Gabriele Kopp was repeatedly raped by Russian soldiers in 1945, when she was just 15. Now, at the age of 80, she has become the first German woman to write a book under her own name about the sexual violence she experienced during World War II. Der Spiegel magazine published a story about the book itself and its author.
By the time a person turns 80, her life has consisted of 29,200 days. Nevertheless, for Gabriele Kopp, what happened in the space of only 14 days was enough to cast a dark shadow over the rest of her life, the remainder of those 29,200 days.
The things she experienced during a 14-day period while she was fleeing from her homeland were so traumatic that she still has trouble sleeping today. There are times when she cannot eat. During those 14 days, Kopp was raped, again and again. She was 15 years old, and she knew nothing about sex.
Kopp has now written a book about those 14 days and about the rapes, titled "Warum war ich bloss ein Madchen?" ("Why Did I Have to Be a Girl?"). The book is an unprecedented document, because it is the first work of its kind.
There is "A Woman in Berlin," the famous confessions of a woman who was raped in World War II, which was first published in the 1950s and republished in 2003. But the woman was unwilling to disclose her identity, and it wasn't until after her death that it was revealed that the anonymous author was a journalist. To this day, there are doubts as to whether she truly wrote the book alone or whether there was a co-author who helped her to distance herself from the horrific events and, with distance, to achieve a voice -- a surprisingly free, confident and even flippant voice.
Kopp lacks this voice. She describes the first few days of her escape with precision, sequence by sequence, almost cinematically, but it is clear that she is not a practiced author. Nevertheless, her account is so gripping precisely because it was not polished for the sake of putting beautiful language on paper. Her story exerts a pull on the reader that stems from the authenticity of her words and experiences. And when the author herself is unable to comprehend what she experienced, even her voice reaches its limits.
Kopp couldn't find the words to describe the rapes themselves. She writes of a "place of horror" and a "door to hell," and she describes the rapists as brutes and scoundrels.
When asked why she was unable to describe exactly what happened to her, in all its horror, she shrugs her shoulders and says: "I can't even say the word" - rape ... I was hardly more than a child".
Writing her account under her own name hasn't made it easier, she adds, "but I had no choice; who else would do it?"
Indeed, women have rarely reported voluntarily on their encounters with violence during and after the war.
Experts describe this experience as a double trauma: the act of violence itself, and having to keep it hidden. Philipp Kuwert, a trauma expert and head of the department of psychiatry and psychotherapy at the University Hospital of Greifswald in northeastern Germany, began a research project last year on the repercussions of sexual violence in World War II.
He interviewed 27 women affected by such violence. He already has the results of his study but hasn't published anything yet. "It is one of the first and probably the last study of this nature, because 95 percent of the women who were affected are no longer alive."
Der Spiegel notes that no one knows exactly how many women became victims of sexual violence during the war. A figure of 2 million has been mentioned in various studies, but is considered unreliable because of the lack of concrete evidence.
Nevertheless, there is no doubt that it was a crime committed against large numbers of women. The average age of the women in Kuwert's study at the time of their rapes was 16.7, and each of the women was raped an average of 12 times.
About half of the women continue to suffer from post-traumatic symptoms, including nightmares, suicidal thoughts and what is known as avoidance behavior, with 81 percent stating that the experiences had a massive impact on their sexuality.
When soldiers commit rape during war, it is not just "to humiliate a particular individual," says historian Birgit Beck-Heppner. It also represents a "signal to the enemy population that its political leadership and its own army can no longer guarantee its safety." This is why these rapes are often committed in public.
Der Spiegel describes some details of what Gabriele Kopp had to endure. On the evening of Jan. 25, 1945, Kopp was packing her things, preparing to flee. Her mother told her to hurry, because the Russians were approaching the town, and she said that she would join her later.
On Jan. 26, 1945, Kopp and her older sister left the house. She would later learn that Soviet soldiers liberated the Auschwitz concentration camp the following day, Jan. 27. The ordeal that was about to begin for Gabriele Kopp had its roots in the crimes committed by her fellow Germans.
In this massive attack against women a betrayal of the other victims themselves in relation to each was suddenly dramatically apparent. In any case, betrayal of other women was fully experience by Gabriele herself.
All began with the mother, when she said goodbye to their daughters. This was a day before their departure. Kopp wanted to talk to her mother on that evening, but she was silent and barely spoke with her daughter, not even to warn her about the many things that could happen while she was fleeing. "In a sense, she allowed me to run headlong onto a knife," Kopp writes today, as an old woman. This was a betrayal for Kopp. Then, after the mother's betrayal, Kopp experienced a series of others - women's.
She with her sister boarded a freight train, which, unfortunately, was heading to an area already occupied by Soviet troops. After a short time, she heard the sound of artillery fire, and the train came to a stop. The locomotive had apparently been hit. She was an athletic girl and managed to pull herself up to the window. Her sister remained behind in the train. She would never see her again.
She fell into the snow, lying flat on the ground at first to protect herself from the gunfire. Other refugees had also managed to escape from the train, and they began running toward a farm and then a nearby village. Kopp followed them. A baker let her into his bakery.
In the village, Soviet soldiers carrying large flashlights searched for girls in the dim light. One of them grabbed Kopp. The next day, she was chased to another house, where she was raped by a soldier, and then by another soldier soon afterwards. The next morning, she was pushed into a barn and raped by two men.
That afternoon, she hid under a table in a room filled with refugees. When the soldiers came to the building, asking for girls, the older women called out: "Where's little Gabi?" and pulled her out from underneath the table. "I feel hatred rising up inside of me," she writes. She was dragged off to a ransacked house. "I have no tears," she writes. The next morning, it was the women, once again, who "pushed" her into the arms of a "greedy officer." "I despise these women," she writes.
When Kopp finally found her mother in Hamburg, after being a refugee for 15 months, she wanted to show her the letter. But the mother, who had not expected to see her daughter again, greeted her coldly, holding out her cheek to be kissed. The mother also told her to keep quiet about everything she had experienced while fleeing, although she could write it down if she wished. Kopp followed her mother's advice. She was 16 when she wrote the notes that she quotes in her book today.
RUSSIAN DISEASE
In a conversation with the correspondent of Der Spiegel Gabriele Koepp remembers that her menstrual cycle was interrupted for seven years. As the magazine notes, it was a widespread phenomenon in those days, quite common symptom in women, and some gynecologists called the "Russians' disease."
Asked has she had any other experiences of love and sexuality? No, she says, nothing at all. "For me, it was just violence."
More recently, Gabriele Koepp began to paint. Some of them are hung in her house. One of the paintings depicts the stations of her life. There are crosses and skulls at the center of the image. A date is written across the top: Jan. 26, 1945. Other paintings show hearts and strong colors.
Der Spiegel notes they are the kinds of pictures that girls paint -- 15-year-old girls.
Department of Cooperation and the Media,
Kavkaz Center
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