German movie puts war rapes in focus

25 October, 2008, 19:34

A new movie opening this week in Berlin is set to spark debate on the morality of war and in particular the treatment of women in times of conflict.

'A Woman in Berlin', is based on the book of the same title, written by an anonymous 34-year-old woman in the basement of her bombed-out building during the invasion of Berlin by the Red Army in the last months of WWII. It details the way German women were raped en masse by the occupying forces and explains how the same women survived the attacks the Red Army officers felt they deserved in victory.

The book was originally shunned by Germans when it was published in 1959. The subject matter was still too painful and the author remained anonymous as she was afraid of being socially ostracised. Coming so soon after the events it described, the book was thought to have brought shame on German women and was even seen as propaganda due to the prevailing Cold War tensions.

However, it proved a bestseller when it was published again in 2003 two years after the author's death. The author was revealed to be Marta Hillers, who'd died aged 90. The book has since been praised for the author’s candour about surviving wanton assault and the utter desperation that she and thousands of others felt in the aftermath of the occupation of Berlin. Marta’s story was still harrowing, but there was sufficient distance in time and emotion to fully appreciate the content.

Although the exact number of women and girls who were raped in the months preceding and following Berlin’s capitulation will never be known, their numbers are likely to be in the hundreds of thousands. Many of these victims, like Marta, were raped repeatedly. The experience, as highlighted in the book and movie, was a collective experience and it inflicted a massive collective trauma on the East German nation. According to the book ‘Berlin: The Downfall, 1945’ by Antony Beevor, 3.7% of all children born in Germany 1945-1946 had Russian fathers. This particular portion of history was considered a taboo topic until as recently as 1992.

Of course, this story is not the only example of mass rape during conflict. The Germans themselves raped Jewish women and girls during the invasion of Poland, Japanese oppressors used sexual assault as a tool to humiliate the Chinese, even using the euphemism ‘comfort women’ to give a veneer of acceptance to the approximately 200,000 women who were forced into military brothels. Sexual violence against women was prevalent during the Rwanda genocide and during the Balkan wars.

However, it is rare that the psychological impact these atrocities have on the women involved is portrayed. Due to the very nature of the assaults, reports are kept hidden by the women themselves and suppressed by the forces involved. The techniques Marta employs to survive are unsettling. In the interests of self-preservation, she tries to become a courtesan to the second man who attacks her, assuming that she will be protected against attacks from others. It is a depressing plan of action, even more so when we realise it does not work.

War rape itself was not punishable under international law until recently and it is rarely prosecuted as a war crime. The first real cementing began in 1993 and 1994 after rape and sexual violence, were specifically codified for the first time as a recognisable and independent crimes within the statutes of the International Criminal Tribunals. In the past, acts of sexual violence against women went unrecognised and unchallenged. In many conflicts, some soldiers, perpetrators, and world leaders viewed rape as a fringe benefit of war, an unspoken perk. Justice Richard Goldstone, Chief Prosecutor at the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia has said that: “Rape has never been the concern of the international community.”

However, women across the war-torn world are left to carry the trauma of their brutalisation with them. They must also remain in fear of how they will be treated once their men have returned. Indeed, the notion that the men must deal with their actions as much as the women must deal with their victimisation is succinctly revealed as the author writes, “And they loved to tell their stories which always involved exploits that showed them in a good light. We on the other hand will have to keep politely mum; each one of us will have to act as if she in particular was spared.”

‘A Woman in Berlin’ re-focuses the attention onto the brutalisation of women, who are civilians in these cases, not prisoners of war. Martha refuses to look away; she challenges the silence and the guilt it conceals. Her courage is admirable and when we consider the recent events in conflict areas like Darfur her story has not lost any relevance in the proceeding 60 years.

Ciaran Walsh for RT

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