Red Army rape row

[Marcus]

A post by ChristopherPerrien containing only opinions on whether Russia and Germany should pay anything for WW2 crimes or not was removed. You know the rules regarding opinion posts.

/Marcus

[ChristopherPerrien]

Sorry Marcus. Drunken Christmas Eve rant.
I somehow got a notification to this topic, I don't ever remember posting in it or getting a notification before. I stay out of the H+WC as much as possible.

Merry Christmas

[snpol]

Here are some more examples from Hungary:

The Swiss Legation to Budapest issued a report of the Russian invasion of Hungary in the spring of 1945, stating in part:

"During the siege of Budapest and also during the following fateful weeks, Russian troops looted the city freely. They entered practically every habitation, the very poorest as well as the richest. They took away everything they wanted, especially food, clothing and valuables. Looting was general and profound, but not always systematic. It happened, for instance, that a man was deprived of all his trousers, but his jackets were left to him. There were also small groups which specialized in hunting up valuables, using magnetic mine detectors in search of gold, silver and other metals. Trained dogs were also used. Looting became more general after the Russians had gutted the city.

"...Furniture and larger objects of art that could not be taken away were frequently simply destroyed. In many cases, after looting, the homes were also set on fire, causing a vast total loss...

"After several weeks, looting stopped... but Russian soldiers often arrested passers-by, relieving them of the contents of their pockets, especially watches, cash and even papers of identity...

"Rape caused the greatest suffering. Violations were so general - from the age of 10 up to 70 years - that few women in Hungary escaped this fate. Acts of incredible brutality have been registered. Many women preferred to commit suicide in order to escape monstrosities... Misery was increased by the sad fact that many of the Russian soldiers were ill (with syphilis) and medicines in Hungary were completely lacking. Cases have been reported where Russian women serving in the Red army or in the Russian police force have been guilty of rape. Men have been beaten up by such women for not having submitted themselves to their wishes...

"It is estimated that more than half of the city of Budapest was destroyed. The commercial district and the hills of Buda have suffered most. There are certain parts in the city, which, according to the Russians, have suffered more than Stalingrad. The quays on the Danube and especially the Elizabeth Bridge and the Chain Bridge have been almost completely destroyed. In the Fortress there is almost no house standing. The Royal Palace was burned down. The Coronation Church collapsed. The Parliament Building is severely damaged, but its skyline has remained intact...

"During the siege the population had to live exclusively on whatever stocks or reserves it had piled up. Toward the end of the siege, the situation was disastrous and the corpses of horses dead for several weeks (often flattened by tanks that passed over them) had also been eaten..."

You quote the Swiss Legation report from Budapest. It is a very interesting document. It's full text can be found here
http://www.hungarianhistory.com/lib/montgo/montgo21.htm
What is known in this context? Who personally did compile the report? It is official document recognized by Swiss MFA? How reputable historians do estimate the report?

[Annelie]

Read this book some years ago and it left an impression on me.

One Women In The War..by Alaine Polcz

There are excerpts from the book in the link below....the author writes of her time in 1944/45 and in some
details are the many rapes from the Russians. I read an interview in which if I remember correctly
she surmised she was raped at least 200 times.

She survived and went on to become an very well known psychologist that dealt with children
and death.

Quite horrifying reading.

https://books.openedition.org/ceup/1566?lang=en

[snpol]

Read this book some years ago and it left an impression on me.

One Women In The War..by Alaine Polcz

There are excerpts from the book in the link below....the author writes of her time in 1944/45 and in some
details are the many rapes from the Russians. I read an interview in which if I remember correctly
she surmised she was raped at least 200 times.

She survived and went on to become an very well known psychologist that dealt with children
and death.

Quite horrifying reading.

https://books.openedition.org/ceup/1566?lang=en

It is remarkable book and reading this thread I have found freely available Russian translation. Still I have read only some fragments. It is a bitter personal story.

He received me gently. I was served a good dinner. I waited for what was to follow. If I stay with him for the night, he said, he will give me half a pig. Good Lord! half a pig!

The woman cook, who was also the cook at the hospital, was coming toward me; she was cooking here now. She looked at me, the hospital’s “little darling”. I had gone to bed, even though they did not beat me, did not strike me; it showed in her eyes what she was thinking, “You are a whore.”

Actually, I was a whore in the strictest sense of the word. A whore is someone who goes to bed for money or some other kind of benefit. A whore is someone who deliberately acquires something with her body.

It is a bitter reality of that war. Some women (Russian, German), in fact had to agree for sexual relation with invading soldiers just to survive, just to not die from hunger, to feed their children.

[Annelie]

Alaine Polcz writes in the book that she observes that
the consequences are less than with resistance which makes sense.

Apparently one concern then was that it wasn't unusual to learn
some women had their backs broken. Yes, food was scarce but she
had to give in to survive the act which isn't uncommon in rape victims.

My 2002 edition was printed in English.

[snpol]

I have found an article in German published 24 May 2002 and would like to ask kindly German forumists to give the most correct translation in English.
https://www.stern.de/politik/deutschlan ... 85088.html

Die junge Hannelore Renner, Jahrgang 33, ist bereits mit zwölf erwachsen, wie sie später erzählt. Noch Kind, hat sie bereits schlimmere Erfahrungen hinter sich, als gefestigte Charaktere verarbeiten können. Zunächst Kriegshilfsdienst als Zehnjährige im sächsischen Döbeln: Tote bergen, Verletzten und Müttern helfen, deren Kinder erfroren sind. Dann Flucht mit der Mutter nach Westen, die Füße in zurechtgeschnittenen Gummireifen. Nächte in Straßengräben und Heuschobern. Ständiges Hungern, das bisschen, was es zu essen gibt, muss sie klauen. Schließlich die russischen Soldaten. Frauen werden vergewaltigt, geschlagen, manche totgeprügelt, auch Hannelore kommt nicht davon, wird schwer am Rücken verletzt.

Automatic google translation gives

The young Hannelore Renner, born in 33, grew up at the age of twelve, as she later tells us. Still a child, she has already had worse experiences than established characters can deal with. First military service as a ten-year-old in Döbeln, Saxony: recovering the dead, helping the injured and helping mothers whose children were frozen to death. Then fleeing west with her mother, feet in rubber tires cut to size. Nights in ditches and haystacks. Constant starvation, she has to steal what little there is to eat. Finally the Russian soldiers. Women are raped, beaten, some beaten to death, even Hannelore does not get away, is badly injured in the back.

'As she later tells us' means that the story was told to the journalists by Hannelore Kohl herself (Renner was her maiden surname).
I'm interesting in exact meaning of the underlined text.
'Women are raped' could mean that some women in Germany were raped that time (1945) but just insert 'The' before 'Women' and the phrase could be understood as Hannelore and her mother were raped.
So help from native German speaker is needed.
Thanks in advance.

[AliasDavid]

Hello

'Women are raped' could mean that some women in Germany were raped that time (1945) but just insert 'The' before 'Women' and the phrase could be understood as Hannelore and her mother were raped.

"Frauen werden vergewaltigt" means some or an undefined number of women are raped. If they had wanted to refer to certain women, they'd have had to add the definite article "die". The text doesn't clearly say Hannelore was raped, but seems to suggest that.
UlrichH

[snpol]

Hello

'Women are raped' could mean that some women in Germany were raped that time (1945) but just insert 'The' before 'Women' and the phrase could be understood as Hannelore and her mother were raped.

"Frauen werden vergewaltigt" means some or an undefined number of women are raped. If they had wanted to refer to certain women, they'd have had to add the definite article "die". The text doesn't clearly say Hannelore was raped, but seems to suggest that.
UlrichH

Thanks. It seems to me that this unclear description was understood by some as she (12yo girl) was raped with her Mother Irene.
For example Antony Beevor in his lecture in Cambridge (2002) claimed without any reference to primary source
http://culturahistorica.org/wp-content/ ... ermany.pdf

Red Army approached. For many young girls, the experience affected the whole of the rest of their life. Hannelore Kohl, the wife of Chancellor Helmut Kohl, was raped at the age of twelve as she tried to flee from near Leipzig with her mother. Her recent suicide was widely ascribed in part to the long-term affects of the experience.

An article in The Guardian was published 23 June 2002
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2002/ ... teconnolly

Among the victims were women who became prominent figures, including Hannelore Kohl, wife of the former Chancellor, Helmut. Mrs Kohl, who committed suicide last year, was raped along with her mother at the age of 12 as they failed to escape on a train bound for Dresden.

Hardly Hannelore and her Mother were able to use train. Dresden was under Soviet control. So they walked toward Leipzig that was in US hands and where herr Renner waited for them.
2003, 28 February
https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/ar ... ny/302661/

As if to demonstrate the burden of history and the uneven distribution of its weight, a huge success has recently attended Antony Beevor's heart-freezing account (The Fall of Berlin 1945) of the rape and murder and humiliation that fell on Germans in the territory taken by the Soviet army in 1945. The book's publication in Germany provoked an uprush of repressed memory and shame that filled pages of newsprint: one of the girls battered and defiled by Stalin's soldiers had been, it turned out, Hannelore Kohl, the late wife of the ex-Chancellor. In common with a rather large number of German women and girls, she had evidently realized in the postwar period that nobody was likely to be very much moved by her story.

But the question remains open. What is the primary source of the claim?

[AliasDavid]

But the question remains open. What is the primary source of the claim?

The source is Dr. Heribert Schwan: "Die Frau an seiner Seite: Leben und Leiden der Hannelore Kohl", 2011. He claims to have obtained the information by having long talks with Hannelore Kohl herself.
UlrichH

[snpol]

But the question remains open. What is the primary source of the claim?

The source is Dr. Heribert Schwan: "Die Frau an seiner Seite: Leben und Leiden der Hannelore Kohl", 2011. He claims to have obtained the information by having long talks with Hannelore Kohl herself.
UlrichH

As you may see the claim was made in 2002 (in mass media and by mr.Beevor) nine years before the book by herr Schwan was published. So it can not be regarded as a primary source.

[AliasDavid]

As you may see the claim was made in 2002 (in mass media and by mr.Beevor) nine years before the book by herr Schwan was published. So it can not be regarded as a primary source.

Now that you say it... Still, Schwan is the source mostly quoted regarding the rape. From this recension I gather that Patricia Clough (Patricia Clough: Hannelore Kohl: Zwei Leben, 2002) at least mentions her having been thrown out of the window by soldiers of the Red Army. Then, in 2011 Alice Schwarzer claimed Helmut Kohl had told her about his wife's rape back in 1998.

[snpol]

As you may see the claim was made in 2002 (in mass media and by mr.Beevor) nine years before the book by herr Schwan was published. So it can not be regarded as a primary source.

Now that you say it... Still, Schwan is the source mostly quoted regarding the rape. From this recension I gather that Patricia Clough (Patricia Clough: Hannelore Kohl: Zwei Leben, 2002) at least mentions her having been thrown out of the window by soldiers of the Red Army. Then, in 2011 Alice Schwarzer claimed Helmut Kohl had told her about his wife's rape back in 1998.

Thank you very much for interesting information. I try to find namely the primary source. Mr.Beevor in 2002 was unaware about content of the book by herr Schwan and he in 2002 didn't know about confession allegedly made by Helmut Kohl in 2011.

I would like to quote your source (the recension).

Die Panzerungen, die auch nach ihrem Tod noch bestehen blieben (Helmut Kohl hat nicht nur der Journalistin selbst jede Auskunft verweigert, sondern auch den Familien- und Bekanntenkreis zum Schweigen instruiert), hat Hannelore Kohl in ihren Selbstdeutungen oft auf ihre Kriegserlebnisse zurückgeführt - als Schutzwall gegen Hunger, Angst und Verlust. Die Schuhe aus Autoreifen, die Bomben auf ihre Flüchtlingsheimat Döbeln nahe Leipzig; die Verletzten und die Mütter mit toten Babys, die sie im Rahmen ihres schulisch organisierten "Bahnhofsdienstes" aus den Zügen holte, die vom Osten kamen; das Betteln um Rote Bete; die vergebliche Flucht vor den Rotarmisten, von denen sie einmal "wie ein Zementsack" aus dem Fenster geworfen wurde - all das verarbeitete sie zu der Maxime: "Wir haben den Krieg überlebt, wir werden auch das überleben."

Automatic translation gives

The armor, which remained even after her death (Helmut Kohl not only refused to give the journalist any information, but also instructed his family and friends to be silent), Hannelore Kohl often traced back in her self-interpretations to her war experiences - as a protective wall against hunger, fear and loss. The shoes made from car tires, the bombs on their refugee home in Döbeln near Leipzig; the injured and the mothers with dead babies whom she took from trains coming from the east as part of her school-organized "station service"; begging for beetroot; the futile escape from the Red Army soldiers, from whom she was once thrown out of the window "like a bag of cement" - she processed all of this into the maxim: "We survived the war, we will survive this too."

It's a very interesting statement but the context is very important.
Imagine that one says
I lost everything. The Red army soldiers came and I was thrown out from my luxury life like a bag of cement is thrown from the window.
Or
I tried to flee from the Red army soldiers and fell from window like a bag of cement.
Or
The Red army soldiers stormed a house and after explosion of grenade I was thrown from the window like a bag of cement.

[AliasDavid]

...
It's a very interesting statement but the context is very important.
Imagine that one says
I lost everything. The Red army soldiers came and I was thrown out from my luxury life like a bag of cement is thrown from the window. Or
I tried to flee from the Red army soldiers and fell from window like a bag of cement. Or The Red army soldiers stormed a house and after explosion of grenade I was thrown from the window like a bag of cement.

The "einmal" (once) indicates the sense is literal.

Different people (Schwan and Schwarzer) claim to have obtained first-hand knowledge of the rape. If you ask for the primary source Beevor used that could be Clough's book (2002), whether she explicitly mentioned the rape or just the abuse.

[snpol]

...
It's a very interesting statement but the context is very important.
Imagine that one says
I lost everything. The Red army soldiers came and I was thrown out from my luxury life like a bag of cement is thrown from the window. Or
I tried to flee from the Red army soldiers and fell from window like a bag of cement. Or The Red army soldiers stormed a house and after explosion of grenade I was thrown from the window like a bag of cement.

The "einmal" (once) indicates the sense is literal.

Different people (Schwan and Schwarzer) claim to have obtained first-hand knowledge of the rape. If you ask for the primary source Beevor used that could be Clough's book (2002), whether she explicitly mentioned the rape or just the abuse.

Previously I quoted articles in The Guardian and in The Atlantic. They were published long before the books by Schwan and Schwarzer appeared.
The following questions remain open
- does the Clough's book contain claim about rape of mrs Kohl?
- if yes then what is the primary source of the claim?
- if not then what is the primary source of claims made in the mentioned articles and made by mr.Beevor?
It looks that the questions will remain open.
Anyway thank you very much for information, clarifications and attention.