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

In the following case, a child resulting from rape was even described as replacing the woman’s legitimate children, who had died. H. S. had been raped during her three-year Russian captivity in East Prussia. Her legitimate children, aged six and ten years, died within a week of one another. Her parents also starved to death. The son from the rape, wrote H. S., was her all and everything: ‘I am so sick that I can no longer have children. The child had no milk or sugar until 1948. He was completely undernourished. He was nine months in hospital in plaster with severe scoliosis. My husband wrote that I should go to him, but without the child. As a mother I couldn’t do that. He had the boy declared illegitimate and doesn’t provide for him.’ [110] H. S. on 25 July 1959 to the Federal Chancellor, BA Koblenz B/126/5548.

We also hear from fathers, however, who accepted the rape child as their own. A mother wrote to the Federal President Theodor Heuss that she found it particularly praiseworthy that her husband, a displaced person, behaved properly in every respect towards the child and did not treat him differently from his own children: ‘In the end, this child – even if it was conceived in violence – is also a living being having the right through being born to an existence and thus demands, and should indeed demand, my tireless maternal duty.’ [111] Letter to Federal Minister for Family Affairs Franz-Josef Wuermeling, BA Koblenz B/126/5548.

Occasionally, of course, there are glimpses of less noble maternal instincts. Some women clearly hoped that the French occupation authorities would take the child. As has been mentioned, France was the only victorious nation after the war willing for demographic reasons to accept occupation children and bring them up as French citizens. France’s interest in the children was well known, and there were even rumours that poor mothers had their children taken away from them, even if they were unwilling for this to happen. Calls by the French administration for such children to be reported heightened the fear of child abduction. [112] Satjukow, ‘Besatzungskinder’, p. 10.

Pressure does seem to have been exerted on some occasions. M. T. from Krauchenwies near Sigmaringen wrote in her petition to Federal President Heuss that, when her son was six months old, two men from Tübingen asked whether she wanted to give him away to be brought up in a French family. ‘What kind of mother would give away her child? In any case, Germany needs them as well’, she wrote indignantly. [113] To Federal President Heuss, BA Koblenz 28 November 1957, BA Koblenz B/126/5548.

M. L. from Bad Krozingen fought a long and difficult battle with the authorities. After her failed request for an abortion, she did not want ‘under any circumstances’ to keep the child resulting from rape by a French officer. She had been a Red Cross nurse in Russia during the war, held an executive position and, according to the authorities, enjoyed great respect in her surroundings. All that the 37-year-old knew of the father was that he was Algerian and had been posted on the day after the rape.

The State Health Department in Freiburg confirmed to M. L. in October 1947 that it was possible for the child to be adopted in France. M. L. replied that she didn’t want to keep the child another minute, as she still loved her husband, who had been killed in the war, too much to bring up other children. She had already sacrificed her health as a Red Cross nurse and now she was expected to keep a child that had been forced upon her.

Out of the question. I can’t find any love for it. And I don’t think it’s right that these men should get away with it so easily, simply by returning to France, while the others have to see how they can manage… I certainly haven’t deserved to have my life turn out this way, at my age and certainly not on account of such a vile scoundrel.

She repeated defiantly: ‘I don’t have any time for the child and won’t bother trying to look after it.’

On 12 January 1948, the district juvenile department in Mühlheim took over guardianship of the child. Only two weeks later, the mother declared that she wanted to bring up the child after all. ‘Mother and grandmother get so much pleasure out of him and are devoted to him’, it said in the records of the district welfare office. In 1955, M. L. married a businessman from Ettenheim and moved with the child to him. A year later the new husband adopted the boy. [114] Staatsarchiv Freiburg, compensation court, individual cases, D 5/1 5047.

The case histories offer shocking testimony to the difficult lives of the rape children. Mothers had children taken away from them, although they were clearly well looked after, simply because they looked ‘negroid’. One boy was put in the children’s home in Konstanz and then in Villingen, where he was to be handed over to the occupying forces. The welfare worker wrote on 24 March 1950: ‘From what I have learned to date about the child’s mother and her parents, they are quite unwilling to accept the child in their own household. L. S. shows no maternal feelings or love for the child.’ On 2 May 1950, the mother was deprived of custody. The child was put up for adoption in 1951, but his foster parents could not decide whether to adopt him. L. S. married a watchmaker in January 1953. She died two years later of a heart attack. It was only after her death that the husband found out about the child’s existence. Although the consistently negative attitude of the child’s mother and her parents to the illegitimate child was unpardonable, it was understandable given the fact that she had been raped as a young girl and ‘didn’t want to be constantly reminded through the child of this terrible experience’. [115] Ibid., D 5/1 5325.

The to and fro between custody and giving away children resulting from rape was no rarity. Depending on their situation, some of the raped women gave the child to their own parents, particularly when they were unmarried and had to work; others put the children in homes because they wanted to start a new family. Putting a child in a home seems to have been used as a threat, should the children create difficulties. E. X. from Achern was raped by two drunken French soldiers on her ten-minute walk to work. When the daughter F. was six years old, she went to live with the grandparents because the new husband didn’t want to have the girl with him. She was told that if she made difficulties she would be put in a home. The welfare worker noted that the girl had promised to behave and had not caused any problems to date. She helped the grandmother at home and there were no complaints from school ‘although the teacher is not particularly happy about her being there’. After eight years of school, she was nevertheless put in a home ‘where she is being taught all the tasks required of her’. She clearly needed a strict education with good guidance and instruction. [116] Ibid., D 5/1 5312.

In this way, the suffering of the rape victims was carried over to the next generation. It started with the rape itself, continued with the refusal of a request for abortion, making the victim dependent on welfare, and ended in many cases with expert opinions and lawyers, who appeared in principle to consider the victims insincere. For better or worse, the raped women and their children were often at the mercy for decades of the arbitrary behaviour of authorities – first foreign soldiers, then German officials.

It is evident that the attitude to date to the mentality of mothers made pregnant through rape has been too one-dimensional. It is not true that the main grounds for wishing for an abortion were racial. The relationship to the children resulting from rape was also ambivalent, with sentiments ranging from complete rejection to love, seen as a consolation at a time of great hardship. The child’s skin colour was not necessarily a concern. By contrast, the encounters of the women with German authorities was repeatedly coloured by manifest racism and narrow-minded morality.