The Unquestioned Crime: Sexual Violence by German Soldiers during the War of Annihilation in the Soviet Union, 1941–45

Abstract

Naum Epelfeld was 13 years old when the German army invaded Berdychev (Ukraine) on 5 July 1941. Fleeing from air raids, he and his family found shelter in the cellar of a nearby hospital. “Everybody sensed that terrible things were about to occur”, he remembered after the end of the war. Night fell. There was no light. We sat in the dark, huddled against each other, and talked in whispers. Suddenly we heard people entering the hospital building, heard orders barked in a foreign language. The noise of breaking glass and the crack of gunshots impressed themselves on my mind. It all became clear to us. The Germans were taking Berdychev. After a while two soldiers entered the cellar where we were hiding. They lit their way with flashlights and said something, but nobody understood them. Then they started to approach the people sitting on the floor and to shine their light on their faces. Eventually they stopped in front of a girl and a woman, led them into an empty room, and raped them. The girl — she was our neighbour’s daughter — was named Guste. Guste Glosman was fourteen or fifteen years old. Soon afterward, she was shot together with her parents. That was how the occupation began for me. The worst part of my life.1