Miriam Gebhardt - Crimes Unspoken - The Rape of German Women at the End of the Second World War

This description is typical of the events taking place during flight and expulsion. Women often found themselves in a kind of camp situation.

Explosions and the fear of aerial attacks meant that the refugees had to find places to shelter on their way. They sat together in cellars, sheds or other shelters, waiting lethargically, often for days and weeks, while the war raged around them.

In Elbing [Elblag] in West Prussia, for example, 200 mostly elderly women and men were sheltering in a primary school and could not even leave the room to answer nature’s call. The building was bombarded and burnt to the ground. [30] Ibid., pp. 59–61. The 39-year-old E. O., with her 15-month-old daughter and 7-year-old son, had a terrible experience on 29 January 1945 as they watched a 15-year-old girl being repeatedly raped, and her mother, who tried to protect her, killed. The Soviets set up special rooms for the rapes. They hauled out women twice a day. This went on for a week. For E. O., the seventh day was the worst. She had to spend the whole night in the ‘jaws of hell’. There was nothing to eat, only alcohol and cigarettes. By the next morning, she was severely injured and could hardly walk or lie down. Leading her two children by the hand, she was driven with other women on foot to a town 21 kilometres away. They were still given nothing to eat and believed they would all die on this death march. When the procession was broken up two weeks later, only 200 of the 800 women and a few old men were still alive. The dead were left by the side of the road.

‘I was a physical and mental wreck and was thus spared these atrocities. Once they wanted to take my son Horst away; to prevent this I was used once more. Then the order was given that women were not to be raped. We were then able to defend ourselves, but it was too late. Thousands of women like myself are ruined and there is no one to help us’, she said six years later for the official documentation. She walked as far as the British zone, where the soldiers proved to be ‘good people’. She nevertheless attempted to commit suicide shortly before she reached safety. Someone pulled her unconscious out of the river Lahn. [31] Ibid., pp. 63–4.

In February 1945, Rössel [Reszel] in East Prussia became a garrison town. The soldiers looted day and night. There was no end to the raping. If a Russian appeared at the door, the women and girls escaped through the windows. Then men surrounded the houses to capture their ‘booty’. Many women attempted to obtain poison, but the doctor in the local hospital refused to help. One girl drank vinegar essence and died a painful death. Among the abused victims were 13-year-old children. One girl was so badly injured during a rape that she could no longer walk and remained sick for a long time. Another girl hanged herself. [32] Ibid., p. 101.

In Jastrow [Jastrowie] in the district of Wirsitz [Wyrzysk] in West Prussia, H. H. and her children found themselves shelter on a farm. Soon the first soldiers arrived, taking a break on the farm and drinking alcohol. They forced the doors open, broke the windows and selected their victims. It went on like this day and night, and had it not been for her child H. H. would have preferred them to shoot her. She didn’t want to abandon it ‘alone in a foreign world’, so she had to put up with ‘this most terrible humiliation’. One day a Russian soldier shot another one. After this, the commanding officers became stricter. [33] Ibid., p. 181.

In Woldenberg [Dobiegniew] in the district of Friedberg in Pomerania, now Lebus in Poland, Otto H. experienced the first terrible night: ‘My niece was raped by fourteen Russian officers in the next room. My wife was dragged into a barn by a Russian and also raped. Then she was locked in the stable and at 5 a.m. next morning raped again at pistol-point. When the troops left, we found my wife under a pile of straw, where she had hidden in fear.’

A Russian appeared and picked out a 13-year-old girl. The child screamed and struggled. The soldier loaded his pistol, had everyone assembled and threatened to shoot them if they didn’t bring the girl into the next room within five minutes. ‘We knew that he would use the weapon and were forced to comply with his wishes. When he discovered that the girl was too weak, he gave her to another comrade. He himself appeared in the room and we had to assemble again. This time he took the mother, who was the youngest of the women. The mother was raped in the bed while her daughter was assaulted on the floor next to the bed by the other Russian. The mother was pregnant.’

Abuse and rape increased from one day to the next, with the result that more and more locals and refugees sought shelter in the former farm. Every night the Russians came, fired their weapons through the windows, battered down the bolted doors and raped women and girls in the presence of the children. Some of the victims were over sixty. Sometimes vehicles drove up to the farm, took women and girls to other places, where they were raped again. The following day they had to walk back 20 or 25 kilometres. [34] Ibid., p. 196. The reports repeatedly describe systematic rape for several days in one place with different women. Contrary to what people thought in their panic at the time, however, there was never a military order in the Soviet Army to rape German women.

In Zietlow [Sidłowo], M. M. found shelter with other refugees in a sheep pen. Soviets kept on coming into the pen. At first they were looking for watches, then they took the boots from the Germans, then they drove all of the men except M. M.’s husband from the pen. They lined up the women and girls and pointed their loaded machine guns at them. M. M. thought they were all going to be shot, but the soldiers fired into the ceiling, where they suspected that German soldiers were still hiding. Next they took women and girls as they pleased. More and more Soviets pushed their way into the pen. Some women, some unfortunate girls were raped five or even ten times in that seemingly endless night. [35] Ibid., p. 198.

It is interesting to note how often the eyewitnesses mention the wide range in the ages of the victims. Many old and very young women, frail, sick, pregnant and even dying refugee women had personal experience of the later claim by feminists that it was not only young or attractive women who were raped and that the act was not sexually motivated but rather a demonstration of power. ‘For weeks and months our women and girls went through hell on earth. I later visited an 82-year-old woman who never recovered from her experiences. Schoolgirls and confirmands suffered the same fate. I know of several women who were killed for trying to resist. One young woman and mother, a former confirmand of mine, had her skull bashed in after having tried to prevent a Russian soldier from having his way’, reports the former pastor of Muttrin [Motarazyn] and Damen [Stare Dębno] in the district of Belgard [Białogard] in Pomerania. [36] Ibid., p. 223.

Another striking feature is the numerous gang rapes reported in the source documentation. In Lauenburg [Lebork] in Pomerania, Red Army soldiers stood in line in front of every house. One German woman was raped by as many as forty-five men, despite the fact that she was half-dead by the end. Victims included 78-year-old women and 9-year-old children. The Russian soldiers said that their wives and sisters had been treated far worse by the German soldiers. When leaving the village, B. met a farmer who told him that his 13-year-old daughter had been ‘taken’ for the fifth time that morning. [37] Ibid., p. 265.