Page 466 - Le Operazioni Interforze e Multinazionali nella Storia Militare - ACTA Tomo II

1106 XXXIX Congresso della CommIssIone InternazIonale dI storIa mIlItare • CIHm

After an inquiry by the interviewer M. speaks a third time about the incident. She
tells this time: “Then came into the room, opened the door, in the room we had this two
bikes we had brought from Treuenbrietzen. They stood there. They said: ‘In Treuenbri-
etzen is so much business, Germans and so on.’ That’s what they told us. And then ….
So, we went to bed. I said: „Jesus Maria! The Poles had said to us, that we should have
gone to them. Maybe we should have gone, maybe not. But now we are here. The room
opens. There is no light. And they went to the colleague who slept opposite me. She
slept with her colleague downstairs. He said: ‘Let’s go, I want to sleep with you.’ She
answers: ‘No, No, No!’ and started to cry. But wherefore cry? It was useless. We deeply
suffered with her, really, deeply. The one who came to me and wanted to sleep with me,
shot two times into the air, took the bike and left. [laughs]”
In this narrative, M. obscures totally the possibility of being raped. It is now ‘only’
her colleague who suffers. She even transfers the soldier’s question with which he had
actually addressed her to her colleague who fell victim to him. She even does not have
to hide from him. Nobody, reading only this final version of the incident, would come
up with the idea that she also - maybe - suffered from sexual violence. Thus, Janina M.
develops a narrative by constant re-telling of one incident that is very clear-cut and in
favor or her own physical integrity. At least literally she is able to protect her body from
the soldier’s illegitimate advances and obscures the trauma.
The reason behind this strategy is probably, as she argues in the following statement,
that sexual assaults on a (female) body also target one’s (female) honor: Her colleague’s
crying was due to the fact that back then “every girl cared about her honor, which was a
valuable thing.” To lose it was considered to be a “tragedy”. 26

* * * *

The last set of sources available when tracing the behavior of the Red Army are the
Ego-Documents of its own soldiers, that is, by the perpetrators and their comrades. Even
when they are probably the best ones to explain the incidents in 1944/1945, they have
surprisingly been neglected by scholars for a long time. While very few Russian histo-
rians address the topic in general as talking publicly about atrocities by the Red Army
is still a highly tabooed topic in Russia, Western historians did simply not believe in the
existence of such documents. They were convinced that (prevailing) Soviet ideology
would prevent any narrative contrasting the official picture of the glorious, self-sacri-
ficing and unblemished Red Army. But as we know now, these scholars were mistaken.
From the late 80ies on and especially in the 90s Russian periodicals as well as West-
ern publishing houses published diaries and memories by former Red Army soldiers.
These testimonies spoke clearly of deprivations and fear within the Red Army, of vio-
lence and injustice against comrades, and of crimes and brutalities not only against trai-
tors and spies but also against civilians in very different countries. The frankness of
these testimonies is flamboyant. Thus, we can clearly state that there was a grass-root
inspired discussion in the Great Patriotic War.

26 Janina M., Archiv-ID ZA 252, Zwangsarbeit 1939-1945.