New German Study Looks at Rape Trauma 60 Years On - Sexual Violence from World War II
source: http://www.spiegel.de/international/germany/0,1518,585779,00.html
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- unclepete
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Germany in the spring of 1945. Hitler's Nazi regime was on the brink of defeat in the catastrophic war it had launched six years earlier. After invading and occupying large swathes of Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union -- and murdering tens of millions of people in the process -- the German army was retreating, and the Red Army was following hot on its heels, intent on revenge.
Sweeping across German territory, many of the Russian soldiers burned, killed, looted. And they also raped German women. The Soviets, of course, weren't the only ones; soldiers from other Allied armies were also guilty of sexual violence as they moved into Germany from the West. But most agree that the problem was particularly acute in eastern Germany. Historians estimate that close to 2 million German women and girls were raped in the closing months of the war, many repeatedly.
This week a new film, called "A Woman in Berlin," opens in Germany which deals with the story of one of those women. The film is based on "Anonymous," an autobiographical account, originally published by a German journalist and editor in the 1950s, describing her experiences between April and June 1945. When it was originally published, reaction was overwhelmingly negative, prompting the author to forbid it from being republished during her lifetime. She died in 2001 and the book hit the shelves again in 2003, going on to become a best-seller.
The woman, played by Nina Hoss in the film (the film's North American release date is still pending though it was shown at the Toronto International Film Festival in September), is raped several times by Red Army soldiers before forming a liason with a Russian officer in order to protect herself from further attacks. While the film tries to turn this into a love story of sorts in the book the relationship is purely functional.
(continues at link)
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- groups:
- Entertainment, Film
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- tags:
- Entertainment, Film, Research, Germany, 7 more
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Floodious_Maximous
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This will be a very interesting film but I should imagine will pull on the heart strings especially as it is a real topic about a real person, which obviously makes it so much more real to watch.
- 3 years ago
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Floodious_Maximous
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themanwithadog
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This film would be quite difficult to watch but it should be shown. I personally will not watch it.
Will there be a sequal that depicts how US female soldiers have been raped by their "comrades" in Iraq and Afghanistan or will this be brushed under the carpet along with other atrocoties commited by the military machine against civilians.
- 3 years ago
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themanwithadog
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J_Jammer [removed]
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That's disturbingly interesting. I wonder what the rapist thought or how they justified this action that they most likely never took part of until they joined the army. I suppose the villains were the Nazis and of course the women had to be bad an not that human so why not?
Interesting film to keep an eye out for. I do have a fascination with WWII things. But I have the most apprehension of films that deal with rape. Some films fail to do a rape scene in a way that shows it's rape without getting so into it that the anger just builds in me from just watching it.
That's what happened when I saw Blindness and that was the sole reason as to why I hated that film. The scene was far too long and the person that could have removed the threats didn't. It was too frustrating.
This would be why I may not see the film...I don't like feeling that frustrated while watching a film.
- 3 years ago
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J_Jammer [removed]
