Question

Using your notes, write a two-paragraph journal entry from the perspective of someone your age (16) who is living in West Berlin during the Berlin airlift.

Answer 1

11 November 1948

This morning the city smells of coal smoke and hot cabbage again; Mother has been saving the last of the sugar for the bread, and when I stepped outside there were already long lines at the bakery and the coaling point. The trains from the east are gone and sometimes I forget that we are surrounded — at night the sky is full of lights as the transport planes come in over Tempelhof and Gatow, one after the other like bright, slow fireflies, and you can hear them hours before you see them, a deep steady thunder that makes the windows vibrate. At school we talk quietly between classes about who got extra powdered milk this week and where the next distribution will be; I help carry parcels to Mrs. Klein on our street because her son is too sick to stand in line. Seeing the crates marked "Flour" and "Coal" arrive feels like watching hope being unloaded.

I am so grateful to the men and women in those planes — some of them wave from the cockpits when they pass low — that it makes my chest ache with something like pride and shame at the same time. The pilots toss little parcels down sometimes, and the boys call them "Rosinenbomber" and cheer like it's a holiday when a chocolate parachute floats into the square; for a while at least, the sour taste of worry is replaced by laughter. Still, there is anger here too, and a constant fear that the Soviets might try something worse, but I find myself believing more each day that we will hold on, that this city will not be starved into surrender. I try to study by the pale lamp after curfew — I want to learn enough to help rebuild, not only for us now but for the Berlin I hope my children will know.