Api's Berlin Diaries

After her mother’s death, Gabrielle Robinson found diaries her grandfather had kept while serving as doctor in Berlin 1945—only to discover that her beloved “Api” had been a Nazi.

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She Was Thrilled to Find Her Beloved Grandfather’s War Diaries—only to Discover That He Had Been a Nazi
  


Toward the end of WW2 Api, a doctor in Berlin, cared for his patients in desperate conditions in medical cellars without water, light, and medications. The dead were stacked outside, adding to a nightmare landscape of rubble, acrid smoke, and bomb craters. It was April 1945 in what the Nazis called the “Citadel,” near the Reichstag, the Brandenburg Gate, and Hitler’s bunker. As the Third Reich collapsed, what Berliners dreaded most was the advance of the Red Army who soon terrorized a city already 90% destroyed.  
  




In this award-winning memoir, Gabrielle Robinson retraces her grandfather’s steps over half a century later, seeking answers to why he joined the Nazi party while also remembering this loving man who had provided her with the only stable home she had known. Her riveting and moving memoir may also remind today’s readers that even if we are not individually responsible for what was done in our country’s name, we still need to reckon with our countries’ pasts. 
 




“This is a must read for anyone interested in the German experience during WWII..”—Ariana Neumann, author of When Time Stopped