In 1941, director Leo de Laforgue makes a film about Berlin...
..to be called Symphony Of A World Capital.
The sun always seems to shine and life is flourishing.
There's no mention of the Second World War,
no inkling of concentration camps,
no sign of over 300,000 forced labourers in the city,
not a trace of misery and hunger.
Quite the contrary.
This summer, the Reich is at the height of its power.
Half of Europe has surrendered,
and it's basking in the glory of its successes.
But in less than four years, the tide will have turned.
Adolf Hitler will have survived an assassination attempt.
Allied troops will be ready to storm the country and take the city.
The war will return to its source, Berlin.
And there will be little left of the city but diaries
and memories, files and pictures, ashes and dust.
TRANSLATION: Sunday, New Year's Eve,
a trip to Grunewald forest with Kurt.
It was a splendid walk, deep snow everywhere.
We stopped off for a beer.
We were home by six and celebrated with Schultzes.
It was the end of an eventful year.
What will the next year bring?
We are fearful of 1945.
TRANSLATION: The new year began quietly.
Lieutenant Kutner ordered the whole battalion to listen
to the radio transmission of the Fuhrer's speech.
January 2nd. Back to work.
Everyone talks about how drunk they were on New Year's Eve.
In the evening, to the UFA cinema on Alexanderplatz with Kurt.
We saw Rite Of Sacrifice with Kristina Soderbaum and Carl Raddatz.
It was a wonderful film.
So sad. We were spellbound.
January 4th. Air raid alert from quarter to 12
until quarter to one.
It's been quite a smash-up, another heavy attack.
The capital of the Reich was attacked by 40 fast bombers.
They crossed the city in loose formation.
12 dead, 23 injured, 1324 homeless.
TRANSLATION: January 9th.
Something terrible has happened.
They've implicated Count Moltke in the Hitler assassination attempt
and he will be brought before the People's Court.
And whoever comes before the People's Court -
treason, conspiracy to overthrow the state,
the Nazi regime - it couldn't be worse.
TRANSLATION: The setting was a room packed with people.
The proceedings went like this...
Freisler - talented, brilliant and not bright,
and potent in all three respects,
reads my resume. Details are affirmed or things added.
Then come questions about the allegations.
He ignores what doesn't suit him, dismisses important points.
The name Moltke constantly rang out.
It permeated the proceedings
and it was obvious they wanted to have me killed.
The barracks are wedged between the main street
and the subway next to a sports field.
The station is called Baumschulenweg, a working class
district with small factories, handicraft businesses, tenements.
From above, the barracks look completely alike.
For Berliners passing by the fences,
it's just a compound, and they couldn't care less anyway.
On the large meadow opposite were several barracks
for prisoners of war and forced labourers.
Most of them are Ukrainians and must have been terribly mistreated.
Screams rang out again and again.
People living nearby ignored them.
That is, when the screams of the tortured were heard,
they all closed their windows as if on command.
TRANSLATION: Homesickness hits me in waves.
At work I try to suppress the sadness,
but when I'm alone it's barely possible.
How many years of my youth have I lost?
We go to the cinema.
After the film, straight to the party offices
to pay my member's fee.
January 11th.
The Moltke trial. Before evening falls,
the prosecution requests the death penalty.
We just had thoughts, just Delp, Gerstenmeier and me.
The NS is so afraid of these solitary men's thoughts
that anything infected by them must be eradicated.
If that isn't a compliment.
It was too late to execute us the same day,
so, if it's the Lord's will, I'll stay alive.
You're still alive, my darling.
Now I fight for you again.
This respite might benefit us.
Kurt came to eat with us.
Mother left us alone.
He played the mandolin and I sang along, and then he kissed me
and was very tender with me.
The visits to the front lines in the east
by our Berlin regional commanders went well.
Our troops in East Prussia are in high spirits,
confident they will repel the coming Soviet offensive.
January 16th. For three days now,
there's been a major Bolshevik offensive.
One of our men, Manfred, cries in his bed at night
because he's worried about his family.
He's from Konigsberg, where the Russians are advancing.
But the battle lines already reach deep into Silesia.
At night when the American and English bombers approach,
we man the guns.
Two days ago, the Volkssturm started enrolling
in civilian jackets and puttees.
Some had never held a gun before. Extras to plug the gaps.
Every day in the darkroom, I see the portraits
of young people who - barely adult - are already dressed
in military uniforms.
Many of them won't live to see the end of the war.
Their uniform will be the only garment worn
in their short adult life.
Kurt picked me up for the last time.
He only took me with him to the station.
Who knows when we'll see each other again?
The first refugees arrived from Silesia.
A wagon filled with dead children arrived
at Berlin's Silesian station.
They'd been standing in the cold for 96 hours,
packed in like pickled herrings in a barrel.
Our boss says we have to shift snow, then dig graves for the dead.
The earth is frozen solid to 50 centimetres down.
We dig through ice and snow, then continue down, battering
with hammers and iron wedges.
It was hard for us before. Now it's even worse.
At three, I visited Muller, head of the Gestapo.
He said he couldn't do anything for you as you're a traitor.
I'm fine, my love. I am ready and determined to happily
place my faith in God's will, knowing he only wants the best
for us, including you, my dearest.
Farewell, my sweetheart.
May the Lord bless you and all of us.
Yesterday at noon, they took Count Moltke from his cell.
By four o'clock he'd been executed.
It was all quite sudden.
The city is teeming with refugees,
all complaining about these cursed times.
Nobody is mincing their words.
For 24 hours, every person can rage about his hardship, his desperation
and terror without inhibition.
Then Goebbels is back in control.
Today is the 12th anniversary of the party's rise to power.
One or two British bombing raids every night.
During the day,
desperate Wehrmacht reports.
The Fuhrer's radio address is a good boost to morale.
SINGING
We went downstairs to Matusack's again.
His wife was also there now.
The Schnapps was flowing until ten o'clock.
Then we listened to the Fuhrer's speech.
Uncle Paul is always drunk.
Stalin is at the gate.
The Russians have crossed the River Oder, advancing on Wriezen
with about 100 tanks.
There is nothing between Berlin and Wriezen, no anti-tank
guns, no barricades, not a single soldier.
People are restless.
My loving wife, you ask what's to be done.
I'm still optimistic on the whole. The more rational voices say
we still have considerable reserves and will still get new weapons.
Berlin can't be considered to be any safer than where you are.
Since there is no adequate means of travel, I think it best
if you stay there.
The four o'clock weather briefing indicated that there would be visual
conditions in the Berlin Magdeburg area.
This was later confirmed by the ten o'clock conference.
In Berlin, the aiming points were
the centre and the heart of the city,
an area bounded by the Lindenstrasse,
the Unter den Linden and the Wilhelmstrasse.
We had to report early to Rosenthaler Platz
to build barricades. We hadn't been working for long.
Everyone was in a good mood,
the lads were singing, but then the air-raid siren sounded.
SIREN WAILS
NEWSREEL: More than 1,000 Flying Fortresses sweep out
from their bases in England to hammer the German capital.
The stern voice of retributive justice comes to Berlin
in the heavy drone of bombers.
From Berlin went the orders
which wreaked havoc in Rotterdam and Warsaw. From Berlin,
also, Germany watched without pity the agony of those millions
of refugees whom war turned into sad armies
of the uprooted and dispossessed.
Today, the wheel has turned full circle. Berliners are undergoing
the ordeal to which they unprotestingly committed
the great cities of Europe.
In 45 minutes, 2,500 tonnes of high explosive and incendiaries rained
down on the government and army administrative offices in the heart
of the city.
The city's in a terrible state.
Through smoke, soot and filth, I reached the publishing house.
The rain's pouring down, binding the smoke and soot, which sticks
to our shoes like thick porridge.
Disaster struck our anti-aircraft unit.
A bomb hit the munitions chamber and all 400 rounds
of ammunition exploded.
All of my classmates are dead.
The districts of Kreuzberg,
Mitte, Horst Wessel and Wedding were hit hardest.
1,130 dead, 738 missing,
1,116 wounded, 102,061 made homeless.
Bayerischer Platz underground station is also
affected. More than 100 bodies are under the rubble.
Men, women and children stand crowded together.
They hang their heads in silence. Grave, speechless, solemnly,
they wait for their dead to be dug up.
Your pick sinks into something soft.
You shout, "Here! I've found someone."
A policeman comes running.
Only a German may touch cold German flesh.
They finally get the body out, grab it by the leg and pull it out.
Sometimes the leg comes off.
Some puke. At least they still have something in their stomachs.
NEWSREEL: In this operation,
the Americans lost 19 bombers and five fighters.
As they head for home,
they leave behind them a reminder to Germans that war doesn't pay.
Berlin, they say, is now a city of dreadful night. As an American
airman said after this trip, "When Stalin's boys get to Berlin,
"they'd better bring a Fire Department, because the place
"is really burning now."
The eighth of February. We reached Stalag VII in Luckenwalde
in the early morning. Due to overcrowding, there are no bunks.
Each man has a filthy blanket.
The latrine for hundreds of men is a deep hole.
If the hole is full, Russian prisoners have to go down and clean
it. They are treated horribly.
Power was cut for two hours today. I received
the first two letters from Kurt.
Air-raid alarm from 8:45 to half past nine.
We've only just learned that during the daytime
attack last weekend, the president of the People's Court, Dr Freisler,
was killed along with most of his staff.
For a moment, I'm torn between horror and joy.
Freisler, the man who sentenced everyone to death,
he died a month too late and many weeks too early to be made
accountable and face retribution.
My little doll, news from here. The night was clear,
the temperature dropped to zero. Tomorrow morning at ten past seven,
I have to go to the Volkssturm,
probably to build tank barriers again.
I'm still hoping the countermeasures announced will turn
the tide. All the best from your dad.
February 15th.
Today I'm alone in the clinic.
Professor Sauerbruch isn't there, nor is his official deputy.
The order was given to move all patients to the shelter,
or at least to the basement. First, children and private patients,
then the women.
In the bunker, I met a half-Jewish biology professor.
He told me there are Jews hiding in Berlin.
They have been living for months or years in cellars and attics,
looked after by friends and acquaintances.
My love,
we've been apart for two years already. This fear
of being hunted, what for?
All my life, I've lived as a decent human being and now I have to hide
like a criminal, like a murderer, and tormented by my thoughts
about the children.
That's the worst of it.
I am so desperate, because I simply know nothing about them.
If things went badly for Miss Muller,
they're no longer alive, but I had no choice, otherwise I would
have had to face the Gestapo with them.
When children sing songs on the radio, it brings tears
to my eyes.
February 25th.
My confirmation in the Church of Jesus Christ in Dahlem.
Daddy came, we were 14 girls and six boys.
Unfortunately, it didn't take place in the church. It was too cold.
Nevertheless, it was very solemn and no siren interrupted it.
For lunch, we had a good pot roast that Daddy had brought
with him. In the afternoon, visitors and real coffee and cake.
February 26th.
Today was the day we were trained for.
I always wanted to bomb Hitler's Berlin.
The city has the toughest anti-aircraft defences
and more enemy fighters than any other target in Germany,
so it's understandable that the crews let out tormented
groans when they heard about it at the briefing.
After take-off, I felt so alone on my position in the rear
of the plane, in spite of the many planes around us.
So terribly alone
and afraid that this could be my last flight.
I cannot describe the emptiness I felt.
Saw Truxa with Liana at the cinema.
Right at the best part,
the sirens started and we ran to the bunker.
After the longest distance we've ever flown, we were right
in the middle of it.
Lurching airplanes. A direct hit sent the one right next to us
up in flames.
I shuddered in anticipation of the steel
that could rip through my body at any second.
Then the bomb bays opened.
A wing of the factory's hit.
Fire breaks out from the incendiary bombs.
As we walk into the shelter,
we have to avoid the burning asphalt.
Alexanderplatz in flames. We have no lights
and no water at home.
After the all-clear, the film continued.
After what felt like hours, we reached the beautiful shores
of England, we had made it.
It was over and I was so glad, I didn't know what to say.
Now the city is dying and can no longer be saved.
Tired, apathetic people.
The doormen at the entrance tells a crying woman,
"Be glad, I tell you, that he's buried in a mass grave.
"At least he's not alone there."
German morale is in freefall, and every
round of bombing reinforces this feeling of depression.
But as critical as the situation may be, it does not in any way
interfere with the normal daily routine.
Police surveillance is being further intensified.
The camp was fenced in with barbed wire, which was electrified.
The guards had dogs and machine guns.
Our strength was waning. We were consumed by work.
One day, the kitchen made soup from dried potato peels.
It was pig swill.
February 28th.
Margot's place has been damaged by bombs again.
Incendiary bombs fell on the doctor's flat, but the fire
was extinguished, only caused minor damage.
He says that's how we'll win the war.
I darn socks in the evening.
March 3rd.
We left Berlin
early in the afternoon. The Fuhrer wanted to see progress on the front
lines for himself to strengthen troop morale
and check ammunition supplies.
The Fuhrer was here.
His visit sharpens our awareness of where we stand, namely to defend
the capital of the Reich.
Basic order for preparations
to defend the capital. Berlin is to be defended to the last man
and to the last bullet.
The struggle must be fought with fanaticism, imagination,
with every means of deception, cunning, deceit,
on and above the ground.
It is necessary that every block, every house, every storey, every
hedgerow is defended to the last.
We build tank traps on Landsberger Allee and in Kniprodestrasse.
We now have daily bazooka firing and rifle training
under SA supervision in Friedrichshain.
Many old men are taking part, from the People's Storm.
The Wehrmacht reports are shocking.
Life is becoming increasingly primitive.
Detergent and soap have to be made to last ever longer.
Items for personal hygiene are a luxury. Sewing material and bits
and pieces are all the clothes ration card allows for.
The less cultured people of the East may still feel comfortable
under these circumstances, but civilised Europeans
suffer and degenerate.
We visited Father. As soon as we were there, sirens sounded.
We stayed in an overground bunker.
I thought I'd long since overcome my fear, but today I trembled, afraid
for my life. A terrible bang.
The bunker sways, the lights go out, people screaming.
The attack lasted two hours.
We saw the tremendous glow of fire on Prenzlauer Berg.
Opposite, house number 15 was hit and collapsed.
Half Berlin was in flames and in ruins.
It's enough to drive you insane when you walk the streets.
Our Berlin, the Berlin I loved so much.
Even though it disgusts me that its inhabitants allowed us
to be excluded from their community just because we're Jews,
I still love my hometown.
March 20th.
We face the toughest challenge in our history,
Battalion chief Kuckner told us this morning.
We are to stand firm with religious fanaticism.
At the shop at 9am, had to walk home, went for a walk
with Kuzi in the evening and fetched water.
Got a wonderful letter from Kurt, read some of the most beautiful
parts to Kuzi.
Went to the cinema with Margot.
ORCHESTRAL PIANO MUSIC PLAYS
Saw Soloist Anna Alt.
Some comrades no longer know where their relatives are.
East Prussia, Silesia. Without a home,
the war becomes pointless.
I can't imagine that Berlin would be lost.
Today, it is they who are deprived of their last possessions
and their homes, whose relatives face an uncertain fate in endless
treks and refugee trains.
I well know what it means to live in permanent uncertainty
about your nearest and dearest and all the people close
to you in need and misery and hunger and agony without hearing
anything from them.
I, we, we Jews, we have long lived through this.
Am I now supposed to feel pity for them?
63rd Transport was scheduled to Sachsenhausen
and Ravensbruck. Destination - Theresienstadt.
Date of departure - March 27th, 1945. For the evacuation of Jews
from the territory of the Reich to the Theresienstadt ghetto,
the following regulations apply.
Transportation is to take place in single carriages on a regular
train servicing the Theresienstadt route. Each person is to take 50
Reichsmark, a complete set of clothing,
bedsheet and blanket, eating
utensils, plate or pot with spoon, rations for eight days.
Prohibited items are stock certificates, currencies, savings
account documents, etc, animals or ration cards.
Before departure, the carriages are to be searched for weapons,
ammunition, explosives, poison, currencies, jewellery, etc.
Without exception, all assets are to be confiscated.
Easter Sunday. We slept in very late, reading during the day
and telling each other scary stories in the evening. We did some
exercises and then we went to bed.
SIRENS WAIL
I'm sick of war.
Every night, fast bombers attack Berlin.
We are always tired and weary.
And those miracle weapons, where are they?
Once again, a hostile attack
on the capital by Mosquito aircraft. One has already got so used to them
that they've become part of the daily routine.
If they don't come, the Berliners feel something's missing.
My comrade, Udo,
received a letter from the Pankow NSDAP branch. His mother
and little sister, Elke, burned to death in the north of Berlin.
He has no-one now.
He stood still for a long time, then suddenly jumped on a stool,
tore the large portrait of the Fuhrer from the wall, spat
on it and stamped on Hitler's head.
When the on-duty sergeant came, he locked Udo in a cell.
April 12th. The Russians and Americans
have advanced across the borders of the Reich.
The situation has markedly deteriorated.
In the office, we only do the most
urgent work. We are burning most of our files in case Berlin falls.
My dearest love,
the day before yesterday was your birthday.
Will there ever be another one we spend together?
I don't believe it any more.
And the children. Yesterday Weimar was taken by the Allies.
How will I ever find a trace of them if things have gone wrong?
I will listen to American radio today to hear
what happened in Weimar.
BIG BEN CHIMES
This is London calling.
RICHARD DIMBLEBY: I have just returned
from the Belsen concentration camp.
I find it hard to describe adequately the horrible things
that I've seen and heard, but here, unadorned, are the facts.
There are 40,000 men, women and children in the camp,
thousands of them Jews.
In the last few months alone, 30,000 prisoners have been killed
off or allowed to die.
Dead bodies, some of them in decay, lay strewn about the road
and along the rutted tracks.
Inside the huts, it was even worse.
I have seen many terrible sights in the last five years, but nothing,
nothing approaching the dreadful interior of this hut at Belsen.
I picked my way over corpse after corpse in the gloom
until I heard one voice that rose above the gentle, undulating
moaning. I found a girl.
She was a living skeleton.
She was stretching out her stick of an arm and gasping something.
It was, "English, English, medicine, medicine."
Got my STEN gun.
RICHARD DIMBELBY: The SS guards,
who shot several of the prisoners after we'd arrived in the camp
when they thought no-one was looking, are now gathering
up all the bodies and carting them away for burial.
May I add to this story only the assurance that those officers
and men who've seen these things have gone back to the Second Army,
moved to an anger such as I have never seen in them before.
A lot of time has passed since we started marching through Germany.
The Baltic Sea comes to mind, where we drowned the Fritzes.
Now victory is in our grasp.
In April 1945, Soviet director Yuli Raizman
makes a film about the end of the so-called Third Reich.
He has 38 Red Army cameramen at his disposal.
The title of the film - Berlin.
The liberation of the city by the Red Army is to be documented.
It is due to start on April 16th
at the Oder with the Battle of the Seelow Heights,
70km outside of Berlin.
At the banks of the river, the Red Army has gathered -
2.5 million soldiers, over 6,000 tanks,
7,000 aircraft and 41,000 artillery.
They are confronted by the German Army -
one million soldiers, many among them Hitler Youth and old men,
800 tanks and no air support.
Over two million people are still living in Berlin.
Men and women, young and old, guilty and innocent.
Soon, only diaries and memories, files and pictures,
ashes and dust will tell the tales of their city.
TRANSLATION: Miracle upon miracle, we're allowed to sleep in.
No air raid alert, not in the morning, not in the afternoon.
We fetched water and made preserves,
many glasses,
in case of a long siege.
Sewing and reading in the afternoon.
Nobody who hasn't lived through it will believe
how orderly life goes on, despite everything.
The bread carriage and the grocery truck are ringing their bells
in the streets. People gather outside to chat.
You're aware of the approaching catastrophe...
..but it's not here yet.
RUSSIAN NARRATION
The night between April 15th and 16th felt unusually long.
With nerves strained to the utmost, expecting major events,
time passes very slowly.
The offensive was due to start at 5am.
We watched the final seconds tick by.
ARTILLERY EXPLOSIONS
There has never been a day like today at the front line.
At four in the morning, thousands of Stalin organs opened fire.
Later, the battle cry echoed everywhere -
"To Berlin."
It was cold in the early hours.
Fog rose, the smell of sulphur everywhere.
The ground dins and trembles.
Hell seemed to have broken loose.
Impacts continue. Our ears have been deaf for a while now.
Hardly anyone speaks.
Farms and villages are burning in the distance.
Death stands right next to us.
The city hums like a swarm of bees.
Now it begins.
In Berlin, we hear the Russian cannons.
Everywhere in the streets, one encounters military police
hunting down refugees and deserters, who are convicted on the spot.
A proclamation by the Fuhrer is hanging on each wall.
Everyone ordering retreat is to be arrested and killed on the spot.
Michel saw how a barricade was erected at Alexanderplatz.
He also saw with his own eyes a man hanging from a tree at a crossroads.
He had complained about the Nazis and the war.
Supplies precarious and uncertain.
AIR RAID SIREN SOUNDS
Even though the Russians are well beyond Furstenwalde,
we had to take shelter from English bomber aircraft.
Uncle Fritz, an old party comrade, turned pretty brutal.
"Dieter, you have to return to your battery, it's your duty," he said.
If I didn't go to the Flak tower, I was to be reported.
I am on German territory, where I have seen the tiniest Fritz
and the womenfolk.
I'm trying to destroy them faster
so the German no longer thinks he can invade us.
It will be a reminder and a lesson.
Mum, I have already taken revenge for Father.
I've killed with my own hands.
I don't know how many and yet, still too few.
I will take revenge as long as I shall live.
The higher-ups report that Furstenwalde has been occupied.
I hope it is not just a ruse to lift morale.
Many of our people have been killed.
They're lying in a field or by the side of the road,
falling so close to victory.
Today is the Fuhrer's birthday.
We are already afraid of it.
You can hear the artillery.
Dr Goebbels says we should trust and have no fear.
The Fuhrer will conduct an experiment
and all will turn out well in the end.
The day when usually the flags of ugly malice would be
flapping all over the country, there is not a single flag.
Not even the official departments have flags out,
and that should mean something.
The mood is kaput.
In the afternoon, I reported to our department in the garden
of the Reich Chancellery.
When Hitler appeared from the bunker, I reported to him too.
Then the Fuhrer walked along the length of the delegation.
Together with a local NSDAP group for the borough of Kreuzberg,
I'm lying in the small bunker
of the Ministry for Propaganda,
waiting to be deployed.
I feel awkward among the old party comrades.
It disgusts me that many of them are drunk.
Suddenly, a radio blares with military marches
and we heard Goebbels' speech for Hitler's birthday.
Years back, they screamed "Heil."
Now they hate the man who calls himself the Fuhrer.
They hate him, fear him.
They suffer deprivation and death for him.
But they have neither the strength nor the courage to free themselves
from his demonic possession.
No water, no gas, no electricity either.
It was in Germany when our soldiers began to ask
why the Germans invaded us.
Millions of our men have seen the rich farms in eastern Prussia,
the advanced agriculture,
the two-storey houses fitted with electricity and gas,
the well-paved roads.
They all ask themselves in anger, "But why did they come to us?
"What did they want?"
Many of my acquaintances, my friends even, will think that I'm touched,
that I feel for the German cities and the German population.
I have to confess, no, I will never, ever pity them
since I have seen for myself the havoc they have caused in Russia.
The exhaustion is overwhelming, but we're going to make it.
We have to make it.
Everyone is on the run.
The Russians are coming to Kaulsdorf.
It's all moving fast.
Digging trenches is useless. There are no soldiers to defend them.
We're in the rectory basement.
In the basement, the minister performs a brief service.
Soon after, two Russians appear. They demand watches.
Mrs F gives them her watch. The Russians leave.
Meanwhile, at home, Mrs Richter and Mrs Kushel
were being raped repeatedly.
It happened around midday.
Unter den Linden took a hit.
Without prior warning, without a bomber aircraft,
one shell impact.
Now it is certain, Berlin WILL see the Red Army.
Mum wouldn't let me go to the shop.
The tank shoots like crazy.
We hauled our most precious possessions to the basement
and set up air shelter beds.
They are burning swastikas in the houses, throwing away the medals.
Me, I clear away the briquettes in the basement
and bury the Fuhrer's images.
Why? I do still believe in National Socialism after all.
10pm. Rumours are spreading in the cellar.
Mrs L says, "Rather a Russian on the belly
"than an American bomb on the head."
Miss B is screaming in the cellar,
"Now, let's face it, none of us is still a virgin."
Nobody answers.
There is no doubt. We're putting the screws on Berlin.
I'm a staff member again
and have to occupy myself with office work.
The only fun part is listening in
on the German and Allied radio shows.
They're coming thick and fast through the airwaves.
The headlines in Sunday's papers state,
"The cruel front line spirit now rules over Berlin."
It's about obtaining a turn in the war by sheer obstinacy.
The order of the day - a fight to the last Berliner.
Already, new emergency measures are introduced.
From now on, death penalty for using electricity for cooking.
Mum has just buried the last pieces of jewellery.
I'm keeping my watch.
The grounds are too wet.
Mum and I have packed a rucksack in case we need a quick start.
We each have our papers, two sets of underwear, soap, shoes,
dress, towel, and so on.
Maybe we'll be kidnapped and brought to Russia.
April 24.
Today we crossed the Spree.
It's a rather narrow and pitiful river.
I spit in the damned water three times.
The Fritzes are cut off.
Now we're supposed to finish them.
In the Flak tower, I reported back to Senior Lieutenant Kuttner.
In our barracks, I met only a few of my old comrades.
But there are still news of victories in the Wehrmacht report.
RADIO CRACKLES
I went to collect water from the big basin in Number 16 Wins Street.
It's very misty, but we don't want to use our preserves yet
in case things get even worse.
We are hearing about new deaths every day,
people who died fetching water.
Around 11am, I got a call from the Reich Chancellery.
I was to go and see General Krebs.
Krebs told me that I had made a good impression on the Fuhrer
and had been appointed Commander of the Berlin Defence.
I was to take over immediately.
At 10pm, I arrived at the Reich Chancellery
to report on the current situation.
The Fuhrer was once again sitting at his desk which was covered in maps.
All his words were directed towards one thought -
if Berlin falls, Germany's defeat would be inevitable.
The troops are moving in all directions. Where is the front line?
The captain is badly injured. He's unlikely to make it.
There are shootings, fire and smoke everywhere.
The Germans are attacking us from their windows and doors.
A grenade explodes in front of the house.
We get a man shot in the arm and leg into the cellar.
He's lying there with an emergency bandage
and a shot of morphine.
Miss Blau has been hit worse.
Splinters in her lungs, losing blood.
I calm her with morphine.
No more beds in Gertraude Hospital.
The injured, Russian and German soldiers alike,
are mixed together in the corridors.
Performed surgery until midnight.
I wanted to go to my room to have a drink
and listen to the BBC news.
Suddenly, the bunker swayed like a boat.
A huge bomb fell right into the clinic.
My room is in ruins.
The janitor and his wife are dead.
Four nurses are buried under debris.
I've been pondering whether I'm scared of dying.
No, I'm not afraid to die,
but I fear serious injury.
I'm carrying cyanide with me.
The battle for Berlin rages on but for Dahlem, it is over.
No more Russian grenades, no more projectiles,
no more Russian bombs.
Around midday, I saw three soldiers coming,
the first Russians.
They were very nice, asked for watches and liquor.
Then they left.
Shortly after, the next group came.
One of them came up to me, took me outside,
led me upstairs to the sofa.
Surprisingly, I wasn't scared.
I had to take off my trousers and then he laid on me and did this.
It hurt.
In any case, it was horrible.
We all had to.
Even little Inge, who was only eight years old.
I kneeled in front of the soldiers but it was no use.
Later, we had to cook for them.
They say that during those first few days,
there were around 100 suicides in Friedrichshain.
The pastor shot himself, his wife and daughter
because the Russians broke into the basement and assaulted the girl.
Mrs Hoffman shot her sons and then cut her veins and her daughter's.
Our teacher, Miss Klinkmoller, hung herself.
She was a Nazi.
The local group leader, Schmidt, shot himself
and Mrs Nitschke poisoned herself.
The further we advance into Berlin,
the harder the fighting.
The thick, massive stone houses make for perfect fortification.
GUNFIRE
Just like in a manoeuvre, our men jumped from door to door
to attack the Red shooters hiding on each floor.
Our attack gained ground.
Our units held their ground at Belle-Alliance-Platz
to block the access to the government quarters
in the Reich Chancellery.
There are no more defences, right or left of us.
We only have the bazookas, assault rifles and a few machine guns left.
ARTILLERY FIRE
EXPLOSIONS
Company Commander Kirchner has received the Knight's Cross
and returned from the Fuhrer's headquarters
with Adolf Hitler's best wishes.
The five floors of the Flak tower are scattered with dead bodies.
A disgusting, sweetly scent fills the tower.
It stands like an island in the sea,
the Russians having already moved past us.
We were slowly moving forward towards the Reichstag.
Suddenly, I was hit by a damned fascist explosive device.
I was badly injured
and lost consciousness.
We are out of morphine.
It is terrible not to be able to give sedatives to the injured.
April 30th.
Everyone will remember the air in Berlin -
acrid and hazy from the fire and the dust of the stones,
our teeth crunching on sand.
The walls were covered in German posters.
I am so scared. We don't have much longer to live.
I certainly won't.
What will my dearest Kurt do?
Surely I will not see any of my dear soldiers ever again.
EXPLOSIONS
Good day, my friends. I am still alive,
just a little drunk.
I need it for courage. Three Star cognac never hurts.
I'm 50m from the Reichstag.
It's not easy to take the Reichstag.
What's left of the once awe-inspiring Prussian army
was desperately defending themselves.
The building was transformed into a fortress.
The Reichstag is filled to the brink with Russians.
When we shoot ten, 20 more follow. It's dreadful.
Hand grenades and gunfire are raining down on us.
In the underground corridors and vaults,
everyone is shooting at everyone.
I climbed onto the roof with the soldiers
and passed the flag to one of them.
Finally, I found the spot
where you could see the burning Reichstag with burning houses
and the Brandenburg Gate in the background.
And I knew, that's it.
The fighting got more intense.
Houses collapsed with thunderous noise.
The Fuhrer said goodbye to those still with him.
He shook hands with everyone for one last time.
He stood there, hunched over.
I snapped to attention and signed off for the last time.
In a seemingly calm manner, he said,
"Linge, I will shoot myself.
"You know what to do."
Berlin was still engulfed in battle when the Central Committee
of the Communist Party sent delegates from Moscow to Germany.
The First Initiative group landed 70km from Frankfurt Oder.
Nothing to see all around -
no city, no buildings, nothing.
Two young officers approach us and say,
"We are very happy to be able to welcome you here.
"We have heard that you are members of the new German government."
I almost choke.
What did he just say?
May the 1st.
I dive from one cellar door to the other
until I reach Number 33 Lindenallee.
There is supposed to be a battery radio there.
Everything is filled with debris and ash. Furniture is damaged.
The walls and ceilings hanging low.
In the basement, I actually find the radio.
When the message arrives that the Fuhrer has been killed in action,
everyone leaves the foxholes
and is very agitated for the next few hours.
There are no more clear orders.
The leadership has probably lost its head.
We have decided not to leave Berlin but to stay
and end our life at our Fuhrer's side,
because to me, life no longer holds value.
I make this decision also on behalf of my children,
who are too young to offer their opinion,
but would surely come to the same conclusion if they were old enough.
There is no more help and no more troops to replace us.
We long to sleep and eat a full meal for once.
In the second half of the day, the situation became extremely grave.
The defenders of Berlin were squeezed into a very small space.
There was only one way out.
"Are you the defender of Berlin?" I asked General Weidling.
"Yes," he answered.
He had given the order of surrender to his troops today.
The war is over for us. My God.
There is no amount of liquor you can possibly drink to celebrate
all these occasions. The mood is the jolliest I've ever seen.
Sacha gets a canister filled with spirit
and mixes it with juices to create a devilish concoction.
He calls it Hitler's Death.
MUSIC: En Route by Les Choeurs De L'Armee Rouge Alexandrov
A young Russian soldier collects weapons
and kicks against the discarded helmets lying on the ground.
He laughs and brags.
"Vanya, kaput. Hitler, kaput.
"We go home to Babushka."
I leave our hiding place in the basement.
At once, I am seized by a strange atmosphere.
Silence.
A deafening silence after days and nights of explosions,
roars and shooting.
When I had finally grasped it,
I could no longer contain myself.
It was impossible to hold back the tears.
The day we'd been yearning for had finally arrived.
The day of Berlin's surrender.
It is hard to describe.
Vast masses of German prisoners,
their faces reflecting the drama of the situation.
This cold, cloudy, rainy day,
undoubtedly the day of Germany's ruin.
I am so scared.
They are picking up all the men.
Our policemen have been collectively taken away. Our old policemen.
The women, standing in the street as they were led away, cried.
We might not live much longer.
In the evening, they found Goebbels.
He is dragged to the door of Wilhelmstrasse.
Hitler's right-hand man is dead but still recognisable.
Soldiers and civilians gaze at his corpse.
Before Goebbels killed himself,
he had someone poison his kids.
We were only interested in one thing -
where's Hitler?
Zoological garden. There was fighting there. Cages destroyed.
The bodies of monkeys, tropical birds, bears.
A conversation with an old man.
He had cared for the monkeys for 37 years.
In one cage was the body of a dead gorilla.
"Had the animal been frightening?" I ask.
"No," he answers.
"People are more vicious."
There were rumours of a dead horse across from us
in a street just off Ku'damm.
I went to cut off a piece as well.
The food situation is critical.
You have to listen carefully to find out where to get bits and bobs.
I found typhoid pills and warned everyone against drinking the water.
It comes from pumps, and because of all the bodies buried
in the rubble of the city, the ground water could be contaminated.
We took off and walked to Heike's.
There are many bodies
and the bloated cadavers of horses lying in the street.
It looks terrible.
Luckily, the weather is rather cold.
The body of a man in the next-door garden has turned blue and black
and is threatening to decompose.
The Russians refuse to deal with German corpses,
but are very thorough when dealing with their own dead.
Our soldiers have been through everything.
Pain and hatred, bitterness and self blame in the face of defeat,
the hopelessness of encirclement,
desperation in detention camps,
the rage of attack,
the euphoria of victory in battles from Volga to Spree.
And all that for some of them to die in these last few minutes
on the streets of Berlin.
The looting of shops has begun.
Yet it's not the Russians who are responsible for looting,
but mostly the German people.
Unbelievable scenes.
Women hit and scratch each other, pour oil on themselves,
and rub their skin with jam.
They're carting things away by the kilo.
It feels strange to no longer be in charge in your own country
but to be exposed to the whims of lawlessness.
Where there was once a forced order, now there is chaos.
We were assigned to Soviet officers with the task of helping
their commander to establish and build administrative bodies.
We were to get in touch with former members of the Communist
and Social Democratic parties,
and with those unions who had
remained true to antifascist ideology during Hitler's regime.
Proclamation by the Russian city commander -
"The population is to remain calm.
"All members of the Wehrmacht, SA and SS have to come forward
"within 72 hours."
So I have to come forward.
I might be taken to Siberia.
Today at noon, there is supposed to be a nationwide ceasefire.
Germany is surrendering.
At two in the afternoon, three Douglas aircrafts
appeared in the sky.
The British Air Marshal Tedder arrived on the first plane,
American General Spaatz on the second,
and the third brought French General de Lattre de Tassigny.
At last, another plane landed with Field Marshal Keitel.
No-one shook his hand.
ARCHIVE: What did open our eyes
was the drive in from the airport to Kaulsdorf
where the meeting was to take place.
It's a fairly long drive but you can take my word for it,
that there was hardly a single habitable house
or usable building within sight along the entire distance.
One can put it in six words -
Berlin has practically ceased to exist.
All eyes were on the door.
Over this threshold, those who have so boastingly proclaimed
to be able to conquer the whole world would enter at any moment.
Keitel entered, arrogant and defiant,
strode to his table and raised the Marshal's baton in greeting.
He eyed up the room as if from the battlefield.
He looks ridiculously Prussian as he bangs his heels together.
No-one gets up.
When he sees me, he says, "Oh, the French. What's next?"
Zhukov asked me if I had read the articles of surrender.
I answered, "Yes."
The second question was if I was prepared to accept by signing.
Again, I replied with a definite "Yes."
At 43 minutes past midnight, the document was signed.
I ordered the German delegation to leave the room.
They stood up, bowed, and left with their heads hung low.
An incredible ruckus broke out in the room.
Many people had tears of joy in their eyes.
I then opened up the banquet and made a toast.
The feast went on way into the morning with songs and dance.
CHEERING
There is nothing to say about the night except that
I was allowed to spend it alone.
For the first time since April the 27th,
there was no-one under my sheets.
No Major, no Uzbek showed up.
In April 1945, Soviet director Yuri Reisman makes a film
about the end of the so-called Third Reich.
He has 38 Red Army cameramen at his disposal.
The title of the film - Berlin.
The liberation of the city by the Red Army is being documented.
It begins on April 16th at the Oder with the battle
of the Seelow Heights, 70km outside of Berlin.
16 days later, the city is conquered and the red flag is blowing
in the wind over the Reichstag.
On May 8th, Germany signs its unconditional surrender.
War in Germany is over, Joseph Goebbels is found dead,
Adolf Hitler's fate remains unknown.
Over two million people are still living in Berlin -
men and women, young and old, guilty and innocent.
Soon, only diaries and memories, files and pictures, ashes and dust
remain to tell the tales of their city.
TRANSLATION: May 9th, Wednesday. We all had to show
up with buckets to clear the barricades at the church.
It was a lot of work and the Russians were keeping watch.
We are supposed to hand in our radios or we'll be punished.
And not just our radios, but cameras too.
After lunch, I went to the firm with Mum.
Out of habit, I stupidly greeted colleagues
in the yard with "heil Hitler".
TRANSLATION: The Reichstag is a huge, dark building, not pretty.
The inside is a mass of brick and iron.
In one of the city halls, there was a huge throne
with a portrait of the Kaiser on the back.
I had my picture taken in the chair.
The walls were covered in countless writings of our victorious Russian
soldiers and officers.
Here, there were soldiers from Stalingrad.
One from Smolensk stood here.
We're in the Reichstag, everything is OK.
TRANSLATION: Close to Hitler's Chancellery,
next to his personal bunker,
two bodies were discovered - one male, one female.
The corpses are badly burnt and it is impossible to identify them
without further information.
TRANSLATION: We can say that the man
is between 50 and 60 years old, 1.65m tall.
The body is charred and smells of burnt meat.
The glass splinters in his mouth suggest he used a thin vial.
TRANSLATION: Experts remove the teeth and lower jaw.
His teeth are surprisingly intact.
Dr Blaschke had a private dental practice
at number 230 in Kudamm. He was Hitler's personal dentist
from 1932 onwards.
His assistant, Kathe Heusermann,
was the only person we could find there.
She knew and remembered all the important details
about Hitler's teeth.
I held the dental bridge in my hand,
I looked for irrefutable evidence.
I immediately found it, took a deep breath and burst out,
"These are the teeth of Adolf Hitler."
TRANSLATION: I went to the Russian Kommandantur.
It's incredibly difficult to find someone who understands you there.
They couldn't believe there were still Jews in Berlin.
I managed to get permission to move back into our flat.
Yesterday, I went to the Jewish hospital in Schulstrasse.
The kids had been there last year but were taken away again.
I was told they were taken to Auschwitz.
I want to maintain my strength for all of you
until you are with me. I will not surrender hope.
This Friday, we had our first public service in the small
synagogue of the Jewish hospital.
I gave the sermon, but I couldn't speak much because the room
was filled with crying and sobbing.
Only now did the reality sink in of just how many were missing.
TRANSLATION: May 13th.
The town mayor, Berzarin,
was introduced to the members of the first post-war magistrate of Berlin.
The independent anti-fascist Dr Arthur Werner was selected as mayor.
TRANSLATION: In a classically Saxon accent,
Ulbricht explained to us, "It needs a semblance of democracy.
"We must retain control of everything".
Later, Erpenbeck rushed into my room. He is supposed to write
text for my radio announcement, he tells me.
We had the newest Pravda figures in front of us,
which we translated into news with anti-fascist democratic demeanour.
RADIO, TRANSLATED:
We are now on Moscow time - the clocks were set two hours ahead.
TRANSLATION: The first German newspaper has been published,
but it's difficult to get hold of a copy.
TRANSLATION: Page one contains a message from Stalin,
also announcements from the Soviet military command,
including food rations per person, per day.
People in artistic professions are to receive the same amount
as heavy-duty workers.
600g of bread, 100g of meat,
one portion of potatoes.
Also each month, 100g of coffee, 20g of tea.
My housekeeper wonders whether all of this will be in the shops.
Hundreds of people are queuing in Reichsstrasse.
A kind of camp life has emerged.
Three quarters of the people waiting are sitting in chairs.
Many women are knitting or mending socks.
Some, like me, are reading.
TRANSLATION: For lunch, we had horse meat.
It was very tasty.
May 17th.
Listened to the radio at Schops
and went to the store at 10am.
A few of us girls were there today.
Charlotte Henning was raped several times
and Edith Gasenza five times.
We all described our experiences.
TRANSLATION: I'm now trying to acquire gynaecological instruments
to be able to perform all necessary examinations.
The results for gonorrhoea are horrifying.
Just today, I examined a 15-year-old girl who'd been infected.
In the afternoon, my friend Ruth came with her daughter.
Four Russians.
Swab inconclusive but certainly antibiotics.
This is what you protect your child for.
Suddenly, an order came through for all foreigners to leave Berlin,
they were to leave immediately.
I made the final decision to leave the city by bicycle or on foot
at the repatriation committee.
I was pretty much the only one.
None of the French guys who were there with me agreed.
In the morning, I left Berlin by bicycle.
TRANSLATION: Farewell, Berlin,
a city of misfortune and tristesse.
We took the motorway towards Magdeburg by truck.
Ten minutes later, we had crossed the Elbe
and arrived with the Americans.
The loudspeakers announced, "On Sunday, you will be in France."
I can't quite process it yet.
I will only wake from this nightmare when I'm standing amongst
French-speaking civilians.
TRANSLATION: One afternoon, someone knocked on my door.
Two young Jewish girls wearing
concentration camp clothing were standing there.
They told me they'd just arrived from the concentration camp Stutthof
with 30 other Jews.
We immediately went down the street with two trolleys
to take them all upstairs.
TRANSLATION: When I saw Berlin for the first time,
destroyed and broken, I didn't feel pity for the Germans,
only bitterness and resentment against the people who caused us
such unbearable suffering.
They deserve it.
I met a Mr David, who had walked back from Auschwitz.
He told me that the kids are almost certainly still alive
because they only arrived last September
and they had hardly killed any children since then.
Schatze, it's a horrible thought.
They killed children, and maybe mine are among them.
Mr Scheppes came upstairs and said
that, starting tomorrow, all members of the party had to report for work.
Apparently, we start at 6am in Christburger Strasse.
If it's only work, it's certainly bearable.
But there's a lot of talk of deportation and detention.
The time has come to do penance for my affiliation with the party.
TRANSLATION: A lady appeared and insisted
that my husband accompany her to the Kommandantur.
He has been missing ever since.
My husband is 71 years old and has trouble with his bladder.
He was a member of the party,
but never actively involved in anything.
TRANSLATION: The yard of the Kommandantur was full of Russians.
Two officers came in through the gateway.
As they walked past me, one said to the other, "Shot in the neck."
One Russian started emptying my bags.
The only thing he didn't take was my spoon and a handkerchief.
Then he pointed to the cellar room.
The floor was full of sleeping people.
TRANSLATION: Suddenly, everyone gave a Jew
at least two loaves of bread, or 10 lbs of potatoes once.
Somewhere, sometime.
Everyone listened to foreign radio.
Everyone supported the persecuted.
Tales of awesome heroics are coming to light.
The bigger the fear, the more ridiculous the excuse.
Carried debris to the mountain of rubble
in Jablonskistrasse at six in the morning - row of buckets.
We had to work very hard.
I was there with Lotti Martin.
She was there because her father had been a party member.
I was home at 10pm. That's 16 hours of hard work.
If it goes on like this, many of the women
won't be able to continue.
It's dreadful how us Germans have to demean ourselves.
Are the Americans coming or not?
Will they divide Berlin or leave it to the Russians?
"Who is even in charge?" I ask Endrich.
He shrugs.
"Whoever's turn it happens to be."
Today, the papers show how Germany will be divided.
The English, Americans, French and Russians are coming to Berlin.
Berlin will have a government made up of four powers.
The Americans, British, French and Russians will have to agree
on every detail soon, from education to food sharing.
Theoretically, there should only be problems
with the German population.
It's hot in Berlin, each day is hotter than the last,
and June heat smoulders over the city.
Under the thin layers of dust, the dead are moving.
The scent of their dying hangs in the air like a toxic cloud.
The fumes wafting up from Landwehrkanal are so unbearable
that passers-by have to hold a handkerchief to their nose.
At lunchtime - three children who'd
been badly injured by hand grenades
while playing among the ruins.
I had to splint, bandage and stitch.
Since noon yesterday, we've had some water in the boiler room.
Nice clean water.
And as of 5.30pm today, we have electricity.
We're like children, always switching the light on and off.
You're no longer stumbling around in the dark.
You can see each other while talking.
Plans are being developed for a European Cultural Association -
exhibitions, theatre, lectures.
We've never been as hopeful as we are today.
Concert in our school.
MUSIC: Lied Der Nachtigall by Erna Berga and Sein Orchester
The Philharmonic Orchestra played and Mrs Erna Berga sang.
There were many familiar faces.
Some guys had even dressed up again.
It was a wonderful night.
The first perm in a long time.
June 16th, Saturday.
There's a Nazi special operation today.
At 7am, we were standing in rank and file like convicts.
A youth leader came and told everyone under 20 to step forward
to receive their youth assignment.
Later, two young men showed up and collected the work cards.
Mine still had a big N on it and Horst said,
"We have no use for Nazis."
But the youth leader said that it was all how it was supposed to be
and I could get a different card.
I should just go home and report back at 2pm.
Then I should go to a meeting of the anti-fascist youth
and write a protocol.
On June 30th, I was ordered to drop all my plans and head to Berlin.
Instead of wasting time on an orderly start,
we grabbed our hats and hurried down the Autobahn on July 1st
as if the Cossacks were right behind us.
Russian officers in old confiscated vehicles rushed up and down
our column to check us.
Some wanted a victory toast with us.
Others acted like little commissars.
We reached Berlin late afternoon.
The Russians had not allowed us to view our sectors beforehand.
Nobody knew exactly where to go.
Hundreds of officers and soldiers were looking for places to stay.
RADIO: Hello, BBC, this is Richard Dimbleby speaking from Berlin.
The official Allied occupation of Berlin has begun.
The United States' 2nd Armored Division is entering
the American zone of the city today.
This is the first BBC broadcast from Berlin.
At Reichstrasse, many tanks with white stars drove past us.
Suddenly one tank pulls up at the kerb.
A soldier leans out and asks,
"Excuse me, how do we get to Grunewald?"
We reached Gruneweld with field equipment, helmets and rucksacks.
We set up our vehicles in a circle under the trees,
like in the prairie in the olden days.
In the new Antifa office, work is fun.
It feels like they want the same thing as the Nazis,
just under a different name.
There are the same expectations,
the same manners of speaking.
The young people, they say, are working best.
The ones that are most suited to become team leaders are usually
the Hitler Youth leaders.
It got serious on July 4th.
Outside of the former Adolf Hitler SS Barracks,
now the McNair Barracks,
the Russians moved in with two companies.
MUSIC: Soviet National Anthem
When we saw them, we also positioned two companies there,
along with a row of Sherman tanks.
MUSIC: US National Anthem
Their artillery fire to salute.
Our artillery responded.
I want to greet the American Allied forces in the name of the commandant
of the city of Berlin and in the name of the Soviet forces.
MUSIC: US National Anthem
The next day, Colonel Howley sent his men to the town halls,
raised our flag and instructed the Germans that from now on
they would be taking their orders from the Americans.
Mum had to be at Mrs Schwiering's at half past seven.
They have established an officer's casino in the big villa
at Harnackstrasse.
Mrs Schwiering speaks English fluently.
Mum brought wonderful things we haven't seen in six years.
If ever the fate of Berlin had hung by a thread,
it was on July 7th at the meeting with Zhukov.
He brusquely announced, "And now, gentlemen, let us discuss
"the question of how you intend to supply Berlin with food and coal."
An icy wind from the steps swept through the room.
Zhukov insisted.
He said that there was not only a food shortage in East Germany,
but also in the Soviet Union and that the Soviet administration
could no longer feed the whole city.
TRANSLATION: In the beginning, we were expecting
just over two million Berliners and printed the respective number
of food ration cards.
But soon the situation evolved.
Men, women and children from all over poured into the capital
and we had to print new cards.
Berlin was the transit point for all refugee transports,
even though the Allied Kommandatura had locked down the city.
In July, 500,000 refugees arrived in or were moved through Berlin.
TRANSLATION: We have arrived at Stettin train station,
the end of the line, completely bombed out.
You can only see the sky, rubble, and people, people, people.
Refugees, all drifters like us.
Who should welcome us?
One Berliner said, "There's still space next to that burnt-out
"station wall over there. You can lie down there."
TRANSLATION: Red Cross nurses showed
us to the camp where we were to be housed.
Soon, we stood in front of the surface air raid shelter
and they said, "Here, you can stay."
Then they sent us away to wash.
TRANSLATION: Lice were like humans' pets at the time.
We had to go for delousing repeatedly.
Children and elders alike had to go through it.
It was an all-around cleansing
and afterwards the lice were gone.
Most of the time, anyway.
TRANSLATION: Returnees and those who have been deported
are in poor health.
Babies and toddlers suffered most.
Many have severe nutritional problems.
This has caused a lot of deaths.
July 15th.
At 9.45, we flew to Germany to the Potsdam Conference
in a transport plane.
We were received by a guard of honour at an airport.
After a 20-minute drive, we reached our accommodation in Babelsberg.
It was made up of a series of villas all looking out
over the lake - very pleasant.
In the evening, I tried to catch a pike.
Berlin is like an island in the South Seas,
isolated from the world.
Yet Stalin, the British prime minister and the American president
are in Potsdam to decide our fate.
At 1.30pm, I went to lunch with the Prime Minister.
He had just read the American reports about the results of secret
experiments with the atom bomb.
It would not be necessary, he said,
for the Russians to enter the war with Japan -
the new bomb was enough to end the war.
The bomb would also change the relationship with the Russians.
Then we could just say, if you insist on doing this or that,
then we will wipe out Moscow from the map,
then Stalingrad, Kyiv, Sebastopol and so on.
The day ended with a dinner of the heads of state.
July 25th.
At home, I finished the blue blouse with the cut-off sleeves.
At 8pm, I went to the movies with Mother.
The film was called "Berlin".
It was a Russian film about the Battle of Berlin.
LOUD EXPLOSIONS
We were exhausted when we left.
They shouldn't show us something like that.
We only just managed to get through it.
If you were to see this in a few years, it would be different,
but after three months, that's not clever.
On July 28th, I did the first consecration of a boy
in the small synagogue of the Jewish hospital.
The following day, on July 29th, I married the first Jewish couple
in Berlin in the small synagogue in Rykestrasse.
Amid all the terrible suffering, murder and savagery in Auschwitz,
two people had found each other.
This was the first joyous day for the newly awakened
Berlin congregation.
Oh, Schatzel, how wonderful to be lying in one's own bed,
knowing one is within one's own four walls.
Goodnight.
I hope you are all relatively comfortable as well,
if you are still alive.
Even though I escaped the gas chambers,
the locked doors, the screaming and the beatings,
the dogs and the roll calls,
at night it caught up with me.
It all came back. The barbed wire fences,
the young girl dead in the dirt,
Gad waving goodbye.
The past and the present were merging,
the future was an empty sheet of paper.
Huge headlines in all papers.
The Potsdam Agreement.
Common policy in all occupied territories,
mutual consent on the order of peace in Europe.
It sounds too good to be true.
This is a historic occasion.
We have conclusively proven
that a free people...
..can successfully look after the affairs of the world.
Here we have it - no invasion,
but the atom bomb on the city of Hiroshima.
If Hitler had managed to create such an instrument of destruction,
I dare not think it.
TRANSLATION: August 12th.
The Americans are met with great sympathy.
Yes, the behaviour of some Germans is actually disgraceful.
Every day, one can observe how German men greedily bend down
to pick up cigarette butts thrown away by Americans,
or German women strolling through the streets and parks,
arm in arm with American soldiers.
Imagine your own son, 18 or 19 years old,
free of any supervision,
provided with almost unlimited resources
and fortunate enough to be as attractive as Clark Gable.
Now imagine him being exposed
to a people bereft of any moral standards.
Berlin women are hungry and lonely.
INFORMATION FILM NARRATION: The problem now is future peace.
That is your job in Germany.
You are soldiers on guard.
You will not argue with them.
You will not be friendly.
You will be aloof,
watchful and suspicious.
Every German is a potential source of trouble.
Therefore, there must be no fraternisation
with any of the German people.
The guards have taken possession of all the motorboats at the end
of their lake.
When they're not on duty,
they race up and down the lake with German girls in their boats
and enjoy themselves.
TRANSLATION: You become numb.
I alone have diagnosed 50 cases of gonorrhoea.
Now the cases of unwanted pregnancies are mounting.
TRANSLATION: I herewith politely ask for your attention
for the suffering of a mother and wife of a man
who is currently a prisoner of war.
She got into this terrible situation without any personal wrongdoing
and is in the deepest agony of the soul, begging for your help.
TRANSLATION: I was raped by Russians
on the 21st and 22nd of April this year,
which brought about this pregnancy.
Due to my condition, I'm suffering from depression
and therefore ask for a termination of the pregnancy.
I'm a paediatric nurse by profession.
TRANSLATION: During a small festivity
where alcohol was involved, I was raped by an American.
This evening now has consequences
and I therefore politely ask for the termination of my pregnancy.
TRANSLATION: The termination of the pregnancy of Mrs Gerda Karl,
resident of Berlin-Neukolln, is hereby approved.
TRANSLATION: Dear Mum, dear Dad.
What a terrible place, Berlin.
You cannot begin to imagine the bleakness of this megalopolis.
Even more horrifying are those Berliners dwelling in the cellars,
dying of starvation.
TRANSLATION: What we got on the Russian card
wasn't sufficient at all. We just had to try and organise
something on the black market.
My parents scrambled together anything that could
possibly be fobbed off -
our toys, doll houses, scooters, skates.
Sometimes, that would get some good stuff - a little butter,
some extra bread or a piece of bacon.
Everything is being bartered, trafficked
and sold to people at outrageous prices.
Our GIs have had cheap watches and cigarettes sent to them,
which they now sell around Alexanderplatz or in the Tiergarten
to their Russian comrades at fantastic prices.
Mickey Mouse watches fetch 10,000 marks apiece.
They could exchange the money, one-to-one, into American dollars.
Fancy visiting antique shops with no money
and cigarettes in one's handbag instead.
For four packets, I got a lovely Venetian glass
and a large tortoiseshell comb.
How valuable cigarettes are.
September 10th.
A few days back, there was a great military parade
celebrating the end of the war.
Thousands of Russians, thousands of French, thousands of Americans,
thousands of British.
For us, it was great that the French took up as much space as the others.
Just as many men, just as many flags.
The German Reich is shattered.
The German economy is shattered.
The German culture is shattered.
We no longer have a voice in the League of Nations,
but are treated like mere indigenous people in a colony.
These are the bitter fruits of five and a half years of war,
full of struggle and deprivation.
I'm afraid the Germans have still not learnt the lesson
of this terrible war.
They're only sorry for themselves,
not for all those they murdered
and tortured and tried to wipe from the face of the Earth.
October 1st.
Went to see a film with Gunter in the evening.
"Jenny and the Gentleman in the Tailcoat," with Johannes Heesters.
It looks as though Gunter is completely infatuated with me.
I told Mum I'm at the meeting or she'd get upset and scold me again.
Mrs Schulze received a letter from Kurt.
So Kurt is alive, thank God. I'm very happy.
November 8th. The flat is now halfway cosy and nice,
the beginning of an existence in the making.
But my great anxiety about my husband and children
remains my all-encompassing concern.
I've left no stone unturned to try and find the children,
but have remained unsuccessful.
I don't know how I am to bear the certainty of their death,
should this come about.
And the only person who ever understood me,
he, too, will not return.
In Nuremberg, an International Court of Justice,
has convened to pass judgment on the main war criminals.
24 defendants.
The bill of indictment filled seven closely typed newspaper pages.
Watching the people flicking through this document of shame
with indifference, it seems as though none of this concerns them,
neither crime nor perpetrators,
neither guilt nor punishment.
These 21 men, these zeroes,
these hardworking and confident monsters,
were the last survivors of a gang that had ruled Germany.
Because of them, millions of soldiers, sailors, pilots
and civilians died in the war,
and millions died in gas chambers and furnaces.
No famine, no plague, no punishment of God ever accomplished
what these men were able to do.
They caused destruction such as the world has never seen,
and there they sat, stony faced.
Hermann Wilhelm Goring...
..you must plead guilty or not guilty.
Rudolf Hess.
Wilhelm Keitel.
Alfred Jodl.
December 8th.
Feast of the Immaculate Conception,
Day of Remembrance.
The first snow, very cold,
wind beating against the windows.
At 7am with mother to the Borgsdorf forest to fetch wood.
It was terribly heavy,
and the forester was about to confiscate our tools
when we wanted to saw a trunk.
We had two large sacks, a rucksack and a bag,
and still we had to run for the train.
December 10th.
It's said to be almost minus 20 degrees Centigrade.
My hair has turned very grey.
In general, we all age rapidly now.
Snow outside, scrunching underfoot.
Everybody's complaining about the cold.
I hope it won't last for long.
With the lack of coal,
the malnourished will freeze to death in their flats.
It's been happening already.
First post-war Christmas.
How different from what we had imagined.
No tree, no presents, no Andric.
But the curfew was lifted yesterday
and those brave enough are allowed out after 11pm.
Eaten lots and well.
To church with Hansels and Schulzes at quarter to five.
It was crowded so we stood on the upper gallery.
Another Christmas without the children.
Last year, I often thought about it and wished for the next one
not to be so sad.
Now, Christmas will soon come around and I have even less hope.
Monday, New Year's Eve.
Mother was angry with me when I left in the evening.
I took my records, first to Gunter,
then to Hayo, who lives in Weissensee. His parents were out.
Gunter was quite jealous because I was flirting with Rudi and danced
the first dance of the New Year with him. It was "Lantern, Lantern."
# Laternchen, laternchen
# Laternchen... #
At 5am, I went to another family, who were also celebrating
and in high spirits.
At 6am, I returned.
Mother was livid.
I went to bed and slept until 11 the next morning.
In 1949, Brigitte Eicke married her childhood sweetheart Kurt Schulze.
The couple had two children, a boy and a girl.
Brigitte spent her entire life in Prenzlauer Berg and died in 2016
at the age of 89.
The trial against the main war criminals at Nuremberg concluded
with 12 death sentences, seven long-term or life prison sentences
and three acquittals.
Hermann Goring eluded his punishment by committing suicide.
In 1947, over 98% of all registered
NSDAP members were back at work.
Even high-ranking SS functionaries were able to build a career
after the war, as doctors, judges, teachers, professors,
civil servants or journalists.
Only in 1946 Alice Lowenthal received confirmation
that her second husband and her daughters, Gitti and Ruth, had died.
All three had been murdered at Auschwitz concentration camp
and were declared dead in 1950.
Alice married again, the son of the family who had hidden her.
The pair had another daughter they named Eva Ruth Gitti.
Alice died in 1985.
Eva still lives in Berlin.