Captured Helferinnen used as sex slaves?

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Jeremy Chan
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Captured Helferinnen used as sex slaves?

#1

Post by Jeremy Chan » 01 Apr 2004, 10:31

I'd like to know if the Red Army used captured German female auxiliaries as sex slaves, and if so, is there any information regarding this? I had read of mass rapes by the Red Army but wasn't sure of this. Did the Soviet forcefully deport German auxiliaries to the Soviet Union to served in brothels for Soviet troops? I read that:
So far as the services were concerned the women were soldiers only during the hours they were on duty. During that time they wore uniform and were paid for the hours they worked. Off duty, they had to wear civilian clothes and were, for the purposes of administration, considered to be camp-followers. This bizarre interpretation had the shocking effects upon the women soldiers who were captured by the Red Army. Soviet officers pointed out to them that they could not claim the protection of the Geneva Convention, becasue,'Even your own army says that you are not service personnel.'
The story of one girl is representative of many who suffered.
(skipping further down)
'When the war ended I was in Schörner's Army Group in the Protectorate (Bohemia and Moravia). We were attacked by Czech partisans on the day the war ended and during the scrimmage I was struck on the head. That blow knocked me unconscious and also split my scalp so badly that my face was covered in blood. That blow and the amount of blood probably saved me from being raped for it must have seemed that I had been klled. In the following days the effect of the blow puffed my face so much that it was completely deformed for nearly a week.
'Like many of the Blitzmäderln (the Signals Corps girls) I changed into a man's uniform seeking to disguise myself as a man and thus to avoid rape. This deception may have stopped the sexual attacks but not the beatings which were hard and frequent. In addition, we women disguised as men had to do a man's share of work and we also received, of course, a man's share of beating. When one of the girls collapsed at work the major in charge of our unit told them that their future was to serve as whores for the Red Army. By not being acknoledged as soldiers we were, therefore, legally outside the protection of the Hague Convention. Our own army, he told them had described them as "matresses for officers". The Blitzmäderln would fulfill that function for the Russians. Not for officers, but for the rank and file. The girls were, after all, common whores and not good enough for the officer heroes of the Red Army. What happened to the girls I do not know and all inquiries in post-war years have been fruitless.'
Source:World War Two through German Eyes -James Lucas

Can anyone help me with this?

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#2

Post by Penn44 » 01 Apr 2004, 20:31

These kinds of posts are simply too much. What's next? An inquiry into where any Germans were abducted by UFOs?



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#3

Post by Marcus » 01 Apr 2004, 20:52

One may or may not agree with how the question was asked, but at least a quote and proper source for the claim was given, something that is so often neglected here.

/Marcus

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#4

Post by Penn44 » 01 Apr 2004, 20:56

Marcus Wendel wrote:One may or may not agree with how the question was asked, but at least a quote and proper source for the claim was given, something that is so often neglected here.
/Marcus
The source is undoubtedly his own imagination, and this post is simply a fishing expedition to find something sensational to discuss.


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#5

Post by Marcus » 01 Apr 2004, 20:58

Penn44 wrote:The source is undoubtedly his own imagination
The source as posted above was "World War Two through German Eyes -James Lucas", I don't own that particular book by Lucas, so I can't verify it.

/Marcus

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#6

Post by Oleg Grigoryev » 01 Apr 2004, 21:46

well since the Red Army did not have borthels the whole question is moot.

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#7

Post by xcalibur » 01 Apr 2004, 21:51

Marcus Wendel wrote:
Penn44 wrote:The source is undoubtedly his own imagination
The source as posted above was "World War Two through German Eyes -James Lucas", I don't own that particular book by Lucas, so I can't verify it.

/Marcus
You can acquire it for $2.80 from Amazon.

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#8

Post by Marcus » 01 Apr 2004, 21:57

xcalibur wrote:
Marcus Wendel wrote:
Penn44 wrote:The source is undoubtedly his own imagination
The source as posted above was "World War Two through German Eyes -James Lucas", I don't own that particular book by Lucas, so I can't verify it.
You can acquire it for $2.80 from Amazon.
Well, no, but you can buy it from a seller with the alias "ejillian" through Amazon for that price if you want to be picky :-)
Hopefully some of the members have access to it and can verify the quotes in case there is any doubt about them being accurate quotes from the book in question and I assume Colonel SteelFist can provide the pagenumbers in question.

/Marcus

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#9

Post by xcalibur » 01 Apr 2004, 22:22

Marcus Wendel wrote:
xcalibur wrote:
Marcus Wendel wrote:
Penn44 wrote:The source is undoubtedly his own imagination
The source as posted above was "World War Two through German Eyes -James Lucas", I don't own that particular book by Lucas, so I can't verify it.
Hopefully some of the members have access to it and can verify the quotes in case there is any doubt about them being accurate quotes from the book in question and I assume Colonel SteelFist can provide the pagenumbers in question.

/Marcus
The problem in the past been not with the accuracy of the quoted material, but rather, when asked to provide the author's source notes for the quoted passage one is greeted with : "But that would mean I'd have to read all those notes at the end of the book. " :roll:

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#10

Post by Marcus » 01 Apr 2004, 22:24

xcalibur wrote:The problem in the past been not with the accuracy of the quoted material, but rather, when asked to provide the author's source notes for the quoted passage one is greeted with : "But that would mean I'd have to read all those notes at the end of the book. " :roll:
True, but many threads have started with "I've read somewhere...", which is even worse considering the claims some posters have made.

/Marcus

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#11

Post by David Thompson » 02 Apr 2004, 03:53

Colonel SteelFist -- Looking closely at your source, it comes down to this:

(1) The first excerpt gives this description:
So far as the services were concerned the women were soldiers only during the hours they were on duty. During that time they wore uniform and were paid for the hours they worked. Off duty, they had to wear civilian clothes and were, for the purposes of administration, considered to be camp-followers.
The passage is not clear as to who the women are -- whether they are German, Russian, or some other nationality, nor is it clear who, "for the purposes of administration, considered [the women] to be camp-followers."

The passage then goes on to say:
This bizarre interpretation had the shocking effects upon the women soldiers who were captured by the Red Army. Soviet officers pointed out to them that they could not claim the protection of the Geneva Convention, becasue,'Even your own army says that you are not service personnel.'
This suggests that the women being discussed were some nationality fighting against the Red Army, and that the practice described in the first part of the passage took place in the armed forces of whatever non-Soviet country the author is referring to. In other words, the "bizarre interpretation" that the women were "camp followers" came from their own armed forces "for the purpose of administration." The passage does not state, and consequently does not support, your notion that the Red Army "used captured German female auxiliaries as sex slaves."

(2) The second quote refers to widespread rapes, but in regard to the claim that the Red Army "used captured German female auxiliaries as sex slaves," there is only this passage:
When one of the girls collapsed at work the major in charge of our unit told them that their future was to serve as whores for the Red Army. By not being acknoledged as soldiers we were, therefore, legally outside the protection of the Hague Convention. Our own army, he told them had described them as "matresses for officers". The Blitzmäderln would fulfill that function for the Russians. Not for officers, but for the rank and file. The girls were, after all, common whores and not good enough for the officer heroes of the Red Army.
In other words, the narrator was not used as a sex slave. The whole passage is based on something a major in the Red Army is supposed to have said in order to make the captives work harder (When one of the girls collapsed at work the major in charge of our unit told them that their future was to serve as whores for the Red Army [my emphasis -- DT]). From the wording in the sentence ("told them"), it is not even clear that the narrator witnessed the statement by the Red Army major.

What we have here is a threat, made by a single person. There's no indication that anyone in the group was ever made "to serve as whores for the Red Army." There may be more to the tale than this, but I think a second-hand "yarn" about a threat somebody else said they heard cannot be taken as proof that the threat was ever actually carried out. Based on what you posted, Colonel SteelFist, this story looks an awful lot like . . . well, I'll be charitable and say "a lurid rumor."

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#12

Post by Vadim » 02 Apr 2004, 17:18

I would just like to add one more thing to what David said above. Look at the last sentence:
What happened to the girls I do not know and all inquiries in post-war years have been fruitless.
So, to sum it up: the narrator was never raped herself; she has not witnessed any other women being raped or sent to "Red Army brothels" (which of course did not exist); she cannot say with any degree of certainty that anything like that happened later because she "does not know" what happened to other girls.

Also, switching into "Michael Mills" mode here, I have to say I find it very hard to believe that "many Signal Corps girls" were able to change into men's uniforms and impersonate men, the whole story sounds far-fetched at best. I have read one or two of Lucas' reference books on Wehrmacht, but I have not read this particular book so I cannot comment more.

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#13

Post by Vikki » 03 Apr 2004, 08:21

Marcus Wendel wrote: Hopefully some of the members have access to it and can verify the quotes in case there is any doubt about them being accurate quotes from the book in question and I assume Colonel SteelFist can provide the pagenumbers in question.

/Marcus

I have the book, and the quotes are accurate (outside of a few mistaken words, for example "Geneva Convention" should read "Hague Convention"). The copy I have was published in 1987 in London by Arms and Armour Press Limited, and the quotes are from pages 62-3. Lucas does not use footnotes in the book, but the sources (all secondary) in his Bibliography that the passage would have most likely come from are: Gersdorff, U. von. Frauen im Kriegsdienst, 1914-1945. Stuttgart, 1961; Seidler, F. Blitzmädchen. Koblenz, 1979; Stephenson, J. Women in Nazi Society. London, 1975; Studnitz, H.G. While Berlin Burns. Stuttgart, 1963; Thalmann, R. Frauen im Dritten Reich.



David Thompson wrote:
The passage is not clear as to who the women are -- whether they are German, Russian, or some other nationality, nor is it clear who, "for the purposes of administration, considered [the women] to be camp-followers."
The quotes were taken out of context. The paragraph just before the first quote is speaking of girls in the BDM, and whether the stories of them destroying Soviet armour, and of multiple rapes of them by Soviet troops, are true. And the first sentence of the paragraph of the first quote is actually: "For those girls who served in military units National Socialist concepts of frugality applied. So far as the services were concerned the women were soldiers....." (etc.). Taken in context, the quotes are obviously referring to German Helferinnen.



David Thompson wrote:
In other words, the narrator was not used as a sex slave. The whole passage is based on something a major in the Red Army is supposed to have said in order to make the captives work harder (When one of the girls collapsed at work the major in charge of our unit told them that their future was to serve as whores for the Red Army [my emphasis -- DT]). From the wording in the sentence ("told them"), it is not even clear that the narrator witnessed the statement by the Red Army major.
I agree. The narrator later says that she graduated in Russian, and so was capable of understanding the threat, if she witnessed it. And what she does say she heard, by eavesdropping without the Russians knowing that she spoke Russian, was the guards' plans to move the women to a camp in western Siberia, near a mine---not a brothel. (Interestingly, exactly the fate of some Signals Helferinnen which is verified by Siegfried Knappe in Soldat--pp. 404-5.)

There is a final point of interest in the account itself. The Russian major's statement that the Blitzmädchen were "legally outside the protection of the Hague Convention" may have been his own interpretation---or a slip on the part of the narrator? At least some examples of the Personal-Ausweis for Helfs I have seen were stamped with a notice indicating that they were covered by the treaty.

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#14

Post by Penn44 » 03 Apr 2004, 11:02

Fraulein Valkyrie wrote: There is a final point of interest in the account itself. The Russian major's statement that the Blitzmädchen were "legally outside the protection of the Hague Convention" may have been his own interpretation---or a slip on the part of the narrator? At least some examples of the Personal-Ausweis for Helfs I have seen were stamped with a notice indicating that they were covered by the treaty.
According to the official history of the International Committe of the Red Cross (ICRC), Doentiz discharged all German female service personnel the day before the war ended so that they would not have go into POW captivity. Whether this affected the POW status of German female military personnel already in captivity, I do not know.


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Re: Captured Helferinnen used as sex slaves?

#15

Post by wildboar » 03 Apr 2004, 15:47

Colonel SteelFist wrote:I'd like to know if the Red Army used captured German female auxiliaries as sex slaves, and if so, is there any information regarding this? I had read of mass rapes by the Red Army but wasn't sure of this. Did the Soviet forcefully deport German auxiliaries to the Soviet Union to served in brothels for Soviet troops? I read that:
So far as the services were concerned the women were soldiers only during the hours they were on duty. During that time they wore uniform and were paid for the hours they worked. Off duty, they had to wear civilian clothes and were, for the purposes of administration, considered to be camp-followers. This bizarre interpretation had the shocking effects upon the women soldiers who were captured by the Red Army. Soviet officers pointed out to them that they could not claim the protection of the Geneva Convention, becasue,'Even your own army says that you are not service personnel.'
The story of one girl is representative of many who suffered.
(skipping further down)
'When the war ended I was in Schörner's Army Group in the Protectorate (Bohemia and Moravia). We were attacked by Czech partisans on the day the war ended and during the scrimmage I was struck on the head. That blow knocked me unconscious and also split my scalp so badly that my face was covered in blood. That blow and the amount of blood probably saved me from being raped for it must have seemed that I had been klled. In the following days the effect of the blow puffed my face so much that it was completely deformed for nearly a week.
'Like many of the Blitzmäderln (the Signals Corps girls) I changed into a man's uniform seeking to disguise myself as a man and thus to avoid rape. This deception may have stopped the sexual attacks but not the beatings which were hard and frequent. In addition, we women disguised as men had to do a man's share of work and we also received, of course, a man's share of beating. When one of the girls collapsed at work the major in charge of our unit told them that their future was to serve as whores for the Red Army. By not being acknoledged as soldiers we were, therefore, legally outside the protection of the Hague Convention. Our own army, he told them had described them as "matresses for officers". The Blitzmäderln would fulfill that function for the Russians. Not for officers, but for the rank and file. The girls were, after all, common whores and not good enough for the officer heroes of the Red Army. What happened to the girls I do not know and all inquiries in post-war years have been fruitless.'
Source:World War Two through German Eyes -James Lucas

Can anyone help me with this?
They were handed over to NVKD by red-army as per stalin's decree.
What NVKD did to them is area of research.

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