Alone in Berlin

by Hans Fallada

‘But the main thing is that we remain different from them, that we never allow ourselves to be made into them, or start thinking as they do.

‘Over the next few days, you will be very much alone with yourself and your thoughts, Frau Rosenthal. Try to accustom yourself to it. Solitude can be a very good thing. And don’t forget: every single survivor is important, including you, you most of all!

For all his goodness, human beings don’t mean anything to him, the only thing that has meaning for him is his justice. He does it for that, not for me. It would only matter to me if he did it for my sake!

As far as she can see, only potatoes and herself, all alone: she needs to hoe the potatoes. She smiles, picks up her hoe, there’s the clink of a pebble, a weed falls, she hoes her own row.

‘You’re humanity. He’s just dogma. You must go on living, don’t give in to him!’

He might be right: whether their act was big or small, no one could risk more than his life. Each according to his strength and abilities, but the main thing was, you fought back.

‘It’s because people have got in the habit of thinking. They have the idea that thinking will help them.’

‘Who can say? At least you opposed evil. You weren’t corrupted. You and I and the many locked up here, and many more in other places of detention, and tens of thousands in concentration camps – they’re all resisting, today, tomorrow…’

‘At least I stayed decent,’ he said. ‘I didn’t participate.’

whereas Hannah Arendt’s Eichmann in Jerusalem (1963) dissects and analyses ‘the banality of evil’, Hans Fallada’s Alone in Berlin comprehends and honours the banality of good.