On Writing Api’s Berlin Diaries

Imagine if you found out that someone you loved had a dark past. That happened to author Gabrielle Robinson, as she tried to reconcile the grandfather she knew with his complex past in her memoir Api’s Berlin Diaries (She Writes Press, September 15, 2020). 

After her mother’s death, Robinson found two diaries her grandfather had kept while serving as doctor during the fall of Berlin 1945. He recorded his daily struggle to survive in the ruined city and attempted to do what little he could for the wounded and dying without water, light, and medications. But then the diaries revealed something that had never been mentioned in her family, and it hit Robinson like a punch to the gut: Api, her beloved grandfather, had been a Nazi. 

In this clear-eyed memoir, Robinson juxtaposes her grandfather’s harrowing account of his experiences during the war with her memories of his loving protection years afterward, and raises thoughtful questions about the political responsibility we all carry as individuals. Moving and provocative, Api’s Berlin Diaries offers a firsthand and personal perspective on the far-reaching aftershocks of the Third Reich — and the author’s own inconvenient past.

“Robinson’s honesty, courage, and intelligence are crucial in coming to grips with questions of individual responsibility and collective guilt.” ― Helen Fremont, author of The Escape Artist and After Long Silence

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“The past is never dead. It’s not even past” (Faulkner) A Message for Our Time

Gabrielle Robinson 

After my mother’s death, I found two diaries hidden behind books in her Vienna apartment. I immediately recognized my grandfather’s handwriting with which he had written poems for me to recite. I had spent the happiest years of my childhood with him. Api as I affectionately called him, was both father and grandfather to me since my father had been killed in the war.

The diaries were his daily eyewitness accounts of the fall of Berlin in 1945. Each entry is in the form of a letter to us since my grandmother, mother, and myself had fled the city when our apartment was destroyed by bombs. Api stayed behind because doctors were needed desperately. 

I read about medical cellars without medications, water, even light. I watched Api scramble across streets buried in rubble in search of food and a place to rest. Fires from day and night bombings made it hard breathe. Thousands of refugees from the East had crowded into Berlin and were living and dying in the streets. The stench of corpses was everywhere. 

I read late into the night and decided right then to tell the story of the diaries, both as a tribute to my Api and as a historical document. Back home in South Bend I studied them more carefully and discovered with a shock that Api had been a member of the Nazi Party. I still remember the moment. I sat there with a pounding heart, saying to myself “Oh my God, Api was a Nazi.” Immediately I hid the diaries again, just as my mother had done and told no one about what I had found. Even when months later my secret unexpectedly burst out and my husband urged me to write, I couldn’t do it. It felt like a betrayal.

Meanwhile, I was doing a book about African American workers at the South Bend Studebaker plant in the 1950’s. They had fled the South to get away from Jim Crow but, as one of them said, “we met Jim Crow in the North.” Determined to create a better life for their children, they decided to stand up against discrimination by founding the first black housing coop in South Bend. Better Homes of South Bend. An American Story of Courage describes their long struggle, captured in the Minutes the group kept. In the end they managed to build twenty-two homes in a white neighborhood and create a vibrant community. 

For background, I happened to read Edward Ball’s Slaves in the Family. When he told his relatives about his plan to write about the slaves his family had kept, they were angered and upset. One of them shouted: “You are going to dig up our grandfather and hang him!” While this stopped Ball at first, he eventually concluded that, no, he was not responsible for what his grandfather did, but he was accountable. That perfectly fit my situation. It was the push I needed to overcome my shame and resistance to write.  

However, I still had a lot to learn, both about history and about my grandfather. As I was growing up in post-war Germany, there was complete silence about the Nazi period, both at home and in school. Even our history classes ended with World War I. Now I began to read about the Nazi period but had learnt from previous books that you always, always have to do research and writing together.

Otherwise you’ll never get control of the material. Still all the new information was overwhelming, and my book grew ever more out of focus. It ended up being seven super long chapters that I sent off to my agent. She responded with praise but added that I needed to put more of myself into the book. 

This stunned me. In previous books, I always had kept myself at a safe distance. Not sure how to accomplish this, I did the one thing I had always done, I wrote and wrote. Memories poured out faster than I could write them down: how Api had rescued me when I was lost in a Kindertransport; how we built a kite together and as Api was running with it he fell into a ditch. I joined him and we both laughed and watched our kite zigzag high above us. I remembered how after his death I was haunted by the sight of his gloves at the bottom of the stairs. He had abandoned them hastily to get into bed before collapsing. The fingers still were bent from his hand, but they looked rigid, dead. I had not thought about them for half a century.

This is when at last I found my voice for the book. Instead of seven long chapters, it turned into sixty-two short ones. They move between Api’s record of Berlin 1945 that brought him to the brink of mental and physical collapse; my memories of living with him after the war until his death in 1955; my research into why he had joined the Nazi party; and reflections on Api’s guilt, German guilt, and the political responsibility we all carry. I often asked myself what I would have done? 

The book’s message also came into focus. I want readers to feel the profound impact 20th century history has had on Api’s life. He served in two world wars, lost his only son and son in law, home and livelihood. I also would like them to reflect how their own lives are impacted by the past. Above all, I hope that my story creates empathy. This is the power of memoir and stories altogether. Reading about anyone’s struggles, no matter how different they are, moves us and helps us understand how we all are bound together in our common humanity and that we should approach each other with tolerance and compassion. I can think of nothing that is more important for us today. 

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GABRIELLE ROBINSON tells stories about people that reveal their personal situation within its historical context. One reason for her fascination with the intersection of the personal and historical stems from her own experience. Born in Berlin in 1942, her father’s fighter plane was shot down over England in 1943; after her family was bombed out twice, they fled Berlin in 1945, the beginning of a string of migrations that ended in the US.

Gabrielle holds an MA from Columbia University and a PhD from the University of London. She has taught at the University of Illinois, at Indiana University South Bend, and abroad, and has won a number of awards for her writing and community engagement. Gabrielle is now settled in South Bend, Indiana, with her husband Mike Keen, a sociologist turned sustainable neighborhood developer, and their cat Max. Her favorite leisure time reading is about animals and trees. Learn more about Gabrielle and Api’s Berlin Diaries at https://www.gabriellerobinson.com/.

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Category: On Writing