Lost Red Army Children Search for Fathers

[Jaga]

this is sad but I am glad that this subject is not a taboo anymore

Lost Red Army Children Search for Fathers


By Irina Repke and Peter Wensierski

More than 60 years after the end of World War II, the children of Red Army soldiers born in eastern Germany during the Soviet occupation are now searching for their fathers with the aid of historians and the Russian media. Many of these so-called "Russian children" have endured lifelong suffering as a consequence of their situation.

Sixty-one-year-old Jan Gregor can still remember "every little gesture and every word my mother said on the day she decided to tell me the truth." His mother had just finished making the beds, recalls Gregor, who was born in the eastern German state of Brandenburg, and was smoothing the bedspread, as she always did, with her broom handle. After carefully putting the broom away, she finally came and sat on the edge of the bed, next to her son. After a long while, he said, she started to tell him her story.

Gregor remembers his mother talking very slowly and deliberately and, although only five years old at the time, he knew instantly what she meant when she talked about "being made pregnant by force."

"I was very mature for my age," he says.

Fifty-six years have passed since his mother told him the truth and for 56 years Jan Gregor has been engaged in a constant search for his father or, to be more precise, his fathers. Gregor's mother revealed to him during their bedside conversation that she had been raped by four Red Army soldiers during the final days of the war. Gregor says he'll continue searching for them "even if it takes a lifetime."

Meanwhile, Verena B., the daughter of a German mother and a Soviet soldier, has come to the end of her long search. After hearing about a "Search Show" on Russian television, she wrote asking if she could appear on it and was promptly invited to Moscow, where she got the surprise of her life. She discovered she had lots of half-brothers and half-sisters she knew nothing about -- her Russian family.

...
www.spiegel.de/international/germany/0,1518,500251,00.html

[Jaga]

For decades, the fate they suffered was a taboo subject in eastern Germany; initially in the Soviet Occupation Zone and later in the German Democratic Republic (GDR, the former East Germany). For 40 years in the GDR, posters and banners sang the praises of the "Soviet-German Friendship" and stories involving rape did not fit the image of the glorious and heroic Soviet army. The rapes that took place were swept under the carpet -- they were seldom registered, and officials looked the other way. In the old GDR days, Soviet soldiers were officially regarded as heroes who had smashed Fascism and rescued German children. They couldn't possibly have been rapists -- that, at least, is what the propaganda would have people believe.

And even within the families of "Russian Children," the whole issue has always remained a highly emotional topic, says Barbara Stelzl-Marx, deputy head of the Ludwig Boltzmann Institute in the Austrian city of Graz, which helps victims of the consequences of war conduct investigations into their circumstances. "The subject is still often a taboo in many families, even today," says Stelzl-Marx.

...

One day around noon, in the final days of the war, four Red Army soldiers marched purposefully towards the small house inhabited by the Gregor family. They wrenched open the wooden shutters, burst into the front room and attacked the young woman. She found out later that the soldiers who raped her were not Russians but Ukrainians or Crimean Tatars from the Crimean Peninsula. A farmer living nearby had given the soldiers directions to her house, so as to divert attention from his own daughters.

From then on, most people in Summerfield avoided Jan's mother, although she was the victim, just as they later avoided her son. From a very young age, he was routinely tormented by the other children in the village. "They hit me and shouted insults at me and they knocked the milk out of my hand," recalls Jan Gregor, "they kept calling me a "Russian pig" and told me I didn't need any milk."

For a long time his mother said nothing, so her son simply couldn't understand why the children called him "Ivan." It was only after school bullies had beaten him up and thrown stones at him untill he was crying with pain that the five-year-old decided he was fed up being brave. He ran home to his mother, demanding an explanation.

After telling her son what had happened, the mother went on to report the rape to the authorities. She also managed, in what was possibly the only instance of its kind, to get state support amounting to around 100 East German marks per month. Soon afterwards, Jan Gregor was sent to another school after some youngsters had threatened to tie the "Russian Child" to a tree.

[Jaga]

from the article one more peculiar fragment:

But marriage would have been impossible at the time following a decree issued in 1946 that forbade all marriages between Soviet citizens and foreigners. The law wasn't repealed until 1953, and anyone who got married illegally was guilty of high treason in the eyes of the Soviet Union and subject to harsh penalties.

As a rule, once a man had disappeared, the woman he'd loved and the children he'd fathered never found out what had happened to him. Nor could any woman claim alimony from the Soviet Union. The Russians had already taken precautions in 1944 by issuing a decree stating that illegitimate children were not related to the men who had fathered them, therefore no one had to pay anything.

[bescheid]

Jaga

It is indeed a sad situation of war children and their search for their parent. It would so seem the innocents of children suffer for the mistakes and nature of war.

I have not noticed for some time in the news print; every so often, a notice would be placed requesting information for a parent. These were war time children {now adults} searching for solder fathers and mothers. Primarily, I had noticed these searchers as being German{Lebensborn Programme} Norwegian and French. Of course it would be more logical for the Russian offspring to place the search notices in Russian and American news print.

The very most of us need to know our family and back ground, it seems a natural instinctive intrinsic need we have for a closing. And not to mention of unknown relatives never to have been met.

Charles

[Jaga]

Charles,

thanks for your comments. I also found another article about the children who were born in the lebensborn program. I will post it later.

My mother and aunts from Silesia were telling us about Soviets coming. They were living in their house, they did not behave badly but.... they were very eager to reach the boarder. My family knew that they just wanted to reach the boarder so that they could do whatever they would like with the local population.

My family knew that they raped the nuns from the German monastery nearby. This was a common knowledge.

I am also glad that this part of the history is talked about now