THE BERLIN DIARIES OF MARIE VASSILTCHIKOV 1940 -1945.
London. Published by The Folio Society. 1991. 8vo. pp.xix + 296 with black & white photographs and maps. A very good unmarked copy in slipcase. Item #194613
`A brilliant record of wartime Berlin as well as the haunting day-by-day life of a beautiful woman of almost unbelievable courage' Daily Mail
Marie `Missie' Vassiltchikov as a White Russian émigrée caught with her family in Hitler`s Germany at the outbreak of the war. She was a Bright Young Thing, part of the cosmopolitan set who managed to maintain a trance-like normality until as late as 1941 - picnics, house-parties, dinners at the Eden...
Before long, however, Missie became sickened by the brutal and repressive nature of Nazi rule which overshadowed every aspect of her life. "Through Adam Von Trott, for whom she worked in the Information Department of the Foreign Ministry, she became involved in the Resistance and the diaries vividly describe her part in the drama of July 1944 and its appalling aftermath.
Living among the ruins of Berlin during Allied bombing raids, she grows us to be strong-minded, committed and courageous woman as she daily displays uncommon bravery in the face of the Gestapo and the detestable Dr Six of the SS. Having survived the Nazis, Missie ends the diaries as she flees from Vienna, where she has been working as a nurse, before the advancing Red Army."
Price: $40.00