After the final capitulation life in Berlin returned to normal relatively fast – in the sense that under completely changed external circumstances people's individual will to live took over. After almost six years of war and being under constant threat people just wanted to go on living, and Homo sapiens’ irrepressible survival instinct made this possible. Even after that war, its horrors and its consequences. In the summer of 1945 there was no longer a German state. The cities lay in ruins; people often had little more than a roof over their heads and there was real suffering. Families had been torn apart and many millions were fleeing, driven from their homes or interned.

The Russians had immediately set up local administrations for the German population in their own military headquarters or alongside them. Ration cards also soon appeared, in German and Russian. Shopkeepers were ordered to open their shops, get vouchers for food to stock their shelves and begin selling. Herr Weihrauch and I went to the distribution point, collected vouchers for four quarters of beef carcass, hauled the wheelbarrow out of the shed and made our way to the slaughterhouse in Lichtenberg. After much to-ing and fro-ing we got our four pieces. They were already stinking. On the way back a Russian soldier on a horse-drawn cart stopped us and demanded at least one of them. We refused. He threatened to take them all if we didn't give him one. We finally gave in on condition that he confirm it in writing. He scribbled something on a piece of paper and the meat made the transfer from our vehicle to his.

The next day we presented the piece of paper at the local military headquarters and it was explained to us that Red Army Corporal – there followed a name – from Unit XYZ had confiscated “a piece of meat” because his unit was in urgent need of it. We were quite surprised at the bureaucratic correctness of all this; the soldier could have written anything. He knew we couldn't read it. But it was difficult to define “a piece”. The German official to whom the note was passed wanted to know how heavy the piece had been, and of course we couldn't answer for sure.