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

Many rapes ended in death. E. H. from Luggewiese [Lubowidz] in the district of Lauenburg [Lebork] watched as her sister, paralyzed with fear, was shot by Red Army soldiers. With her mother, two children and 25-year-old sister Käte, E. H. fled on 9 March to the neighbouring village of Damerkow [Dąbrówka]. The next day, the Russians also attacked this village. At least thirty people were crowded together in a single room. The first soldiers demanded watches and other valuables. Then a tall Russian came into the room, looked around and pointed to Käte. ‘He just gestured once with his finger. When she failed to get up immediately, he went up close to her and held his machine gun up against her chin. Everybody was screaming, but my sister remained silent, unable to move. Then the shot fired. Her head fell to the side, and blood streamed out. She was dead on the spot without a sound coming from her.’ [38] Ibid., p. 268.

There are reports in the documentation about women being shot or shot at or committing collective suicide. Others went mad. The acts were usually done in a group, very often in public, which may be seen as further evidence that the rapes were also a demonstration of power. They were organized, and the men arranged the matters themselves, which meant that the women couldn’t escape and that their suffering lasted a long time. Many women were abused for days on end.

F. V. from Dambitzen, a brickworks in the district of Elbing [Elbląg] in West Prussia, describes how she escaped in a vehicle. A farmer’s daughter who was travelling with her was shot in the back because she resisted being raped. The mother of the severely wounded woman was shot in the hand. The daughter-in-law and wife of a Danzig businessman, who were also sitting in the vehicle, were raped many times during the journey by young soldiers who jumped on them, all in the presence of the dying woman. The refugees were given shelter by a forester, his wife and two married daughters with their children. The Russians appeared every evening, took a number of women and girls and raped them several times over. Sixty-two people from the farm and village of Occalitz [Okalice] drowned themselves in the lake, asked the forester to shoot them or took poison. [39] Ibid., p. 274.

Recollections are of limited value as sources for understanding the behaviour of the victims themselves. They say more about how they wanted to be seen than about their actual behaviour at the time. That said, the contemporary reports frequently mention resistance by the victims. Self-defence, presence of mind and ingenious escape strategies are emphasized. In her recollection of the end of the war, Gela Volkmann-Steinhardt speaks not only of the usual attempts to hide or escape to the forest, sleeping every night in a different place and making herself unattractive, but also of a feisty and fearless aristocratic aunt, who, with the ‘concentrated wrath of her righteous ancestors’, stuck a full chamber pot on the head of a young assailant. ‘The helmet wouldn’t budge in spite of the vain attempts by the drenched soldier to get it off. His two comrades were so doubled up with laughter that for this one evening the entire group escaped without the usual sacrifices.’

The author herself also thought up countless strategies. She used her anger, pretended to be fearless and resisted to the utmost. She showed her injuries, begged, pleaded and humbled herself if necessary: ‘I once kissed the hand of a Kalmuck, begging for mercy like a submissive Anyushka. He was touched enough to withdraw.’ Or she would show a photo of a fictitious husband, or gather her sons around her, who would scream the place down like savages if they sensed danger. All the same, these defensive strategies were of no avail in the long run: ‘Hunters will eventually track down all the hiding places – even if the beast thinks out more and more sophisticated ones every night. They dragged out their trembling prey from the straw, from the cow troughs, from the dovecots and the baking ovens.’ [40] Gela Volkmann-Steinhardt, Eine Stimme aus der pommerschen Passion: Erlebnisse aus dem deutschen Zusammenbruch 1945 (Freiburg i. Brsg. 1993), p. 128. When Gela Volkmann-Steinhardt felt ashamed to face her children the next day, she discovered with amazement that the world had remained unchanged in spite of her action: ‘The boys needed breakfast. And lunch. And water and wood. Until another day began – exactly the same as the day before, and another day with thousands of obligations.’ [41] Ibid., p. 135.

It is anyone’s guess whether descriptions of personal courage are really reliable. We will return later to the question of descriptions of self-efficacy or agency as motifs in autobiographical literature of the time, part of a gender discourse in which women were also capable of soldierly virtues like bravery, imperviousness to pain and willingness to make sacrifices. The metaphors used in the reports are also interesting. The perpetrators are often described as hunters and the women as prey who were first herded together and then isolated from the community. The men creep up, stalk, negotiate windows and stairs silently like cats, as if their moves are choreographed. All of the countless cases in the documentation of expulsion are very similar in this regard. The convergence in the interpretation of what happened can be explained by the way in which the victims came to terms with their experiences and also perhaps by the way they were interviewed and their reports edited. I assume that the documentation from the 1950s, which had a political subplot, influenced the descriptions. The impression is given of a communal or collective experience by resisting German women who, when they lost their homeland, flocked together like lambs and never had a chance of resisting the ‘bestial’ Soviet enemy in the role of the wicked wolf.

Autobiographical reports that were not part of the politically motivated documentation but published individually show that the events can be perceived and interpreted in a different way. They emphasize the isolation and helplessness of the victims and are not uncritical of their male and female compatriots. Gabi Köpp describes how she was betrayed several times by women while she was in flight. First, her mother sent her away without any explanation of what she might expect; after that her fellow sufferers betrayed her to Russian soldiers:

The women trembled with fear that they could be the ones to suffer. I literally felt, without being able to see it, that they were searching for me…. The women should go themselves, if they are so afraid of being shot. But then Frau W. says: “Where is little Gabi?” I hear it again and again. She won’t stop until they’ve dragged me out from under the table. I think bitterly: “They can do this to me because I’m alone and don’t have anyone to protect me.”’

For a long time afterwards, Gabi Köpp was troubled by the traumatic experience of being left in the lurch by her own people.

I would use stronger words today to describe what I called ‘meanness’ on the part of those women six decades ago. With ice-cold selfishness, their treachery sent a 15-year-old girl to her doom, fully aware of what they were doing to me…. I feel hate rising in me. Hate for these women who, if I had been their daughter, they would have kept silent. [42] Gabi Köpp, Warum war ich bloss ein Mädchen? Das Trauma einer Flucht 1945 (Munich 2010), pp. 78–9.

The betrayal to the Russians, the lack of solidarity among the women, are recurrent features of the autobiographical testimonies of the mass rape, notably in the well-known Berlin examples of Anonymous and Margret Boveri, which we shall return to separately.