A Woman in Berlin - Anonymous

So this was a re-read; pulled it from the shelf in my bedroom.  Picked it up again to read a bit while I was in between books and ended up reading the whole thing again.  This book is so astounding.  I guess I've read it a few times now and every time it just rocks me.

A Woman in Berlin is actually a journal kept by a woman from April - June 1945.  She chronicles the chaotic last few weeks of the siege on Berlin and the first few weeks of the Russian occupation.  When I'm reading her words I'm always reminding myself - this actually happened.  These are real people she saw die, real people who raped her, real people who suffered.  It's very, very rare to come across an eye-witness account of the second World War like this.  It is unusual also to find something from the time written by a regular Berliner...albeit an uncommon woman such as this who can write with such unflinching clarity about the insanity happening all around her.  She was a journalist before and after the war, which lends a completeness to her observations.

There's a lot more I want to say about it, but I can't put it properly into words, so I'll settle for this. This unknown woman is a hero of mine.  Her story is a priceless document.  It's a perspective of war everyone should see.