Hitler's Girls: Doves Amongst Eagles

by Heath, Tim

  My years with the BDM had meant I was competent at first aid and nursing, though I could never have prepared myself for some of the terrible injuries, which I just could not deal with properly. Soldiers and civilians, along with women and children, were brought in with arms and legs blown off and serious gun-shot wounds and blast injuries. The children often died very quickly from the shock and loss of blood, often crying out ‘Mutter’, ‘Mutter’, which means mother in German.

  We had no proper medicine for pain killing or anything, and we tried to patch up the wounds and stop any bleeding as best we could. Often we nursed people until they died in our arms; that is an awful thing for a young girl to have to experience. The fighting outside raged continuously, and with each wounded soldier that came in, they were warning of the approaching Russians.

  When they [the Russians] arrived they stormed into the huge building firing and shouting and in the end everyone, including myself, was ordered out into the street. I explained that there were wounded civilians and soldiers in there who had a right to receive medical attention. I do not know if they could understand German or not, but several of them went inside the room. Seconds later there were shots fired from a sub-machine gun and the petrolfuelled lamp, which was the only lighting we had inside the room, exploded under a hail of bullets and set the room on fire. The Russians came running out and gestured for us to move. Many Russians went into the building, probably searching for something to steal, as many goods were lying scattered all over the place. They prodded us with their bayonets and kicked our backsides as we were marched into captivity with other Berliners. I couldn’t believe that they had just murdered wounded people, not just soldiers, but civilians also. There were women and children in that place, and no one got out of it alive. I often ask myself today, could I have done more to try and stop them from killing those people. My friends often say, ‘Dana, you did everything that you could to help them, they are in God’s care now, and their killers will be burning in hell forever.’

  Anita von Schoener, a very attractive blonde who had married an SS soldier in May 1944, mainly due to the pressure put upon German women with the Aryan qualities of blonde hair and blue eyes to marry and produce children, had fled her home taking her baby son that she and her husband, Bruno, had named Anton. They had fled along with thousands of refugees from the eastern edges of Berlin.

  Anita had seen firsthand the wretched state that many of the young girls and women were in.

  The stories of mass-orchestrated rape, sodomy, and other acts of sexual violence were unbelievable to me at first, and I did not really believe that such things could be happening. I had lost touch with my husband Bruno, who had spent almost his entire career within the Waffen SS fighting in the east. His letters suddenly stopped coming and I had just assumed that he was unable to write because of the military situation.

  When the train of refugees began to pass through our area and Russian fighter planes were seen in the skies over our homes almost every day, I packed what belongings I could and headed for Berlin, thinking that we would be safer there. For much of the time we were relatively safe, though the conditions in the city were dreadful, and disease was claiming the lives of many people in the city, so I was very worried about taking the baby there, but had few options.

  In Berlin, there was little food and water, and many had taken to collecting the filthy water from the rivers and canals running through the city. This had to be boiled before it could be drunk. If you didn’t boil it, then it would have poisoned you.

  Later on, Russian snipers picked many people off as they collected water, and so it became too dangerous and we often had to go without a drink for days. When the city came under siege from April of that year, things grew worse, though we did try to share what we had with others. Strangely enough, only the SS soldiers refused to share their rations with us civilians. Our armies of volunteers were hopelessly outnumbered, and in the end were forced back further and further into the wrecked heart of the city. When the Russians came, there was fear and panic everywhere. Quite a few German soldiers fled and headed for the flak towers like the one in the Brunnenstrasse. Some SS soldiers took the clothes off dead bodies and put them on, and then threw their SS uniforms and dog tags away. They were trying to get away as ordinary civilians. Anton and me were forced to hide in the rubble and were left to fend for ourselves as the chaos of war broke out all around us. My only concern was for my baby boy, Anton, at that time, and most of the food we were able to find I naturally gave to the baby. Often we ate stale bread that was very hard, and I had to mash it up in my mouth before giving this to Anton, as it would have choked him. When the enemy came and found us, we were immediately taken away; thankfully Anton was too little to know what was going on around him. We were taken to a side street near the Potsdamerstrasse, where many Russian tanks and men had gathered in large groups. There had been very heavy fighting around that place and it was strewn with dead bodies and parts from dead bodies. I covered my little son’s eyes so that he could not see this carnage, even though he would not have understood what it all was, it was just motherly instinct.

  We had not gone far down this narrow street when I was shoved violently inside one of the many empty alcoves in the ruins. Anton was snatched from my arms and held outside and he began to cry. I knew what they were going to do with me, and I was taken into a corner, forced to take off all of my clothes, and thrown down. A gang of Russian males then raped me, one after the other. I could not stop them, as while one did the raping, the others held you down. I had to survive what these men were doing to me for the sake of my child, and I shut my eyes and just thought of my child. They were like a pack of wild animals, and when they had finished taking turns abusing me, I had teeth marks on my neck, breasts and my shoulders. My arms and legs were also covered in bruises. After the rape, they left me virtually alone to put my clothes back on, and I was then taken out to my baby who was still crying.

  I later heard that some of the Soviets had sodomized little boys, and so I checked him myself. Thankfully, they had spared him from harm and had taken their frustrations out on me. When the Americans arrived, I spoke to one of their medical people, a young nurse, who said she came from New York. She examined Anton to check his health, and then afterwards she checked me, and she saw the teeth marks on my body and the bruises, then asked how I got them. I told her what had happened, thinking she would not believe me, but she was very kind and what I had told her made her visibly angry and she made a detailed report of this which she said would be passed to her seniors. She gave me some medicine as I had also contracted something nasty down below [VD], something from the Russian soldiers, which soon cleared up with the medicine.

  The worst thing of all was that I later discovered that I was pregnant, pregnant with the rapist’s child. I went ahead with the birth as many German girls did. Because of what had happened it was utterly impossible for me to bond or show any love or affection for the child, and I gave the child up straight after the birth. I did not even want to know if it was a boy or girl or even look at it. How could I possibly love the baby of those who had raped me? I would have only grown to hate the child, and it did not deserve to grow up being hated, so I had to let it go.

  Bruno did not return from the war in the east. A comrade of his later told me that Bruno had been killed. The Soviets often executed SS soldiers. Those they did keep alive were refused any medical treatment and gave them literally nothing to eat or drink, and let them die slowly. I was also questioned briefly by the British shortly after the end of the fighting in Berlin on my husband, but could tell them little of his operational details, as he never wrote about them in any of his letters, though I did not have any of his letters with me to prove it. I only wish that the British and Americans had taken Berlin – that was a view shared by thousands of Germans after the war.

  Kirsten Eckermann had planned to try to get away from Berlin before the Russian army arrived, but although she and many others made s
everal attempts to break out of the city with groups of soldiers, all attempts to flee were scuppered by the speed of the Russian pincers which closed tightly around Berlin.

  All that was left was to try to get out of Berlin; it was a question of self-preservation. Whole families fled into the night, and found that by daybreak they were facing an advancing army, a Russian army. Then they would turn and go back dejected and frightened. There was nowhere to hide as many of the city’s buildings had collapsed and only the ruins remained. If you could, you crawled into a hole and stayed there, it was much better than staying out in the open when the shells and bombs came raining in. Only those driven insane by the exploding shells and bombs wandered around aimlessly in the streets.

  Occasionally, a woman holding a child in her arms would run screaming across the street. We were basically flushed out like rabbits. The Red Army patrols would pass by shout ‘Granate’ [Granate means grenades in German] into anywhere they felt that people could hide, and it made you think that they were going to throw in a hand grenade if you did not come out, so you did what you felt was the right thing and quickly obeyed them and came out with your hands up. Men were kicked and punched to the ground, and if they had dogs with them, they would let the dogs attack them. The Russians liked to set dogs on you very much, it seemed like a sport to them. When some women and children would run the Russians would let the dogs off their leads, and the dogs would chase and catch them. One little girl had her face bitten badly by one of the dogs, and a piece of flesh on her small face was hanging off and blood pumped out from the wound. The little girl just stood rooted to the spot convulsing violently and screaming. I will never forget that child’s screams so long as I live. Her parents went down on their knees and cried hysterically for mercy and begged for help, when one of the Russians began arguing with his comrades. They had been constantly swigging from bottles and pointed their guns at each other during the argument, and the nasty one walked away while the others went to attend the child who had been bitten.

  There were one or two German soldiers who were found still in their uniforms a few hundred yards from our hiding place. They were ordered out and they came out with their hands in the air, and were made to kneel down, dogs were set on them, and when the dogs had finished they were shot in the head, the bodies were then searched for valuables and money. My father and I began to protest and they came over and told us to ‘fuck off’ in German, before my father was punched several times in the face and I was called a ‘fucking German bitch’ and slapped. The slap had been hard and left marks across my cheeks.

  While this was going on my mother noticed that the Russians were urinating into the open mouths of the corpses of the dead German soldiers that had just been executed, and, with bored expressions on their faces, they prodded their bayonets into the dead men’s eyes. Mother later warned me and Father to ‘keep your mouths shut in future, because I want us all to get out of this alive.’

  The things that I had seen stayed with me and are still with me now. I wrote down much about it in a diary that I kept after the war, just so as I could look back through it all to make sure it wasn’t just a bad dream. I was German, yes, but I did not do any harm to any Jew, gypsy or ethnic people and it took many years to restore my faith in humanity.

  During the critical period of research, medical files retained by the German and Allied authorities in Berlin remain confidential and thus cannot be scrutinized, so there are doubts as to whether any of these still exist in document form today. Most of the material in Russian hands was burned after the war for reasons known only to the Soviets. The United States Army Medical Department (USAMD), and the British and German Red Cross organizations would have no doubt compiled material of a medical context regarding the rape of girls and young women in Berlin during and after April and May 1945. The official figures for rapes committed by Russian soldiers in Berlin do exist, but will probably never be released to the public. Berlin’s former mayor, Ernst Reuter, quoted a figure given to him as 90,000. These were the treated, recorded and medically proven cases of rape that had taken place in Berlin during the early part of the Soviet occupation of the city. There were many more girls and women who had been attacked and had not come forward for medical treatment or support. So, in reality, the quoted figure is to be used as the minimum.

  Amy Richardson was a 20-year-old nurse attached to the one of the US army field hospital units that had been hastily set up to give medical aid to wounded civilians and soldiers alike. When the Allied forces finally arrived in Berlin, they did so in huge numbers, bringing with them many resources and supplies to aid the suffering.

  What shocked Amy Richardson more than anything else she had ever encountered throughout the war, was the number of rape victims she had to deal with in Berlin.

  To be honest, I was absolutely furious and disgusted by it all. We had ten-, fourteen-, fifteen-and sixteen-year-old girls coming in time after time to receive treatment sustained as a result of being raped or sodomized. Now, I know that these were German girls who had probably shown support for Hitler and whatever, but they were basically children, very brainwashed children, and no one had the right to do that to children. In fact, I complained many times to the higher authorities of my profession about it, but was told to just get on and treat the people and not to get too emotional about it all. I was told ‘these terrible things sometimes happen in war’, but I replied ‘this is the first time that I have ever come across this thing.’

  To explain further the medical evidence of rape is very obvious to any trained doctor or nurse. Sometimes, the physical evidence disappears rapidly, depending on the severity of the individual attack. Many of the young girls that came to me for treatment had been brought in by their mothers, aunts, sisters, or whoever. Many had deep bite marks on their breasts, shoulder areas and their necks. Their wrists and arms were often badly bruised due to being violently restrained, and dried semen was often found on the clothing. The most serious cases I had to treat needed stitches around the vaginal entrance, clitoris and labial areas.

  The one that sticks in my mind most, is a 10-year-old that was brought in to us, and when I gently coaxed her into removing all of her clothing, she had dried blood all the way down the insides of her thighs, and bite marks on her chest and shoulders. I had to wash and clean her and put several stitches into a vaginal wound. The degree of sexual violence exerted upon that little girl’s body had been quite considerable, and it was enough for me to write a letter to Allied Command. I noted in my report, after seeing and dealing with so many depressing cases like that, I did not even feel safe having Russian soldiers nearby. My opinion was that if they could do that to a young child, then what might they do to someone like me?

  At least we know these rapes did occur and possibly many more than the known ninety-thousand recorded cases. I was very relieved to have finished my work in Berlin as it was deeply upsetting. My superiors were often as disgusted as I was. We were instructed to not cause any fuss, as we had to keep good relations between Russians and Americans. Though I have always felt it was wrong that this kind of thing was deemed excusable, purely on the pretext that the Russians were our ally.

  Carly Hendryks, another US army nurse, remembers the many young female rape victims:

  We made reports such as their physical and mental state of mind, and documented their injuries and asked them as to how they had been acquired. The great danger with rape victims is they tend to blame themselves, which often leads to severe psychological problems, an inability to form future relationships with members of the opposite sex, and depression, self-abuse, and even suicide. I once had to remove half a broken bottle from the vagina of one German woman. Some brute had forced the bottle into the woman with such force that it broke off inside of her. It was a miracle that she survived such a horrific sexual assault.

  I also know from reading up documents from Berlin much later, that many babies were born as a result of German girls and women being raped, and that man
y of the children ended up parentless, having been handed over to orphanages and convents. Only a woman will fully understand how rape can destroy you. It’s sad that most of the medical reports and documents were destroyed after the war. Our Government was very sensitive to Russian needs and political obligations of the time. They put the Soviet authorities before the needs of little girls and women who had been raped and abused. To me, that was unacceptable as an adult. It’s something that made me feel a bit sick at being an American, a member of the victorious Allies, because that sort of thing wasn’t victory, was it? I do know that later on General Patton spoke out about his disgust of the Mongol hordes, and how they behaved in Warsaw and Berlin.

  Margaret Neilson, also a nurse, had also seen the evidence of Russian sexual crimes in Berlin, and says:

  I was not keen on some of the things the Germans had done to people. But, tell me this, what kind of creature gratifies himself upon the body of some pre-pubescent female child? Such things are totally disgraceful and are a criminal act of the most horrendous kind. I was very concerned indeed about it all, and I did make several complaints about it and hoped that maybe the reports would be made to the Allied commander himself, which is what I had suggested. The problem was we were just too busy to chase up these things, not that anyone bothered doing anything about it. Often we were told to ‘get on with our job’. Being a nurse meant that I was neutral, and no, I would not shut up as I was told to. In the end, they threatened to have me removed from my duties, and I am sad to say that this was very typical of the attitude back then. I don’t think anyone said anything to the Russians about it. There were far too many concerns about Russian sensitivity at the time, like don’t go upsetting our Russian comrades, and things like that. The crimes committed though were very real and very ugly. It stays with, you things like that, when you have to put stitches into women who have been sodomized. Can you imagine having to do that duty, well I did. I saw firsthand the pain, helplessness and suffering.