Trümmerfrau
In German, for “women of the rubble.” In the aftermath of World War II, Berlin was in ruins. It’s population had been reduced by half, and nearly two-thirds of the city’s 2.3 million citizens were women. Many of these German women – known as Trümmerfrauen, worked hard to clean up and reclaim the city. In many cases, they cleared bomb-damaged areas through tough manual labor, separating usable bricks and construction materials from other debris. The Trümmerfrauen have been celebrated not only for their efforts to clean up the city, but for their role in rebuilding families and society in a city nearly destroyed by Nazism. Photo from National Museum of the U.S. Air Force, Dayton, Ohio, 2015. (National Museum of the U.S. Air Force, 2015)