A Woman In Berlin 1945 ****

As the Second World War in Europe reached its endgame, the race to conquer Berlin was on. Stalin had decreed that the Soviet army should liberate the city, rather than the western allies. By now, while the outcome of the war was no longer in doubt, the superpowers were jostling for post-war position and influence.

Hitler ordered that the city would not be evacuated, believing that this would incentivise his troops to fight harder. This meant that the battle for Berlin itself would prove brutal and unflinching.

A Woman In Berlin 1945 is inspired by the originally anonymous Eine Frau in Berlin, whose author was later identified as journalist Marta Hillers. The diary offers a harrowing account of life in Berlin during the final days of the war and its immediate aftermath.

When Soviet troops entered the city, they sought out goods that they could loot, especially easily transportable valuables, such as watches. They sought alcohol. And they sought women.

By April 1945, there were few men of fighting age or physical strength left in Berlin. The population was predominantly women, children and the elderly. Many women were raped by Soviet soldiers, while commanding officers proved powerless or unwilling to restrain the violence. Historians estimate that around 100,000 women were assaulted in Berlin alone.

There was an element of revenge in these atrocities. Nazi forces had swept through large parts of the Soviet Union, murdering civilians and leaving devastation in their wake. For some Soviet soldiers, the violence was also understood as part of the brutalised logic of the “spoils of war”.

For many years the stories were supressed. The authorities did not want to draw attention to the atrocities, and those women who survived felt a burning sense of shame and feared societal stigma. These acts were widespread, not limited to Berlin; in Vienna, the Soviet War Memorial is grimly nicknamed the “unknown rapist”.

Women had to take pragmatic decisions if they were to survive. This often involved attaching themselves to one commanding officer. Those that survived would have suffered severe psychological trauma.

Magda Pohl is alone on stage; no props, attired in black. She presents A Woman In Berlin 1945, an adaptation of Hillers’ diary as a piece of physical theatre.

Pohl moves seamlessly from scene to scene, using a remarkable vocabulary of movement, some of it inspired by Eastern European forms. She tells the stories of ordinary German women and their horrific struggle for survival, inhabiting a succession of characters — male and female, young and old — and even evoking the image of a bird. It is beautifully, honestly and poignantly told by a highly accomplished performer.

Pohl’s Lecoq training is evident throughout the production. Physical theatre proves an especially powerful medium for this story: stripped of props and conventional theatrical apparatus, Pohl relies almost entirely on the expressive potential of the human body. The result is intimate, visceral and intensely immediate.

A powerful story, adeptly and movingly performed.

A Woman In Berlin 1945, alongside four other Le Coq inspired productions, runs until August 22^nd at Teatro Fisico (45 Market St), adjacent to Waverley Station.