Page 464 - Le Operazioni Interforze e Multinazionali nella Storia Militare - ACTA Tomo II

1104 XXXIX Congresso della CommIssIone InternazIonale dI storIa mIlItare • CIHm

term “liberator sexual assault” concerns sexualized violence by soldiers of the liberating
armies, in most cases by Red Army soldiers, against freed female camp inmates, that
is against now displaced women. Due to the irregular key-wording the number of 522
23
“liberator sexual assaults” is not exact, but nevertheless shocking. It means that one
percent of the 52000 interviewees confirms to the fact that soldiers of the liberating ar-
mies raped women who had suffered in concentration camps or were exploited as forced
workers. An incident, that has been suspected for long, but never discussed in public due
24
to the lack of sources.
When looking at these testimonies it is quite astonishing that the female victims
of NS who also fell victim to the Red Army remember and talk in very different ways
about their experience than their German counterparts do. There are no detailed stories
of humiliation, pain, and blood, which the German respondents told voluntarily. Instead,
the displaced women speak rather reluctantly and imprecisely of rape by the liberating
armies. Sometimes they need several quite direct questions and inquiries by the inter-
viewers in order to confirm the assaults; oftentimes they paraphrase the sexual violence
only with terms like „the Russians were pretty wild.” Descriptions of rape remain on the
surface. These omissions become obviously especially when you compare them with
descriptions of violence carried out in the German camps. Sexual torture in the camps is
described very detailed, because for such experiences, I would suggest, there were nar-
ratives world-wide available. For stories of rape by the liberators the displaced women
lacked narratives and opportunities to speak about it.
Another big difference to the German sources is that in the displaced women’s testi-
monies the sexual violence happened, but very seldom to the person speaking, the first-
person-narrator. The woman giving the interview is in most cases the one who is saved
in the last moment from being raped. Either it is a friend or relative, who chases the
perpetrators away, or the perpetrators refrain from the violation because of the victim’s
outer-appearance, her illness or religious believes.
But, unfortunately, it is the shear mass of such stories of salvation that makes the
reader suspicious - especially when there are other testimonies, presumably from men,
who also speak of sexual violence by the liberators towards displaced women, but rather
23 The term covers also sequences when the respondents talk about sexual assaults against non-persecuted
German women and sometimes ‘only’ fears of being harassed. Vice versa, it is sometimes absent, when
respondents speak frankly of rape. A clear-cut quantification of incidents is thus impossible, but within the
frames of this paper neither aimed.
For a larger analysis see the my article in the upcoming volume: Kerstin Bischl, „Und dann war ich nicht mehr
da.“ Überlebende erzählen von sexueller Gewalt durch die Rote Armee [„And then I was gone.“ Survivors
tell about sexual violence by Red Army soldiers], in: Alina Bothe, Christina Brüning (Ed.): Geschlecht und
Erinnerung im digitalen Zeitalter - neue Perspektiven auf ZeitzeugInnenarchive [Gender and memories in the
digital era – new perspectives on testimonies by contemporary whitnesses], Berlin 2014.
24 A very problematic, even voyeuristic source is: Ats Valtna, Die Moral der Roten Armee. Identifiziertes
Heldentum des 20. Jahrhunderts [The morale of the Red Army. Identified heroism in the 20 century], Biel,
th
1948. Maybe the first and only historian to deal with the topic: Jolande Withuis: Die verlorene Unschuld
des Gedächtnisses. Soziale Amnesie in Holland und sexuelle Gewalt im Zweiten Weltkrieg [The lost
innocence of the memory], in: Insa Eschebach/ Sigrid Jacobeit/ Silke Wenk: Gedächtnis und Geschlecht:
Deutungsmuster in Darstellungen des nationalsozialistischen Genozids [Memory and gender: Patterns
of interpretation in presentations of the national socialist genocide], Frankfurt am Main 2002, 77-98.