Soviet soldiers break in and assault Jutta and the women in Berlin in a single visit to the apartment shared by Jutta, Frau Elena, and several other girls. The episode begins with a search of a damaged building and ends with the soldiers leaving, but the apparent limits of that visit do not make it safe: inside the apartment, Frau Elena tries to manage the danger, and Jutta survives the assault without speaking. The scene makes the home a fragile refuge, not a protected one, and places the girls’ vulnerability beside the soldiers’ exhaustion and the destruction of the city around them.

Setting and Approach

The soldiers arrive on a cloudless day in May. There are three of them, and they do not return after this visit. They break into the printing company below the apartment, looking for liquor. Finding none, they begin making holes in its walls. A shot strikes an old dismantled press, and the search moves upward into the rooms where Frau Elena and the girls are sheltering. The movement from the company below to the apartment above makes the intrusion feel continuous: the soldiers’ search of the building becomes a threat to the people who have been trying to remain out of sight.

Jutta is with Frau Elena, Hannah, Susanne, and Claudia Förster. None of the girls is older than sixteen. Before the soldiers reach the apartment, Jutta allows herself to think they may not climb the stairs. They do. Their entry follows a pause at the top of the stairwell and the breaking open of the apartment door. The scene thus gives the girls a brief interval in which escape or avoidance still seems possible, then closes it through the soldiers’ arrival.

Frau Elena’s Attempt to Protect the Girls

Frau Elena tells the girls to stay calm, presenting composure as a way to reduce the risk of being shot. She says she will go first, hoping the soldiers will be gentler with the others afterward. Her reassurance does not remove the danger; it shows her trying to shape what little remains within her control. She leads the soldiers into another room, then Claudia follows. Jutta does not make a sound. The account records these differences in response without treating any one of them as a choice that could make the situation safe.

The objects in the apartment sharpen the contrast between ordinary life and immediate danger. Earlier, as the soldiers search the closet, mop handles are kicked aside and a crate of dictionaries is sent down the stairs. Frau Elena is wearing a striped ski parka, with an abridged New Testament zipped into its pocket. These details remain part of the household even as the soldiers force their way inside: practical belongings, books, and personal clothing cannot keep the violence out. When the soldiers leave, Frau Elena puts on her parka and rubs one arm with the other, an action the narration describes without turning it into an explanation of what she feels.

The Assault and Its Uneven Responses

The soldiers are an officer and two boys who appear no older than seventeen. The account describes their filthy clothing and notes that they have splashed themselves with women’s perfume. One is extremely thin and wears a rope as a belt; the other laughs in apparent disbelief at the state of the city. The officer sits by the door while the girls are confronted, then assaults them in turn. This contrast between the soldiers’ youth and their power in the apartment does not soften what they do. Their age and disordered appearance coexist with their control over the people they have entered to terrorize.

The narration distinguishes the women’s and girls’ reactions without making their silence or speech a measure of consent or courage. Hannah screams briefly and muffles herself; Frau Elena makes a small sound as she leads the soldiers away; Claudia responds with moans. Jutta remains silent. These different responses are reported as part of the event, not as evidence that any of the girls can direct its course. The scene’s restraint keeps attention on the assault and its coercive circumstances rather than depicting it graphically.

Before leaving, the youngest soldier fires twice into the ceiling. Plaster falls, and the sound carries through the apartment as Susanne lies nearby, breathing quietly. The shots do not signal a change in the soldiers’ purpose or provide an escape; they extend the threat to the final moments of the visit. The soldiers then go out into the street. Their departure ends the immediate intrusion, but the scene does not present it as a restoration of security.

Consequences and Narrative Significance

The episode is brief in the plot’s chronology, but its details establish a lasting wartime vulnerability around Jutta and the other girls. The soldiers come only once, yet that fact describes the limits of the event, not its harmlessness. The apartment’s locked door, household objects, and ordinary arrangements cannot protect its occupants once armed men enter. Frau Elena can try to guide the sequence and shield the girls, but she cannot prevent the assault; Jutta’s silence likewise marks survival under coercion, not control over what happens.

The scene also sets the damaged city and the threatened household in the same frame. Below, the soldiers search a workplace and break into its walls; above, they enter the girls’ home. The dismantled press, the fallen dictionaries, and the shots into the ceiling connect public destruction to private danger without suggesting that the two are identical. By ending with the soldiers outside and Frau Elena tending to herself, the narrative closes the immediate action while leaving the people who endured it inside its consequences. The episode is therefore not simply a scene of invasion: it shows how the collapse of safety reaches into daily life, and how care can persist even when it cannot stop violence.