Abstract
Naum Epelfeld was 13 years old when the German army invaded Berdychev (Ukraine) on 5 July 1941. Fleeing from air raids, he and his family found shelter in the cellar of a nearby hospital. “Everybody sensed that terrible things were about to occur”, he remembered after the end of the war.
Night fell. There was no light. We sat in the dark, huddled against each other, and talked in whispers. Suddenly we heard people entering the hospital building, heard orders barked in a foreign language. The noise of breaking glass and the crack of gunshots impressed themselves on my mind. It all became clear to us. The Germans were taking Berdychev. After a while two soldiers entered the cellar where we were hiding. They lit their way with flashlights and said something, but nobody understood them. Then they started to approach the people sitting on the floor and to shine their light on their faces. Eventually they stopped in front of a girl and a woman, led them into an empty room, and raped them. The girl — she was our neighbour’s daughter — was named Guste. Guste Glosman was fourteen or fifteen years old. Soon afterward, she was shot together with her parents. That was how the occupation began for me. The worst part of my life.1
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Notes
Naum Epelfeld, “Möge mein Gedächtnis das Vergessen verhindern...”, in Boris Zabarko, ed., “Nur wir haben überlebt”. Holocaust in der Ukraine. Zeugnisse und Dokumente, Berlin, Dittrich, 2004, pp. 110–29
Ruth Seifert, “Krieg und Vergewaltigung. Ansätze zu einer Analyse”, in Alexandra Stiglmayer, ed., Massenvergewaltigungen. Der Krieg gegen die Frauen, Frankfurt am Main, Fischer, 1994, pp. 87–112
See among others Cornelia Essner, Die “Nürnberger Gesetze” oder die Verwaltung des Rassenwahns, Paderborn, Ferdinand Schöningh, 2002, p. 219.
Gaby Zipfel, “Ausnahmezustand Krieg? Anmerkungen zu soldatischer Männlichkeit, sexueller Gewalt und militärischer Einhegung”, in Insa Eschebach and Regina Mühlhäuser, eds, Krieg und Geschlecht. Sexuelle Gewalt im Krieg und Sex-Zwangsarbeit in NS-Konzentrationslagern, Berlin, Metropol, 2008, pp. 55–74
Birgit Beck, Wehrmacht und sexuelle Gewalt. Sexualverbrechen vor deutschen Militärgerichten 1939–1945, Paderborn, Ferdinand Schöningh, 2004, pp. 72
Andrej Angrick, Besatzungspolitik und Massenmord. Die Einsatzgruppe D in der südlichen Sowjetunion 1941–1943, Hamburg, Hamburger Edition, 2003.
See for instance Faye Schulman, A Partisan’s Memoir. Woman of the Holocaust, Toronto, Second Story Press, 1995, p. 65.
Susanne Conze and Beate Fieseler, “Soviet Women as Comrades-in-Arms. A Blind Spot in the History of War”, in Robert W. Thurston and Bernd Bonwetsch, eds, The People’s War. Responses to World War II in the Soviet Union, Chicago, University of Illinois Press, 2000, pp. 211–34
Hans-Heinrich Wilhelm, Die Einsatzgruppe A der Sicherheitspolizei und des SD 1941/1942, Bern, Peter Lang, 1996, p. 479.
On the concept of Gelegenheitsräume see Bernd Greiner, Krieg ohne Fronten. Die USA in Vietnam, Hamburg, Hamburger Edition, 2007.
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© 2012 Regina Mühlhäuser
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Mühlhäuser, R. (2012). The Unquestioned Crime: Sexual Violence by German Soldiers during the War of Annihilation in the Soviet Union, 1941–45. In: Branche, R., Virgili, F. (eds) Rape in Wartime. Genders and Sexualities in History. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137283399_3
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137283399_3
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