Cigarettes Were Banned

                Thursday, June 26, 1947

 

 We are not cheerful. The American government banned the import of cigarettes. And that to a country where now for years Chesterfields are used as the standard currency.

"What do you think is the most effective way to combat the black market?" and American finance specialist asked me recently.

 "By giving us cigarettes," I replied.

 He looked at me disapprovingly. "Might a vanquished people be so addicted to intoxicants?" I interpreted his look. A hundred times I have asked myself the same question. Why do people who have never touched a cigarette before suddenly smoke? Why do they sell their food ration cards just to buy a pack of cigarettes on the black market at an incredible price? Why at a time when the monthly cigarette allotment is twelve cigarettes per person? That is per every male person. Women get only half as many. Why don't we draw the conclusions from this lack of supply and stop smoking altogether? Because we are unable to. Daily, if not hourly, fate presents us with new shocks. The shock of a night of bombs, the fear of being raped, the insecurity of life in Berlin, the whole misery of our life in the ruins---all that cannot be compensated with oatmeal. Or with grits or ersatz coffee. It is the discrepancy between the intensity of our fate and drabness of our daily life that makes us addicted to cigarettes. For a few happier moments they offer escape from an unbearable reality. This is the secret that made Chesterfields into the standard currency. And as we are condemned to cope with so much more than our strength permits, they will remain a focus of our desire.

Now the importation of tobacco has been banned. What an illusion to expect that stopping the supply will stop the demand. If only the occupying powers could show a little more compassion for personal needs. What do the sated know of the hungry? Or people who throw away half-smoked butts about those who eagerly sacrifice three and a half marks for one of those butts. On the black market or wherever they can get it.

 

Battleground Berlin, Diaries 1945-1948; Ruth Andreas-Friedrich, Paragon House Publishers, New York, 1990, pgs. 176-177.