Charlotte Beradt (1907–1986)

Charlotte Beradt, née Aron, was born to a Jewish merchant family in Forst, Germany, and grew up in Berlin. Her first career was as a freelance journalist for various newspapers and magazines. In 1924, she married Heinz Pol (Pollack), also a journalist and writer; the marriage ended in divorce in 1933. With the rise of the Nazi regime to power in Germany, she was no longer able to work in journalism. In 1938, she remarried to Martin Beradt, a writer and lawyer nearly 30 years her senior. She was a member of the German Communist Party, but left it following news of Stalinist atrocities. She also was part of the Berlin psychoanalytic community. In 1939, the Beradts went into exile via London to the USA, where they settled in New York City. They were initially destitute and Charlotte helped support them by running a hairdressing salon in their apartment. Elisabeth Bergner and Bella Chagall were among her clients. After World War II ended, her writing was again published in German newspapers and she contributed to radio programs. Her radio broadcasts between 1962 and 1978 included autobiographical works. She also translated a volume of political essays by Hannah Arendt (who became a friend), and served as a theater critic. Beradt's first and most famous book, The Third Reich of Dreams (1966), documented hundreds of dreams from people living in Nazi Germany, which she collected from 1933 to 1939. The book made it clear how Nazi propaganda and terror penetrated the innermost recesses of private life. It became a bestseller and has been reprinted and translated into numerous languages. Her other books included a biography of Paul Levi, the Weimar Republic politician, and a collection of Rosa Luxemburg's letters to her secretary and friend Mathilde Jacob.