the words weren't mine

Beradt gathered the dreams of some three hundred people in her Berlin neighborhood from 1933–39, when she fled the country. Her process of recording dreams was clandestine: “I asked the dressmaker, the neighbor, an aunt, a milkman, a friend, almost always without revealing my purpose.” Beradt also gathered second- and third-hand dreams with the help of others, including “a doctor who had access to a wide range of patients.” Many people were reluctant to divulge their dreams, fearing incrimination. Beradt, who had been caught up in the mass arrests that surrounded the Reichstag fire, and who was also Jewish, feared this too. She wrote the dreams down on small pieces of paper, using a kind of code to conceal their subversive elements: “Hitler, Goering, and Goebbels [became] Uncle Hans, Uncle Gustav, [and] Uncle Gerhardt”; an “arrest” became a case of the “flu.” At first, she hid the dreams within the spines of her own books, but after searches of private homes and book burnings became common, she mailed them to friends around the world for safekeeping. read more

IMAGE: St James Garlickhythe