Rape for Revenge -- "A Woman in Berlin"
In keeping with my desire to 'understand' at least something about WWII, I thought the movie, "A Woman in Berlin", offered in Amazon Prime on my Kindle, would be just the thing to watch last night!
Years ago, I read a somewhat scholarly book about rape and how it is used as a method to defeat the enemies of a country. Then, a few years later, I read about Hitler's last days in the bunker, actually about 4 or 5 books, plus a recently published diary written by his secretary. All of these books briefly discussed the massive rapes that occurred during the street by street fighting as the City of Berlin slowly fell.
This movie depicts the autobiography of one woman who lived through the times. It raises many moral questions, as well as shedding light on a particular time during the fall of Germany.
We never learn the name of the woman, who is called, (in German-- the whole movie is in German with some Russian, and English subtitles), Anonymous. It is based on her autobiography of what happened to her during this time, and how she survived.
Anonymous was the wife of a German soldier away at war, and the mother of two boys that very likely were sent to a Hitler Youth camp, or out in the country. One never really knows, nor does one learn if they survived the war. Anonymous is an educated woman, a journalist, and she speaks several languages, Russian being one of them. She and her husband live in a studio apartment in one of Berlin's old apartment buildings, a few blocks from the Reichstag, which are very elegant.
The Russians reach her street, shelling the buildings where she and her neighbors live. All of the women and the few male civilians with them, hide in the cellars of the apartments while the fighting rages outside. There is no food, no water, and they occasionally risk their lives to venture above ground to search for food or to the neighborhood well for some water.
The Russians 'liberate' their street, and make the announcement that all civilians are to turn in all of their weapons, and anyone hiding a soldier will be shot immediately, unless they come out immediately. Several people are shot anyway, as a gesture of "we mean business". The Russians raid the cellar, where all the women are hiding, that night, and she manages to escape at first, running ahead of them from apartment to apartment, but she is caught and brutally beaten and raped. (These scenes are cringe-worthy, not gory, and never lascivious.)
After the rape, she creeps downstairs to an older widow's apartment, where she lives with five or six women of various ages, and a couple, in order to band together to survive the fighting, and share food and supplies. Raids take place every evening, and she is raped repeatedly, as are the other women in the apartment. The other women in the apartment are of all ages, even one very old woman.
After one particularly exuberant rapist declares that Anonymous is his new "girl friend", and that he will be back, Anonymous decides to see if she can find a protector-- a high ranking Russian commander, to seek protection. She would decide from here on out, who would have her body to use. She seeks out a commander, and speaks with him, but he will do nothing to help her, or to help the other women, risking her life to do so.
For a brief time, Anonymous becomes a prostitute, requiring food or valuables to trade for sex-- and that way, she manages to feed the other women in the apartment. They all become prostitutes-- because why shouldn't they be paid to let these animals use their bodies? The old woman is quite humorous about it, making fun of the soldiers sexual prowess not being up to what it was in HER day... Through the Russian soldiers, they learn of the utter atrocities perpetrated by their husbands in the German army-- the killing of children and old people, the hanging of civilians-- even the commander's wife was hung in the court square of their village.
Several evenings later, after they announce the suicide of Hitler, the commander is in his car, when the soldiers raid the apartment again, beating the women, pulling them out of the apartments to rape them in the street. The commandant sees her, and calls out to the soldiers to stop-- he can barely control them-- but he manages to save her and most of the women in her apartment from being beaten and raped, yet again.
A tender relationship develops between Anonymous and the Stalwart Russian commander. Even as she knows he hates her, he loves her. Even as she hates him, and loves her husband, she also loves this man.
He wants her to come back with him to Russia, but, her husband returns. Her husband is almost crazed from the war-- the thing he saw, the horrible defeat, and the threat of being sent to Russia as a prisoner of war hangs over him. But, he turns on his wife, calling her a whore, and threatening to kill her. She gives him her diary, kept during the worst of the days of the fall of the city. He doesn't forgive her, but allows her to live.
The kind commander is transferred, and Anonymous goes to see him as he is leaving. She walks to him and takes his hand, hiding their affection from the soldiers. And she asks, "How can we go on living?"
That's a question for the ages...
Because of the German soldier's conduct during the war, all over the world, little sympathy is spared for the women of Berlin. They are left in ruins, alone, without their husbands or their livelihoods, to pick up the pieces and try to live.
When Anonymous first published her story in the 1960s, it was panned in Germany-- no one wanted to think about these women, or what they had to do to survive. They were considered to be traitors, whores, and worse-- completely ignored within their society, and hated for their handling of the situation.
Once Anonymous died, her story was republished, to wide acclaim. She was a good woman at heart, placed in unbelievably horrible circumstances. I am amazed that she survived. I do not know how her husband fared, but I do get the feeling that she was alone for much of her life, after the war. I don't imagine that he could ever forgive her-- but I can't honestly say that he truly understood the circumstances.
A good movie? Yes. Also, disturbing and very dark. But true, as well. Perhaps, as society evolves, we can all begin to stop blaming the women of rape, and understand that these women were also victims of the Nazi regime.
Thanks for coming by!
A Woman in Berlin -- Amazon Instant Movie
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I didn't know how to categorize this one. It IS a movie, but entertainment? Eh? A little dark for entertainment. Religion and morals? eh, it's a movie.
anyway, I did the best I could!
Thanks for coming by!
Thanks, Dowser. I will have to check this out.
It's hard to watch, for sure... But, it certainly makes one think-- and I can't help but feel that they did what they had to do to survive.
Sleeping with someone for food, under the circumstances of not knowing if each moment will be your last, is, to me, far less a crime than hanging someone's wife in the town square, just because you wish to terrorize people. I truly felt sorry for her-- and hope that she found peace in her lifetime.
I don't honestly know how she survived!
The disintegration of a city-- This must be what the Bosnians/Serbians went through, too...
Rape as a weapon was part of the Russian culture. They used it on Jewishcommunitiesin Russia. They would invade a village and rape all the woman. These were calledpogroms. It lead to a peculuar custom of the woman shaving their heads and wearing wigs so that they were unattractive and wouldn't be raped.
I am not shocked that this would have happened to the woman of Berlin and I am sure many other cities that the Russians captured. It was really directed towards the men. They knew that this was the ultimate form of disgracing them. The woman were just the means to get to the men.
WWII is a hard war to get your head wrapped around. It is very hard to feel sympathy for a woman who would send her kids off to become Hitler Youth. Many Germans didn't. Her husband had no choice in serving. It seems to bring out a conflicted feeling for her.
Great job with the review, Dowser! I think I am going to watch it. It does sound interesting. A different view of the war.
I don't know where her children were, other than they weren't there-- but she was supportive of Hitler, as a German. It was a REAL conflict for her, when she learned of the atrocities the soldiers committed in Russia.
What struck me most was that she is just likeus-- Hitler was a political figure, not a God-like creature, and she was utterly dismayed to find out what had been done. As any normal person would be... She was a very sympathetic character, even though, of course, I didn't agree with what Germany did!
Yet, the truth was just beginning to come out-- these people, as civilians, had no idea what had happened. It does NOT address the question of the Jewish people, which would likely have been a whole movie unto itself...
The older widow was a hoot! Very prim, very proper, but after having been raped so many times, she began to enjoy the 'sex life'... And the elderly lady was so VERY amusing. The sad one was the pregnant woman, who appeared to be losing so much ground... Her face became more and more haunted, more gaunt, even as her stomach grew... It was a hard movie to watch, for sure.
One of the husbands couldn't handle that his wife was raped so much, and committed suicide... It was sad, too.
The subtitles didn't bother me at all-- There isn't a whole lot of dialogue in the movie, but their expressions say it all.
I believe that of Berlin, but not Munich. Dachu was right on the ring road of Munich. I remember right after 9/11, how we on Long Island could smell the acrid sent of gas and chemicals and flesh here, and we were 15 miles from the city. Dachu was only 2. They didn't know, because they didn't want to know.
And it may have been the same thing for the people in Berlin, too!
The Goebbels propaganda machine was very effective, sadly so! And anyone caught listening to outside radio programs were put in concentration camps... Maybe they didn't want to know, either.
She doesn't say much about it, but she certainly looks stunned when she learns what happened in Russia... But then, there isn't much dialogue.
I feel sorry for her. While the rapes don't surprise me, I still feel sorry for her. She was pretty brave, and did what she had to do to survive. She tried her best to help the other German women, because she could speak Russian. When her Russian lover left, she was utterly devastated.
Most people hate the Germans for what they did. I hate the regime that did it, not the people. The people supported the regime, but what choices did they have? Witness all the lies and BS put out by Fox news, and they have firm supporters... Is that so different? We, fortunately have choices. They did not.
I remember when we went to war with Iraq, I was sick to my stomach, and didn't dare say anything. I expressed my opinion to one person, and they called me a traitor. It was the end of our friendship-- on their side, not mine. If you can think of it as being possible today, and, personally, I think the TPartiers are trying their best to get us all back to this as a possibility, it is easier to feel sorry for the women of Berlin.
I think most people still feel that they got what they deserved. But, did they really deserve that? No more than the poor people of China deserved Nanking-- yet the Japanese continue to deny it, continue to cover it up, continue to behave as if they deserved it.
This woman didn't personally have anything to do with committing atrocities. Yet, she paid for them. She, like all the other women of Berlin, paid for their defeat. And yes, I am grateful they were defeated, don't think that. And no, I don't blame the Russians-- they had justification. But this movie will honestly make you look at the other side of the story...
It is a difficult movie to watch. I read a lot of books about WWII. I guess I've got about 50 books about the Holocaust, alone. Will I ever understand it? Probably not. Somehow, it is important to me to see the depths of human depravity as revealed in these books, perhaps to see, not understand, what we are capable of.
None of us know what we would do, if placed in these circumstances. We can only hope that we would remain true to our inner compass-- but, in those times, that was a very dangerous thing to do...