Question

Using your notes, write a two-paragraph journal entry from the perspective of someone your age who is living in West Berlin during the Berlin airlift.

Answer 1

3 January 1949 — West Berlin

I am twenty-three and still awake too late because the room is colder than I thought it would be. Mornings begin with the same small ritual: check the ration book, fold the coupons into my pocket, and stand in line at the bakery while my fingers go numb. There is always someone to talk to in the queue — gossip, complaints, a laugh about last week’s coal delivery — and those brief human things keep the city from feeling entirely hollow. We hear the planes every day now, like a distant promise. At night the searchlights sweep the sky and you can tell by the shape whether it’s one of the American C‑54s coming in to Tempelhof or a British Dakota returning to Gatow; children name them "Rosinenbomber" when the pilots toss down candy, and for a few minutes the cold and hunger are forgotten.

The airlift feels like a miracle and also like a temporary bandage: each crate of coal and sack of flour is a hard-won lifeline, and we are grateful in ways I never imagined. Watching those aircraft land in a steady stream — one after another, sometimes only minutes apart — gives me hope, but I cannot stop thinking how precarious it all is. The Soviets cut us off and made this city a stage, and yet here we are, making small plans for the spring, swapping recipes that stretch a single potato into a meal for four, keeping the radio on for every bit of news. I write this to remember that we did not give in quietly; we helped each other, applauded the pilots, and held on until relief felt less like luck and more like something we earned together.