A Woman in Berlin

Harrowing Look at the Battle of Berlin from Someone Who Lived Through It.
"A Woman in Berlin" recounts the experiences of a German woman (Nina Hoss) during 8 weeks of the Battle of Berlin, April to June 1945, as the Soviet Union's Red Army overran parts of the city, and German civilians struggled to find food and shelter from mortars and snipers, as well as from the invading soldiers. After she and the women of her neighborhood are raped and beaten repeatedly by Red Army soldiers, she determines to get as much control of her desperate circumstances as possible. She seeks out an officer of the Red Army to whom she offers herself in exchange for his protection. Rebuffed at first by Major Andrei Rybkin (Yevgeni Sidikhin), the two develop a fond relationship of mutual escapism from the horrors around them.

The protagonist is nameless. Until recently, she was known only as "Anonyma", the name under which she published her memoirs in Germany in 1959. They were not well-received. The author was accused of shaming German women with her descriptions of...

"Old Germany is finished"
Extremely moving film based on a memoir entitled "Anonyma" that was first published in 1959. Because the book was considered an affront to the honor of German women at the time, it was met with outrage and condemnation, and the author reacted by banning new editions for as long as she lived, her name not to be revealed even after her death. In some respect, the protagonist in this movie reminds this reviewer of Wolfgang Samuel's mother in "German Boy: A Child in War" (see my review), another memoir recounting events of the same era, although the periodic prostitution Samuel eventually acknowledged his mother had committed in order to survive the ravages of the second world war is significantly overshadowed here. Rather than isolated stints, the woman in this account develops an ongoing relationship with a Major in the Russian army in order to protect herself from the wholesale rape inflicted by hoards of Russian soldiers taking advantage of a defenseless German civilian population...

Realistic portrayal of Soviet occupation of Berlin
I saw this film with a holocaust survivor whose camp was liberated by Soviet Red Army soldiers reeking of Vodka. He was blown away by the realism of the film, as was I. The woman protagonist lives through the invasion of the Red Army soldiers in Berlin at the close of WWII and the occupation after the fall of the city.

The situation of women in war becomes all too clear as the description of Berlin as one big whorehouse is mentioned more than once. Women of all ages are forced to submit to rape over and over again. (My holocaust-survivor friend said Soviet soldiers even raped women they liberated in the concentration camps!)

Our anonymous protagonist, who has the advantage of being able to speak Russian, decides she will find the Commander of the troops and submit only to him, and thereby get protection. Not only does she survive the invasion, but she even finds her heart responding to the man who protects her.

A fascinating contrast is revealed...

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