, hunting down hundreds of hidden Jews for the Nazis. A harrowing chronicle of Stella's agonizing choice, her three murder trials, her reclusive existence, and the trauma inherited by her illegitimate daughter in Israel.
16 pages of B&W photographs.
Customer Reviews:
A Question of Guilt.......2006-07-13
Wyden mixes personal reminiscences about his youthful schoolboy infatuation with schoolmate Stella with a history of the persecution of Jews in Berlin and Stella's ever duplicitous role in it. Ultimately, he portrays a pathetic, lonely and isolated woman who refuses to acknowledge any guilt, real or alledged, or personal responsibility in betraying Jews to the Gestapo.
This book is history and personal anecdote while concurrently begging thought provoking questions about guilt and capitulation. One could easily conclude that had Stella been born in a different place at a different time she would have been a totally ordinary person living out an uneventful life. Sometimes it almost seems that Wyden wants to believe this too. For her part, she claims that even had there been any cooperation with the Gestapo it was to spare the lives of her parents. Is she guilty out of concern for her parents (they ultimately perished) and therefore somewhat forgiven by the "I was just obeying orders" defense so frequently echoed throughout World War II and VietNam; or is she guilty because an ordinary person was born into and negatively impacted by the truly bizarre and cruel world of 1940s Berlin?
Stella is ultimately a disturbing portrait of a truly personal human tragedy; her own and those who suffered for it.
Blond Betrayer.......2006-04-30
Few can match the infamous Blond Poison, Stella Goldschlag, who stalked the alleys of Berlin seeking former friends, School Classmates and neighbers as as well as total strangers not out of loneliness but in order to betray them and send them to the Gas Chambers to be murdered in her place during the Holocaust. She well deserves her reputation as a Judas to the Jews of Berlin, the men, women and children whom she betrayed by the score to preserve her own life.
This book is basicly her story. Written by a former classmate.
It details much of her early life to the best of the author's knowledge. It then goes on to describe her career as a Griefer, one of the scores of Jews who openly chose to assist the Gestapo finding the Jews in hiding so to deport them to the death camps in exchange for their own survival.
A career in which Stella Goldschlag was one of the Gestapo's best.
One could compare her to the infamous Blond Irma Grese (who is not mentioned in this book) but Wyden shows her life was a far cry from nightmare that of the infamous Blond Beast's. She was not mistreated. Her mother spoiled her. Her father hardly interfered. She certainly had contact with better men in the beginning. A far cry from the horrors of Irma Grese's nightmare life that ultimately exploded with deadly fury upon the inmates of Auschwitz with all the savagery of a mistreated dog.
When one looks at the infamous Blond Poison and her Domestic Partner Rolf Isaacson one finds no reason to sympathise with them at all. They did what they did as a matter of choice. Wyden even reports the infamous Blond Poison enjoyed her work.
This is the story of one woman's choice in Evil.
Mr. Wyden finds the painful truth about a childhood friend........2000-09-07
I do not wish to hurt anyone who has suffered from the holocaust by writing this review, nor do I want dishonor anyone who was destroyed by it. I am only making an observation about what happened to this woman named Stella. Stella was a beautiful blonde girl who reached early maturity during WWII in Berlin. She was Jewish, but with her blue eyes she could easily pass for a gentile. When Hitler started his personal war against Jews, he initiated the most horrible and beastly experience that could happen to human beings. With his henchmen, and their vicious attacks on Jews and other peoples, he pushed people into emotional dungeons, and it is at these dark, these lowest levels, that we discover what we are really capable of doing. In his painful memoir of his experiences of the holocaust, Elie Weisel, shows us in Night, that when the Nazis tossed tiny bits of bread to starving Jews, many of them killed for that one morsel of food, sometimes ending the lives of their loved ones for a chance to put something in their mouths. For me, this book was about survival. No one knows what they are capable of unless they are taken to that horrifying nightmare place of doom, and unless one has been there, there is absolutely no way of knowing what our choices would be. Many would argue that Stella did not get to the extremes that occurred in the death camps. But we do know that she was beaten over and over and over again. And then she was offered a chance to have it all end by being a "catcher" for the Nazis. We know that other Jews committed suicide to avoid the beatings and the offer of becoming a catcher to stay alive. I can only thank God that I have never had to be in such a situation, because I don't know what I would do. How could I know? I do know that I have a very strong instinct to live, and I think that may have been why Stella took the path that she did. I believe, that in making that choice, she did lose her "soul." I think that is the only way that a human being could do what she did. For Stella did not only "catch" Jews for the Nazis, many eyewitnesses said she seemed to enjoy it. I think for anyone to make that "choice" you would have to put your entire being into it in order to perform those horrible crimes. In the end, I think Stella suffered far more than if she had allowed herself to die at the hands of the Nazis. At the age of about 21, she began the life of a person who is hated by virtually everyone she had ever known and anyone she would ever meet. She lives her life constantly attempting to convince herself that she didn't do anything wrong. She lives in total seclusion, with the lights always dim, year after year with no one to love her, no one to hold her, no one to console her. And still she survived into old age. Survival was Stella's strongest urge. It kept her alive to live a lifelong death, the death of her humanity, with the destruction of hundreds, perhaps thousands on her hands. Would I choose survival? In retrospect, had I been a "Stella," I can only pray that I would have had the ability to accept my death at the hands of the Nazis.
A gripping and unforgettable book.......1999-02-23
This book is well worth seeking out, even if it is out of print.
What makes it all the more fascinating is that the author grew up with the subject of the biography. The text seems meandering at first, but the interweaving of his story -- and that of Stella -- comes sharply into focus, as the writer shares his innermost thoughts.
Although he does not make Stella blameless, he does demonstrate empathy for her -- in the end, she lives but has lost her soul. She is an unforgetable character. Striking, too, are the many `supporting' characters Wyden introduces to us, brave and courageous Jews who survived in Berlin through much of the war and, in some cases, all of it. These individual stories are striking, heart-warming, sometimes funny, and always unforgetable. I found the book as engrossing as a fictional thriller, truly a `can't put down' item! Don't miss it!
A sickening but outstanding account.......1998-09-15
When I first read this book I was sickened that someone could do this to their own people. It also shows the weaknesses of the Nazis and their "ideal" person because many Jews fit the profile of the "perfect Aryan". In the end God works in wonderous and mysterious ways. Stella got what she deserved when her daughter was taken from her by the Jewish community of Berlin and raised as a Jew. It is a must read for those interested in World War II and the Holocaust.
Average customer rating:
- Must read for any Arendt Fan
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Rahel Varnhagen: The Life of a Jewish Woman-revised edition
Hannah Arendt
Manufacturer: Harvest Books
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Jewish High Society in Old Regime Berlin
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The Promise of Politics
ASIN: 0156761009 |
Book Description
Rahel Varnhagen (1777-1833) lived during the crucial period of assimilation in Germany, when it seemed imperative for Jews to escape their Jewishness.
Customer Reviews:
Must read for any Arendt Fan.......2003-03-27
Intertwining Identities
Hannah Arendt's Rachel Varnhagen: The Life of a Jewess is the biography of Varnhagen that simultaneously attempts to define Rahel Varnhagen's gender and national identity as a resident in early 19th century Germany in Varnhagen's own terms, while Arendt refines her political theory. Rachel Varnhagen is portrayed throughout the book as a complex character; a Jewish woman in a German society at the dawn and immediate following years of the Napoleonic Revolution. Arendt is an accomplished political-philosopher who despised being called a philosopher. Arendt's rise to academic prominence came when she wrote Eichmann in Jerusalem; Eichmann was where she coined the phrase "banality of evil" in reference to the famous trial of the Nazi Adolph Eichmann. Arendt was on assignment in Jerusalem for the Eichmann trial as a reporter for Harper's because she could not attain a university teaching position. Arendt had not successfully completed the monograph that was to be her Ph.D. dissertation. During the National Socialist ascension to power in 1933 Arendt was forced into exile, therefore hindering the completion of the biography of Varnhagen and her doctoral dissertation.
Arendt studied under Karl Jaspers and Martin Heidegger the later of which she had an affair. She is most known in political philosophy circles for her study of totalitarian regimes in Origins of Totalitarianism. Arendt collected the published and unpublished letters of the famous salon, bourgeoisie-oriented Varnhagen to map Varnhagen's identity through the inner voice she reveals in her letters. Through reading the letters it is evident that Varnhagen is practically apolitical, but she struggles with her German-Jewish identity and her life as a woman. Arendt explores the complexities of this dynamic through attempting to slip into Varnhagen and convey to the reader Varnhagen's existence. While in the process of amalgamating the various stories of Varnhagen, Arendt also devises her political theory.
Varhagen was at the center of an aristocratic salon where literature and culture were often discussed and she was viewed as a Jewish exception to anti-Semitism. It was believed at the beginning of the nineteenth century that all anti-Semites had their exceptional Jew, and for the many attendees of Varnhagen's salon it was Rahel. In adding her political theory into the construction of Varnhagen's biography Arendt spares Varnhagen no sympathy, often thinking that these very exceptions furthered the anti-Semitic cause.
In essence what Arendt has done is constructed a philosophical-psychological biography delving into the subject's mind, breaking the barrier between subject and observer by using the letters as a background to reconstruct the thoughts of Varnhagen. Varnhagen wrote her letters as a narrative, waiting and watching for life to unfold, unwilling to participate in introspection. Fearing that contemplation of the past might lead to her rejecting her identity and denial of her self-asserted uniqueness.
Varnhagen befriended many of the most prominent novelists and poets; her salon suggested a milieu of sophistication. However, Varnhagen's letters allowed Arendt intense introspection on the feeling of being a Jew in a largely anti-Semitic culture and being a woman in a misogynist culture. Arendt's political theory is never more evident then when she wears the skin of Varnhagen and talks about the Jewish question. Arendt believes that the common Jew attempted to escape their Jewishness (Varnhagen was baptized) only to allow other Jews to flounder in their Jewishness; each individual sought to break from the community at the cost of leaving the others to be victims of virulent anti-Semitism. Arendt is at her sharpest when she philosophizes on the impact of the Napoleonic Revolution on Jews, "it would be incomparably more difficult to escape from a reformed Judaism than from orthodox Judaism; that association for the assimilation of the Jews could lead ultimately to nothing but the preservation of Judaism in a form more suited to the times (179)."
In the preface to the book Arendt says, "It was never my intention to write a book about Rahel; about her personality, which might lend itself to various interpretations according to the psychological standards and categories that the author introduces from outside; nor about her position in Romanticism and the effect of the Goethe culture in Berlin, of which she was actually the originator; nor about the significance of her salon for the social history of the period; nor about her ideas and her "weltanschauung," in so far as these can be constructed from her letters. What interests me solely was to narrate the story of Rahel's life as she herself might have told it. (81)
Rahel believed she let life happen to her and simply observed and recorded her situations. She was, "letting life rain upon her." She was an prophetic individual that simply aspired to convey what happened to her as destiny. But in this role as intermediary recorder of the past she observed and her unknown, but unconscionable future destiny she thought she was an exception; one that must succumb to destiny, but not attempt to influence it. An individual that was so shortsighted that she failed to consider the fact that the destiny that awaited her, the history that was being revealed and shaped her life was less important than her own life. She was romanticized by contemplation of the past and its unraveling into the future of which she only thought she was a part. Varnhagen was a paradox; waiting like everyone else for history and life to happen but yet she continued to assert her uniqueness. Varnhagen attempts to solve the paradox by waiting for history to unveil, but not discover who she was-only what she could be. In the physical world Varnhagen could not deny her Jewishness, but she aspired to be malleable, devoid of shape and identity, traveling on the waves of history as they splashed on the shores of her continuously unfolding destiny. Arendt best summarizes Varnhagen by saying, "she wished to stand outside reality, to merely take pleasure in the real, to provide the soil for the history and the destinies of many people without having any ground of her own to stand on (145)."
Average customer rating:
- Gripping story
- where is my review????
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Stella : One Woman's True Tale of Evil, Betrayal, and Survival in Hitler's Germany
Peter Wyden
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Refuge in Hell: How Berlin's Jewish Hospital Outlasted the Nazis
ASIN: 0671673610 |
Customer Reviews:
Gripping story.......2005-03-14
The power of this book comes from the pity one feels for Stella, despite that she is guilty of a thousand betrayals of her fellow Jews.
She was an ordinary person caught in an extraordinary circumstance. Might any one of us have behaved better? The author seems to understand this perfectly.
I came away from this book with the feeling that Stella was as much a victim of Nazi Germany as any other Jew. It was Nazi Germany that created her; twisted her.
Very powerful book & highly recommended. For the other side of the coin, I also recommend "When Courage was Stronger Than Fear".
where is my review????.......2003-03-27
I wrote a review already, where is it? how come it's not listed? you let people write reviews with no intention of putting it there?
Book Description
Fraulein Rabbiner Jonas tells the moving story of the woman who inspired a new kind of progressive female participation in the Jewish religion. Biographer Elisa Klapheck shows how Jonas overcame formidable resistance and obstacles from conventional orthodox Jewish institutions to become the first female rabbi. The book includes the text of Jonas’s definitive treatise on why women can indeed become rabbis, which is based on sound scripture from the Hebrew Bible, the Talmud, and other precedents in Jewish halachic law, rabbinic commentary, and Jewish practice. After her ordination in 1935, Jonas spent the remaining years of her life ministering to the abused and terrified German Jewish community as the Nazis rapidly restricted and robbed it of property, identity, and social privilege, forcing the Jews into hard labor, poverty, and ultimately death camps. This moving portrayal of her life reveals Regina Jonas as a humorous and passionate woman who was deeply beloved by all she served during the terminal crisis of their lives.
Customer Reviews:
Fascinating Story of Long-Lost First Woman Rabbi.......2004-10-14
I had always thought, as did most American Jews, that Sally Preisand of Reform Judaism was the first woman formally ordained in the early 1970s.
I was astonished to learn, in the 1990s, that the first woman rabbi was actually Regina Jonas, an Orthodox woman who was ordained by Liberal (Reform) Judaism in Nazi Germany in the mid-1930s.
After an extremely dramatic and fascinating life, Rabbi Jonas vanished from history after her death at Auschwitz in 1944. Records of her life and achievements gathered dust in an East German archive, until her files were discovered after the fall of the Berlin Wall and the reunification of Germany.
Concealed in those dusty files was a story that would make a good film. Jonas was born and brought up as an Orthodox Jew in a dangerous, poverty-stricken Berlin slum. As a child, she was so determined to become a rabbi that none of her classmates thought of laughing at her.
She struggled resolutely through Berlin's Reform rabbinical seminary, supporting herself by teaching endless Hebrew and religion classes to restless schoolchildren and finally triumphed when she received Reform ordination and a rabbinic pastor job with the Berlin Jewish community in her early thirties.
Her triumph was short-lived. She assumed a back-breaking workload, caring for hundreds of German Jews whose rabbis had been forced to flee abroad or been sent to Nazi prisons. Jonas felt unable to leave Germany because she could not abandon her widowed elderly mother or her desparate congregants.
And then -- as if her life were not complicated enough --- Jonas, a pretty and very intense woman in her late thirties, who had hitherto avoided involvements with men, believing that a woman rabbi should remain single to demonstrate the seriousness of her commitment --- Jonas fell passionately and happily in love with a much older male Reform rabbi, a widower who had been called out of retirement to serve as the last pre-WWII rabbi of Hamburg.
During the last chapters of her biography, I was alternated between admiration at her wonderful care of her distraught congregants, gladness that she found a supportive and admiring fiance, and a deep sadness knowing that I would lose this remarkable woman to the concentration camps. But the story had yet another twist.
Deported to Theresienstadt, Jonas joined a group of people working for psychologist Viktor Frankl, who assigned her the toughest rabbinical job of her life: greeting newly arrived Jews, helping them get oriented, and keeping their morale up.
By the time Jonas and her mother were deported to Auschwitz and their deaths in 1944, Regina Jonas had packed more adventure --- and certainly done more good in the world --- into 42 years of life than most of us experience in eighty years.
And Jonas is not presented as a plaster saint. She had a strong sense of humor; a bit of a temper; was deeply spiritual but could be quite aggressive; and based on her rise from slum child to middle class rabbi, she possessed a kindness and ability to empathize with people from all walks of life.
I started crying at the end of the book. I felt as if I'd lost a friend. As the lay leader of a Jewish Renewal women's havurah (prayer and study group), I did a report on the book for my group and they loved the book. It's good reading not only for women interested in spirituality, but also for anyone male or female who admires a hero in any field.
I gave this four stars instead of five only because the author could have provided a little more background on Germany, the Nazi era, the camps Jonas was sent to, etc. As a German Jew, I think this era of German history is so familiar to her, that she may not have been aware that many English-speaking readers born long after WWII have little specific knowledge of that era.
Average customer rating:
- Dagny - biography through letters
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Dagny: Dagny Juel Przybyszewska, the Woman and the Myth
Mary Kay Norseng
Manufacturer: University of Washington Press
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ASIN: 0295969997 |
Customer Reviews:
Dagny - biography through letters.......2006-03-14
The book is an attempt to "rehabiliate" Dagny Juel and find out what is truth and what is myth in her bizaar image. Though, it is a bit too "positive". The author ascribes Dagny's image to the imagination of men surrounding her in different years.
On the whole, it is a very suggestive reading, light and not typically "biographical". The linear biography narration method is neglected, and the author presents kind of thematically focused chapters.
Highly recommended for those interseted in Scnadinavian culture/arts of so called "fin du siecle".
Lots of facts on August Strindberg, Edvard Munch etc.
Customer Reviews:
The civilians always seem to pay the real price of defeat.......2006-10-02
This diary, written by a Berlin woman in her 30's during the fall of Berlin illustrates clearly and forcefully the real meaning of defeat. Interesting asides on the nature of the Russian conquerors: raised in a society where they received but could not choose they had little concept of "value", even of booty. Most of all it reveals the common-place nature & acceptance of rape or of attaching oneself to an Ivan lover - for protection and survival. A very human diary of survival in year zero.
Forewords of the English edition are very helpful before starting.
Berlin hell under the Red 'liberators'.......2005-10-16
The anonymous author of this fine wartime diary is amost certainly Marta Hillers, a former journalist, who died in June 2001 at the age of 90.
Although published in the US and UK mid 1950s it was largely ignored by a world not ready to see Germans as victims too. Since being republished, after the author's death, this book has become a belated bestseller -and deservedly so.
It shows the Red Army for the rabble they were-watches, booze and women were considered the booty of war and with a thug like Stalin as a political leader no restraints were placed on the animals from the steppes. Estimates of rape vary from 90,000 -130,000 in the climatic struggle for Berlin, according to medical records, with over 10,000 German females perishing as a result of the animalistic attacks on them, or by suicide or injury as a consequence of such assaults. All told the Red Army raped over two million women as they rampaged across eastern Europe-a figure that included Jewish women who had escaped death in the Nazi camps only to suffer again at the hands of these Red 'liberators.'
The author, an articulate professional, who had toured the Soviet Union before the war, and knew some of the language, describes the orgy of rape, and after having thrice experienced pack rape at the hands of such scum she sought out a Red Army officer -prostituting herself to be protected from the pack.
The author brilliantly describes the breakdown in Berlin society in this diary, starting on the 20 April 1945 (Hitler's birthday) before the Reds arrive in her suburb, and ending on the 16 June - just over a month after peace was restored in Europe.
There may be some people who think the German civilians deserved what they got -but this reviewer is not amongst them. Depravity is depravity, regardless of who is on the receiving end and the rationale for fighting the war was to stand against such heinous war crimes, not to add to the list of the atrocities.
The Red Army's record in World War II is a disgrace and outraged comments from Russian spokesman convince no-one. It is appopriate that the fine British historian, Antony Beevor, has a preface in this republished version. His more recent work on the Battle for Berlin, was attacked as a 'slander' against the Red Army by the then Russian ambassador to Britain. No doubt that Russian apologist would also consider this diary a fabrication (a charge levelled earlier). Still, for years the murder of the Polish officer class in the Katyn Forest, by the communists, was also labelled a 'fabrication' while the continued imprisonment of the Hero of the Holocaust, Sweden's Raoul Wallenberg, was similarly regarded as 'false' western propaganda.
The courage of this woman, and many others, in war shattered Berlin contrasts greatly with the rank record of the Red Army and is a must read by anyone interested in the impact of total war on a great city and its people.
A Woman in Berlin.......2005-09-08
This book tells the forgotten story of the average German citizen's experience during WWII. On par with Anne Frank's diary in terms of historical significance, poignant life experiences, and the sheer deconstruction of society during war. Of course, since it is an adult's perspective, the themes are on a more mature level. The writing is excellent, the images searing and moving. I can't believe this book is no longer in print or that it is not better known.
Book Description
A soft-spoken transvestite wanting nothing more than to live as a hausfrau, Charlotte von Mahlsdorf instead was caught up in the most harrowing dramas of 20th-century Europe, surviving both the Nazis and the Communists. Originally published as I Am My Own Woman, this exquisitely written autobiography reveals her lifelong pursuit of sexual liberty. The story is reaching an entirely new readership of enthusiastic theater fans with I Am My Own Wife, the new Broadway show by Doug Wright about the life of Charlotte von Mahlsdorf, winner of the 2004 Pulitzer Prize in drama.
Customer Reviews:
Gramophones are flowers.......2007-06-04
Don't let the sensationalist title scare you off - this is a bewildering rarity in TS lit: humanist, protean, sagacious.
Ostensibly the (obliquely Oedipal) saga of a gay crossdresser surviving the Third Reich, then "socialist" East Berlin, Mahlsdorf's narrative is, at core, a love story - with fin de siècle furniture. As stubbornly as she withstood two ridiculous, internecine regimes, Marhlsdorf regales her text with Gründerzeit minutiae. Tedious, obscure, for sure - deal. I believe that's the intuitive point. When Mahlsdorf, a maniac collector of antiquities, proclaims "To me, moldy air is like Chanel No. 5" she strikes a mighty blow against every TS cliche.
Roll over Christine Jorgensen and tell Jerry Springer the news: Gramophones are flowers.
Things that will never be again revisited.......2004-12-19
This is a lovely read by a gentle man who felt he was really a woman in a mannish body, and also it is the story of a German who lived in parts of Germany and Berlin that are gone and will never be again. I felt a nostalgia for times past for the neighorhood around the Alexanderplatz in Berlin which used to be the gay and lower class neighborhood and also the red light district. If one goes to Alexanderplatz today there is the hideous Russian Funkturm radio tower and almost everything has been bulldozed, and there is a huge statue of Michael Jackson (of all things) in the space where Alexanderplatz was, and the neighborhoods Charlotte knew will never be replaced. He has struggled bravely to take pieces here and there where he could and save them for the ages, fighting bravely in the face of the Soviets stealing everything from Berlin that wasn't nailed down and the east German mentality of bulldoze and build worker flats and raze what is the capitalist past. What a time to live in and how amazing to have the story of a transvestite who lived them and knew every thing and place from the bottom up, so to speak, it puts a new face on history. 5 Stars!
Update October 2006: I just returned from Berlin where I visited the Grunderzeit Museum in Mahlsdorf which is a suburb of Berlin. You can get there on the S-Bahn and then walk to the museum (about a 15 minute walk). I was heartbroken to learn that Charlotte had passed away on April 30, 2002. The museum was nice and looks like it is a booming business. I bought some postcards and apparently there is a stage play currently running about the life of Charlotte von Mahlsdorf (in Berlin). Berlin has changed since I was there last, and it is knitting itself together up the middle where it was divided. The museum has had structural repairs and the basement is available for parties. I liked the museum and it was worth the trip!
Engaging story of a memorable transvestite life.......2004-08-21
Young Lothar Berfelde loved stylish women's clothes, and as he got older he tried them on. Amazingly, he got enough support from loved ones to have the strength to follow his inclinations. He also had the clarity of mind to observe what was going around him with historical perspective and perspicacity, i.e., the Soviet occupation of Berlin, the rise of the Nazis (his brutish father was an enthusiastic Nazi), the persecution of the Jews, the murderous suppression of the working class by the post-WWI socialist government, etc. Driven to killing his father, he fell into the hands of the Nazi "justice" system and survived. From his teenage years he was captivated by Biedermeyer era furniture and collected what he could. In the near-anarchy following the war and through circumstance and chutzpah he was able to "acquire" a Berlin mansion in which he created a museum to the pre-WWI furniture, household objects and consumer culture that he loved. He struggled to maintain the mansion and the museum's priceless contents, but was only partially successful. East Berlin bureaucrats and their Stasi agents were formidable foes. But Berfelde, who had changed his name to Charlotte von Mahlsdorf, never succumbed to glorification of the capitalist west. He eventually traded his taste for stylish women's clothed for the peasant hausfrau look of his later years and was strangely content with playing the simple housefrau. However this was an affectation, for he was a very broad-minded and humanistic man. He lived a remarkable life and his story is very much worth the reading.
moving, emotional, and a must read.......1998-05-26
I bought the book because I wanted to understand transvestites, but I came away with so much more. This book should be used in schools to illustrate a part of war they don't teach you, and also how being gay, and/or a transvestite is only part of who a person really is.
Customer Reviews:
A first hand account of a terrifying time.......2007-04-27
A Woman in Berlin is the diary of an unknown female author. It is her personnal account of living in Berlin in the closing days of World War II. She shares an apartment with 'the widow' and 'Herr Pauli', who happens to be a deserter.
Food is scarce, the Russians are terrifying, and death is everywhere. This is a rare glimpse into a time and place that few people saw and fewer survived. The author does not hold back. She describes in detail the multiple rapes that she and other women endured. Young girls were hidden in attics, one woman dressed like a man, and another woman jumped out of a window to her death as she was being chased through her apartment by three Russians.
Food is scarce and the German women do what they have to do to survive. There are very few men in Berlin, they are either dead, or defending Germany in a last stand.
They must pump water from a public well. It is dangerous to pump water because bombs keep dropping and the Russians grab whatever woman they want. Food is scarce. The diet is mostly old bread, pea soup, and 'nettles' which I figured was a kind of wild lettuce.
The author survived in part by allowing Russian officers to have her exclusively, and they would bring gifts of food, alcohol, and cigarettes. The author was raped a number of times, but then learned how to play the game. She used her body for food for herself and her room mates. She hated it, but she survived. First she allowed a large violent enlisted Russian, then a lietenant to have her exclusively. She finally allowed a Russian major with a bad leg to share her bed.
After peace was declared the author describes the forced labor. She and other women did laundry for the Russians for 16 hours a day. When they did not do laundry, they loaded all metals onto trains headed for Russia. The Russians took everything, zinc, copper, etc.
The last part of the book describes how she is going to work with a Hungarian to start up a newspaper and magazine printing business.
Finally her husband returns from the war after being away for 6 years. They are not getting along very well. He has read the diary and is disgusted and angry about the rapes and Russian men having his wife exclusively. Her last words in her diary is a sentence of how she hopes her and her husband will work through this.
This book is recommended for anyone interested in World War II. It is a small window of history as seen through the eyes of an ordinary woman who did what she had to do.
Books:
- Adventures Of Marco Polo
- Alexander Hamilton
- All But My Life: A Memoir
- Amazing Grace: Lives of Children and the Conscience of a Nation, The
- An Ordinary Man : An Autobiography
- Andrew Jackson
- Andrew Jackson: His Life and Times
- Angels Within Us: A Spiritual Guide to the Twenty-Two Angels That Govern Our Lives
- Annapurna
- Anne Frank: The Diary of a Young Girl
Books Index
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Suite Francaise
A Writer at War: A Soviet Journalist with the Red Army, 1941-1945
Memoirs of a 1000-Year-Old Woman: Berlin 1925 to 1945
Armageddon: The Battle for Germany, 1944-1945
Ivan's War: Life and Death in the Red Army, 1939-1945
