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The Brutal Rapes of Every German Female from Eight to Eighty |
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Every German female was tortured, raped, and killed |
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| Bodies of two women and three children; raped and killed | Image Source: Wikimedia Commons | ||
Antony Beevor wrote about the massive war crimes committed by the Red Army in the book The Fall of Berlin. The Soviet armies propelled East Prussia in January 1945. During the 1940s, the Soviet military became extraordinary with modern and medieval weapons — padded black helmets, tank troops, light field guns, and whatnot. The soldiers’ character was as great as their weapons. They were free to drink and rape shamelessly. One of the reports had — “Germans declared that the soldiers raped all the German women in Prussia who stayed behind.” |
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| The disfigured dead body of a raped woman | Image Source: Quora.com | ||
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Numerous reports stated girls under 18, and older women were not spared. The soldiers were subjected to write any diary, which may later become a subject of security threat. Still, few managed to write down instances in their journals sneakingly. One of the soldiers had mentioned when women who had their husbands murdered were trying to form a group and retaliate.
It all worsened. One of the diary’s pages dated 25 April had mentioned the accounts when he had reached Berlin. He asked the group of women carrying suitcases and bundles about where they were going in his broken Germany. “Their faces were horrified, and they told me leaving the country.” One of the girls said, “They poked here,” showing him by lifting her skirt. “They were no less than 20 men”, saying this she burst into tears. Other women, on hearing this, said, “They all raped my daughter in front of me, and they will come back and rape her again.” These were some instances from the diary of Vladimir Gelfand, a soldier of the soviet army. |
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| Vladimir Gelfand | Image Source: Wikipedia | ||
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This horrifying sexual violence and horrors lasted for almost four years. Vladimir’s son once said, “My father had gone through many villages where nazis had killed people and even small children. Evidence of rape was also seen.” Nobody knows how many women had faced the horror of rape, but some historians' estimates say that possibly as many as two million women were raped. Most of the women died due to the consequences of internal injuries as they were brutally treated. Many rapes didn’t result in pregnancies and some women who got pregnant preferred abortion.
Staff in the Red Army was in disapproval. They said, “Our soldiers’ behavior towards Germans is absolutely correct.” Some of the German women recorded Soviet servicewomen watching and laughing as the other German women were raped.
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| The dead body of a woman thrown after raping her | Image Source: UkrainAirlift | ||
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These soldiers were not only brutal rapists but were also alcoholics. It can be assumed that they actually required some alcoholic courage to attack a woman. But then, often, they drank way too much that they were most of the time unable to complete the act and used the bottle to insert in the woman’s body. This made several victims lewdly mutilated. These all happenings of the mass rapes of the women in German were done in a much-controlled manner that even today, veterans of Russia refuse to accept what really happened. (such a shame!) And those handful of them who opened up to speak on them were shameless. “They themselves lifted their skirts for us,” said a leader of a tank company. He even boasted by saying, “Two million of our children were born in Germany!”. A Soviet major once told a British journalist during that time that — “Our soldiers were sex-starved! They often raped women of all age; from ten to sixty, or seventy, or maybe even eighty.” When the gang-raped women pleaded with their attackers to put them out of misery, they often said that they must be thankful that the Red Army men did not shoot those women. |
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| The dead body of a raped woman | Image Source: Revision Net | ||
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Soldiers had one quality in common — to dominate. The victims of the rape were burning in revenge and represented as a sign of war rape. Rape is an act of conqueror, and many of those Red Army soldiers took the bodies of the defeated enemy’s woman to affirm victory. The women who survived the mass rape did not let anyone know that they were victims and later started a new life. In the year 2008, a film was made on the Berlin woman’s diary named Anonyma, in which the lead actress was Nina Hoss. This film created an effect in Germany that encouraged many women to come forward. One of them was Ingeborg Bullert. My mother boasted that her daughter hadn’t been touched. |
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| Ingeborg Bullert | Image Source : BBC News | ||
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Ingeborg Bullert was one of the women who opened up about the mass rapes of Germany. She was 20 in 1945 and used to dream of becoming an actress and lived with her mother. She recalled the incident in an interview — “There were tanks in our streets and everywhere there were bodies of soldiers.” “I ran upstairs to look for a string, and two soldiers were pointing their pistols at me.” “One of them forced me to undress and raped me, and then they changed positions, and the other one also raped me.” “I thought they were going to kill me.” Ingeborg didn’t talk to anyone about this, as remembering those incidents was difficult. She also said — my mother liked to brag that her daughter hadn’t been touched.
How many women did they rape? There is no exact number, but the record says about 100,000 women in Berlin, and more than about two million women were raped in Germany. The women who were raped multiple times were in the majority.
A former Red army officer once said — “We were young, strong, and for four years without any women.” Ten men raped one girl. There were not enough women as the entire population had run away from the Soviet army. Then they attacked the young — eight or ten-year-old girls. If she cried for help, then they put something in her mouth.
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