The Girls of the Ruins

The Second World War was drawing to a close by the spring of 1945, but the Battle of Berlin was still to claim countless victims. In , we hear entries from the diaries of young German women, describing the horrors of the final phase of the war. The accompanying archive footage shows ruined buildings and the people living in Berlin at the time. Even when the war ended with German capitulation, there was no peace for these women, because the Russians then occupied Berlin. Interviewed today, five German women look back on this period. An elderly woman tells of how the Russian soldiers laid claim to any women they encountered. There was a wave of suicides throughout the city, with many of the women choosing to slash their wrists rather than submit themselves to rape. In one diary, a woman writes how she thinks she will never again be able to desire a man. Nonetheless, many of the women know that it was they who reconstructed Berlin after the war -- illustrated by the idealized images of women in brightly colored dresses among the ruins of the city. Hope was not entirely crushed: "Now that's everything's been bombed flat, we can see the sky again at last."