Berlin at War (77 page)

The passion of Red Army soldiers for Berlin’s women would also

become legendary. Estimates of the number of Berlin women who

were raped by Soviet soldiers in 1945 vary widely, but the capital’s

hospitals put the total at between 95,000 and 130,000.85 The true figure

is undoubtedly much greater. Few were overlooked: pre-pubescent

girls, nuns, grandmothers, pregnant women and nursing mothers were

subjected to the campaign of rapes. Even fugitive Jews and liberated

forced labourers received the same treatment. As one Soviet war

reporter recalled, the Red Army was ‘an army of rapists’.86

The soldiers were generally straightforward in their methods.

Though a few employed a nominal ‘courtship’, crude flirting or the

promise of some sort of ‘quid pro quo’, in the vast majority of cases

the soldiers simply exercised their overwhelming power. The most

perilous time for Berlin women was after dark, by which time the

soldiers were often drunk and on the rampage. ‘Throughout the night’,

one woman wrote,

we huddled together in mortal fear . . . a horde of Soviet soldiers

returned and stormed into our apartment house. Then we heard what

sounded like a terrible orgy with women screaming for help, many

shrieking at the same time. The racket gave me goosebumps. Some of

the Soviets tramped through our garden and banged their rifle butts

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on our doors in an attempt to break in. Thank goodness our sturdy

doors withstood their efforts. Gripped in fear, we sat in stunned silence,

hoping to give the impression that this was a vacant house . . . Our

nerves were in shreds.87

When they managed to gain entry to a building, the soldiers would

select their victims. Younger women were favoured, especially those

with blond hair. Plumper women, too, were often chosen, as they were

seen as healthier than their slimmer counterparts. One eyewitness

recalled the scene when a Soviet soldier sneaked into her cellar:

Staggering from one support beam to the next he shines his torch on

the faces, some forty people all together; pausing each time he comes

to a woman, letting the pool of light flicker for several seconds on her

face.

The basement freezes. Everyone seems petrified. No one moves, no

one says a word. You can hear the forced breathing. The spotlight stops

on eighteen-year-old Stinchen resting in a reclining chair, her head in

a dazzlingly white bandage. ‘How many year?’ Ivan asks, in German,

his voice full of threat.

No one answers. The girl lies there as if made of stone. The Russian

repeats his question, now roaring with rage: ‘How many year?’88

Such an interrogation would be followed by the words ‘
Frau, komm
’

– ‘woman, come’ – with which the grim selection was finally made.

Occasionally, older women would step in to volunteer themselves,

thereby protecting the younger victims. However, given the sheer

numbers of Soviet soldiers roaming its streets, any reprieve thus gained

tended to be temporary at best.

In many instances, the selection of the victims resembled a wild

hunt for human prey. Often soldiers would return at night to search

buildings where they had seen women during the day. Some young

women would spend hours in hiding, while the building was ransacked

by soldiers looking for them; one cough or creaky floorboard would

have betrayed them.89 Gerda Peters was hidden by her mother beneath

a table in her apartment in Neukölln, while Soviet soldiers passed so

close that she ‘could have reached out and touched their boots’. Though

Gerda remained undiscovered, her friend was not so fortunate and

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berlin at war

was dragged into the next room. Paralysed by fear, Gerda listened as

the girl screamed out her name, over and over.90

Already injured by crossfire, Gisela Stange, a sixteen-year-old auxil-

iary nurse, found herself cornered by a Soviet soldier and thrown to

the ground in an abandoned building. Guessing her attacker’s inten-

tions, she fought back, kicking the soldier in the groin with all her

might:

he screamed, and another soldier came to help him and pinned me

down. I thought my last moments had come. I was kicked repeatedly

in the face and noticed teeth falling from my mouth along with the

blood. Luckily, an officer heard the tumult and brought it all to an end

. . . Numerous teeth were missing, and some were broken, but I just

thought: ‘I have at least preserved my honour.’91

Those who fell into the soldiers’ grasp were at risk not only of

losing their ‘honour’; those that dared to resist could be killed. In

one instance a Berlin lawyer was shot for trying to protect his Jewish

wife from Red Army soldiers. As he lay dying, he witnessed her

being gang-raped.92 Humiliation, abuse and physical violence were

also commonplace. After one young girl had been raped by three

Russian soldiers, they rummaged through the kitchen of her apart-

ment, and when they found marmalade and coffee substitute, they

smeared it into their victim’s hair.93

Not all rapes were accompanied by violence and humiliation,

however. As one eyewitness recalled, her assailants were sometimes

far from the heartless monsters that one might have imagined. Some

were young and shy, and liked to lie back afterwards and chat; others

promised to return with food, or apologised in advance as it had been

a long time since they had been with a woman.94

Occasionally, too, there was a crude
quid pro quo
. In one instance,

Soviet soldiers selected young women from a queue outside a bakery,

then disappeared with them inside the building. As an eyewitness

recalled: ‘After a while, the door would open again and the girl would

come out carrying several loaves of free bread, and everyone knew

why she had been so nicely rewarded.’95 This was an aspect that was

also identified by an Australian war correspondent, who arrived in the

city later that summer. His interviews with Berliners revealed a curious

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379

world in which Soviet soldiers would arrive in the evening as rapists,

but would often return the following morning to apologise, bring food

and ask their victims not to report them. As one woman said of them,

‘they were childish really’.96

Nonetheless, many Berliners devised methods to avoid unwanted

attention. Some deduced that Soviet soldiers – whether out of fear of

ambush or simple laziness – disliked climbing up to the higher floors

of apartment blocks in their search for human booty.97 Therefore, the

rumour soon spread in the capital that the best place to avoid them

was on the upper floors or attics. Those best equipped had a loft hiding

place with a ladder that could be pulled up out of sight of marauding

troops. Others went further: Rosa Hengst recalled clambering across

the roofs in a bid to avoid Soviet patrols.98

Those in Dorothea von Schwanenflügel’s cellar decided to decorate

their refuge so as to make it resemble a Red Cross nursing station,

‘complete with bandages, cotton wool in empty jam glasses, and face

cream jars labelled as salves and ointments’. In addition, the women

adopted the widespread practice of making themselves as unattractive

as possible, ‘smearing our faces with coal dust and covering our heads

with old rags, our make-up for the Ivan’.99 Some feigned illness – scarlet

fever was a favourite – while younger girls cut their hair, wore trousers

and pretended to be boys.100 Nineteen-year-old Margot Hähnemann was

even more cunning. After a couple of lucky escapes from Soviet soldiers,

she was left as the only young woman in her cellar. ‘In order to avoid

further attacks’, she wrote, ‘I would occasionally pretend I was an idiot.

I plaited my hair, rolled my eyes, pulled a face, dribbled and blathered

to myself. It really scared the soldiers off.’101

The majority were not so fortunate or inventive, however, and for

them the experience was both terrifying and humiliating. As one victim

wrote in the aftermath of her ordeal: ‘I feel so dirty, I don’t want to

touch anything, least of all my own skin. What I’d give for a bath or

at least some decent soap and plenty of water . . . Where will this end?

What will become of us?’102 Another described how a twenty-five-year-

old girl from her group who was raped ‘became a stranger to herself

and to us. In one afternoon she had turned into an old woman, with

grey skin, drab hair and an absent mind.’103

It is thought that around 10 per cent of those raped committed suicide.

Countless others would carry the consequences for the remainder of

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berlin at war

their lives: the shame, the failed marriages and the fear of intimacy.

For some, the stigma would be even harder to shake off. It has been

estimated that 5 per cent of children born in Berlin in 1946 were so-

called
Russenkinder
– the products of rape between German civilians

and Soviet soldiers.104 Already damaged by their experience of the war

and their complicity in the Nazi regime, many Berliners found these

additional humiliations difficult to take. ‘I must repress a lot’, one of

them recalled, ‘in order, to some extent, to be able to live.’105

In the end, what many Berliners best recalled was the sudden irrup-

tion of silence. After months of often cacophonous noise – from the

last Allied bombing raids to the arrival of the Soviets – the German

capital was suddenly and strangely quiet. ‘No shooting from the

“Stalinorgans”,’ Gisela Stange recalled, ‘no air raid sirens and bombs

falling, no machine gun fire and a calm that I had longed for for years.

It was so unusual that it was almost disturbing.’106

On the morning of 2 May 1945, this new-found silence was broken

by an announcement from General Weidling, the commander of the

Berlin garrison, who informed the city of the ceasefire:

On 30 April 1945 the Führer committed suicide and in so doing deserted

everybody who was loyal to him. You, German soldiers, were loyal to

the Führer and were prepared to continue the battle for Berlin, although

ammunition was in short supply and further resistance was pointless.

I hereby declare an immediate cease-fire. Each hour you continue

fighting prolongs the suffering of the people of Berlin and of our

wounded. In agreement with the supreme command of the Soviet

troops I order you to stop fighting immediately.107

The news spread slowly that morning. After the radio broadcasters

had all left the airwaves, it had to be transmitted by word of mouth

and by trucks mounted with loudspeakers. But gradually and

cautiously, Berliners emerged out of their cellars, blinking into the

light of a rain-sodden but peaceful day. Some were overcome with

emotion. Ruth Andreas-Friedrich was simply delighted to have survived

the war: ‘Laughing and crying . . . for a long time we can’t say anything

at all, and when we finally do, it’s just silly blubbering. They all appear,

Frank, Dagmar, Joe, Heike and Fabian. They beam and act as if they

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381

are drunk. “Why, you did it! Why, you’re alive!” Yes, we did it – life

and liberty are ours.’108

Others were rather more circumspect, relieved that the war had

ended, but still mindful that the perils that they faced were far from

over. ‘Things are quiet’, one witness wrote that morning, ‘we stand

there in the pouring rain, speaking quietly and saying little . . . we

wait.’109 Berliners asked themselves what would become of the city’s

menfolk, now surrendering in their droves, as ordered? What, too,

they wondered, would become of them, the city’s ordinary civilians?

A few were not minded to wait to find out. On the very morning

of the German ceasefire, Dieter Borkowski’s group, which had previ-

ously occupied the flak tower at Friedrichshain, was ordered to attempt

to break out towards the north. Emerging into the cool of a grey

dawn, he paused a moment: ‘I stood as though paralysed. “Is this

the end?” . . . It was completely quiet. Is that a good sign or a bad

sign? . . . It was a strange silence, hardly anyone dared to whisper.

An eerie tension hung over our march into the unknown.’110

What Berliners were waking up to that morning was not peace; it

was the absence of war. For all the relief that the fighting was finally

over, they were also profoundly uncertain, with little idea of what to

expect from their new overlords, and little concept of what new horrors

might await them. ‘Was it the end of one nightmare’, one diarist asked,

‘or just the beginning of another one?’111

Epilogue: Hope

With the signature of the unconditional surrender on 8 May 1945, peace

finally returned to the German capital and, paradoxically, the precious

silence of previous days was abruptly shattered by the sounds of Soviet

soldiers celebrating. At the city’s landmarks, such as the Brandenburg

Gate or the Reichstag, crowds of Red Army men gathered to drink,

carouse and fire their weapons into the air. For Berlin’s hard-pressed