Princess “Missie”

If you have read The Berlin Diaries 1940 – 1945 you do not need to read any further.

If you have never heard of this remarkable account of the war seen through the eyes of a White Russian Princess living in Germany throughout the war it may captivate you, as it did me. Marie “Missie” Vassiltchikov, born in 1917, is a child of Prince and Princess Illarion Vassilchikov. Her family left Russia in 1919 – the circumstances of their departure would make another book – and she was brought up in Germany, France and Lithuania. But her diary does describe her departure from Lithuania.

“Berlin Wednesday, 3 January (1940)

We departed for Berlin with eleven pieces of luggage, including a gramophone. We left at 5 a.m. It was still pitch dark. The estate manager drove us to Oppeln. Olga Pückler has lent us enough money to live for three weeks; by that time we must have found jobs. Tatiana (her sister) has written to Jake Beam, one of the boys at the American Embassy she met last spring; our work at the British Legation in Kaunas may be of some help to us there. The train was packed and we stood in the corridor. Luckily, two soldiers had helped with the luggage, as otherwise we would never have been able to squeeze in. We arrived in Berlin three hours late. As soon as we reached the flat the Pücklers have kindly allowed us to stay in temporarily, Tatiana started telephoning friends; it made us feel less lost. The flat, in the Lietzenburgenstrasse, a street running parallel to the Kurfürstendamm, is very large, but Olga has asked us to do without outside help on account of the many valuable contents, so we are only using one bedroom, a bathroom and the kitchen. The rest is shrouded in sheets.

6 January … luckily found a taxi … which took us to a ball at the Chilean Embassy.”

I hope this encapsulates Missie’s diaries. She is not a snob but her upbringing makes her differentiate between her friends with royal titles and other titled aristocrats. She has to work and doesn’t complain although often she is famished. She writes about Berlin under air raids by the USAF and the RAF; it seems worse than the London Blitz. She also records incongruous weekends with her friends, including this programme for a wedding she attended in 1942. It makes arrangements for the King’s coronation seem modest.

Her life is never dull and I enjoyed every page. She brings to life an intimate view of the war not known about in Britain or America. A big thank you to the General who gave it to me. Not one for Oxfam – a truly remarkable record of the war through the eyes of a woman living in Germany with no idea how things would turn out for her and her family as she wrote her diary.