Genocidal
rape is the action of a group which has carried out acts of mass rape and gang
rapes, against its enemy during wartime as part of a genocidal campaign.
The Rape of
Berlin was the mass rape of German women by the Soviet army in the final weeks
of the Second World War (1939-1945) when the Soviets invaded Germany. On the
retreating Eastern front and in Berlin, the Soviet army carried out atrocious
acts of rape, violence, and humiliation against women.
Between the
months of April and May, the German capital Berlin saw more than 100,000 rape
cases according to hospital reports, while East Prussia, Pomerania and Silesia
saw more than 1.4 million rape cases. Soviet soldiers raped German females from
eight to eighty years old.
Journalist
and historian Svetlana Alexievich conducted a series of interviews of mainly
Russian women to preserve an oral history of women in war. Alexievich also
interviewed Russian men, one of whom was a soldier advancing into Germany in
the final stages of the war:
"In the
first German villages, We’re young and Strong. Four years without women, Ten
men violated one girl. There weren’t enough women, the population fled before
the Soviet army, we found young ones. Twelve or thirteen years old. If she
cried, we’d beat her. It was painful for her, but funny for us."
German
historian Miriam Gebhardt writes about a German man saying, "My niece was
raped by fourteen Russian officers in the next room. My wife was towed by a
Russian in the barn and also raped. After being locked up in a stable and raped
the next morning five clock at gunpoint again. When the column was gone, we
found my wife under a pile of straw, where they had fled in fear. "
Read more: The worst mass rape in Chinese history
Survivors
told of what they had seen. Mothers had to witness their ten and twelve year
old daughters being raped by up to twenty soldiers, the daughters in turn
witnessing their mothers being raped, even their grandmothers. In most houses
in the town nearly every room contained naked and dead women with the Swastika
symbol crudely carved on their abdomens. No mercy was shown to the women and
girls.
