Against Our Will: Men, Women, and Rape (12 page)

Race defilement was similar to the prohibition against "the mixture of the races" that was part of the legal code in the American South before and af ter slavery, and which hardly affected the rape of black women by white men. See subchapter on rape in slavery.

When Sala Pawlowicz regained consciousness she found her self lying naked and bloody in the street. According to her mem oirs, the Nazis made nightly swoops through the ghetto in search of young Jewish girls, and despite her mother's attempts to hide her, she did not escape this attention.
It
was, she felt, part of a general sado-sexual humiliation that the Germans inflicted on the Jewish population. During daylight, the Germans would stage mass dis rohings of men, women and children "for diversion": "They forced us to undress and lie on the ground as they walked by, laughing and making lewd comments. Then we were beaten with whips on our bare backs and chased through· the ghetto. Their actions shamed me."

Sexual humiliation had a part to play as the Germans tight ened their grip on the Warsaw ghetto. A series of depositions collected by members of the Warsaw fudenrat, the Nazi-estab lished Jewish governing council, dwells on the German Army's

attempt in late
1939
and early
1940
to cajole the
f
udenrat into

setting up a brothel stocked with Jewish girls that would be divided into two sections, one for officers and one for ordinary soldiers. The Jewish brothel in the Warsaw ghetto was apparently never estab

lished. According to the
f
udenrat, this was where it drew the line; the German soldiers had to make do with mass forays into the ghetto in search of young women.

Surgeon-gynecologists of the ghetto methodically adminis tered antitetanus shots to victims of German rape-"of course keeping secret the names," reported one Jewish doctor of Warsaw. His deposition goes on to say, "In one mirror shop in Swietokerska Street there was a mass raping of Jewish girls. The Germans seized the most beautiful and most healthy girls in the streets and brought them in to pack mirrors. Af ter the work the girls were raped." Another affidavit tells of a similar incident on Francisz kanska Street, where
"40
Jewish girls were dragged into the house which was occupied by German officers. There, af ter being forced to drink, the girls were ordered to undress and to dance for the amusement of their tormentors. Beaten, abused and raped, the girls were not released till 3
A.M."

These depositions appear in
The Black Book
of
Polish fewry,
a mid-war volume that was published in New York in
1943,
before the final liquidation of the ghetto.
.
S
usly, no f
nll-length._ac count of the Warsaw ghetto that I have ever examined, either fact

f.

i

t
:

1.-

O!
fiction, details any incident nf..iap.e.
It
is possible that this failure. has been a mere historic oversight, or hat the
awful
flestrnction
of
.
he ghetto and the last bit of heroic resistance on the art of t ws as overs a owe early stories of the rape of women, but I am inclined to a more cvnical interpretation,. T
B
lack
Book
of P
olish

f
l}! s
p
ublished
as a propaganda volume, a cry for help Af ter

·
-
th>-.War was ove_r perhaps
it_
was no longer politically necessary to

2ieve the word of women, or to consider the special fate of females a matter ot importance or significance

Captured German documents presented at the Nuremberg war crimes tribunal in 1946 corroborate the routine use of rape as a weapon of terror. The reason for the existence of these documents is fascinating. Sometimes German authorities in an occupied city made a straight-faced stab at collecting reports of informal atroc ities under the pretext of a concern for legality. The official Ger man position was that "uncontrollable elements" were responsible for the ugly excesses, an excellent excuse for the formal repressive measures that followed, which required cooperation from the ghetto leadership. Sometimes the gathering of information was inspired by more complex motivation, such as the desire of a Ger man Army commander to build up a case against his SS competi tor. In February, 1940, a German Army commander in Poland compiled a long list of complaints against the SS. Last on the list, Itern 33, discussed the case of two policemen who had dragged two teen-age Jewish girls out of bed. One of the girls was raped in a Polish cemetery; the other, who got violently ill, was told they would "get her next time and pay her five zlotys." The Army commander who wrote up the report was outraged over the ama
teurish
way in which the SS was attempting to deal with the problem of two million Jews.

What remained of Orthodox Jewry during the Final Solution, the remnants of the religious leadership, tried to stretch old doc trines to accommodate the new reality. Rape had to be dealt with because it raised unsettling philosophic and practical questions that required rabbinical interpretation.

A rabbi from the Kovno ghetto in Lithuania sought to formu late answers to many difficult situations as they arose for his dwin dling flock. Jewish slave laborers were fed a bowl of soup that wasn't kosher. Were they permitted to eat the soup? Yes, they were. Could one purchase a certificate of baptism to save one's life?

No.
.
Could circumcision be performed by a nonpracticing doctor since there were no pious circumcisers lef t alive in Kovno? Yes. Since the Germans published an edict ordering death for any Jew ish woman who became pregnant, were abortion and contraceptio permitted? Yes. Suicide? No.

..And, wrote the rabbi,

Immediately af ter we were liberated from the ghetto I was aske an important question which touched not only on the person who came before me but many other Jewish women as well who had survived humiliation and physical abuse by German officers. The specific question was this: A young woman of good family came to me crying that she was one of our poor sisters who had been humili ated by the Germans. Besides abusing her body, the Germans had tattooed on her arm the legend, Whore for Hitler's Troops. Af ter liberation she had succeeded in finding her husband, and they hoped to resume their marriage and set up a proper Jewish home. They had lost all their children at the hands of the Germans. But, seeing the fearf ul tattoo on her arm, the husband was taken aback

. . . Before living together as man and wife they had first to clarify whether she was permitted to him.

The rabbi responded,

Far be it from any man to cast aspersions on pious Jewish women in such a plight as this. Rather, it is our duty to proclaim the reward they will receive for their suffering. We must avoid causing them any unnecessary anguish. Certainly husbands who have divorced their wives under similar circumstances have acted repre hensibly. Nor, in my opinion, need husband and wife in this case make any effort to remove the cursed legend on the wife's arm. Rather, let it be preserved and exhibited-not as a sign of disgrace and humiliation, but as the symbol of honor and courage, in behalf of those who were slaughtered. Let it be a reminder to us and to the world that God has taken and will take His revenge on His people's oppressors.

Jewish women alone did not suffer rape as the German Army advanced into Russia. All women were prey. From evidence pre sented to the Nuremberg tribunal the pattern becomes clear.

The people who came to Nuremberg armed with the bitterest memories and the best-kept records were the Soviet prosecutors,

WAR
55

for the Soviets, who sustained the worst numerical losses of any of the Allies, had been collecting their data and gathering their depo sitions throughout the long war. A distillation of atrocities com mitted by the Nazi invader during the dark days of i941 was submitted as U.S.S.R. Exhibit No. 5i. Prepared by the Russian foreign minister, V. M. Molotov, in January, i942, as an interim war report directed to the Allied governments, it was entered into evidence at Nuremberg as "The Molotov Note." "Women and
girls
are
vilely
outraged
in
all
the occupied
areas
,"
the diplomat had written.

l

f:

• In the Ukrainian village of Borodayevka, in the Dniepropetrovsk region, the fascists violated every one of the women and girls.