A Whore in Berlin


That was how her fiancee described her and the other women of the apartments when he returned home. I am not calling her that. But I have read a lot on the battle of Berlin and there is a definite gray area surrounding the general subject.

As war changes the men who fight in battle, it also changes the women on the homefront suffering airraids and deprivations etc. So like the men, the women also become desensitised and do things in 'war' which they wouldn't do in peace-time.

Anonyma was brutally gang-raped in a basement, in view of civilians and other soldiers who laughed watching. Later that night another group came into her apartment to rape her, she offered herself to the toughest of the group who basically raped her anyway. In the morning she was gang-raped again by a different group who broke in. In the afternoon she got dressed-up with lipstick, went into the street amongst droves of soldiers - presumably some of her rapists - and found an Officer of who she offered herself to. He began visiting her apartment for sex in the evenings. Whenever he wasn't around she had sex with other soldiers, including some of her previous rapists. She chose to fend off other potential rapists, such as the Asian-Mongol, but only because they were in the same unit as her Officer. She generally played the different soldiers off against each other and began socialising with them. All the while she maintained that every time she had intercourse it was 'rape'.

In peace-time, she would never have behaved like this, her behaviour was obviously an act of survival. The more she had 'sex' with the soldiers, the more food she obtained and the threat of 'rape' or gang-rape became less. But it begs the question of where the line is drawn.

A very beautiful blonde woman was moved into Anonyma's apartment building by soldiers after her own building was bombed. Anonyma walked into the woman's apartment one day to see her in bed, in between two soldiers presumably DP'ing her. The woman laughed and invited Anonyma to join them, which she declined. This wasn't in the film but according to the book the woman received a lot of perks but was bascially having sex constantly.

Another incident in Berlin at the time involved a pretty 18 year old blonde, former Bund Deutscher Madel (the female Nazi youth movement). She was seized by central-asian soldiers and raped over 60 times. Some days later she met an Officer (also an Asiatic) and became his girlfriend, sleeping with him in order to prevent more troops from raping her.

Official Soviet policy did not recognise the rape of German women by Soviet soldiers, but after the fall of Berlin women could register with the Soviet military authorities as prostitutes.


There are many women described in Anonyma's book, as well as some who made it into the film, who were raped but who did not later succumb to being 'girlfriends' or 'f-buddies' of the invading soldiers - but that said I don't think its right for any of us who were not there to judge Anonyma and others who did what she did.





reply

Interesting post. Interesting points of view. I have not read the book yet but have it in my pile. I am currently reading "Savage Continent" by Keith Lowe, which describes the immediate post war period, something long overlooked. I think the reason this doesn't get a look in is because it doesn't really fit into anyone's favourite genre. War buffs will probably find it boring because the action's over and those interested in political affairs might but it's not the Cold War.

The only reservation I have is that you say you don't think it is right to judge her yet your title calls her a whore.

reply

Having now read the book I can say that some of this is not quite right. Anonyma certainly didn't offer herself to just anyone. She only targeted officers and the higher the rank the better. She explains this quite well in the book. But once she was effectively "hooked up" with an officer, the word got around and she was off limits to everyone else. That's why she invited officers to her apartment. They were generally a bit more respectful and didn't defile her in the way that the gangs of lower ranks did. On that basis, it is not really right to say that she was still sleeping with whomever came her way. She wasn't. Not voluntarily anyway.

Of course the notion of what constitutes rape is at the centre of a lot of this. There is no question in my mind that she did not want any of this. The only reason she did it was survival and in the end, she had other people depending on her to do it. This was mainly because it helped keep a bit more peace than might otherwise have been the case and secondly, because there was no other source of food. After the bulk of the Red Army left and the clean up started, she was foraging for nettles to eat. That's how desperate the situation was.

reply