The Memory of Violence: Soviet and East European Mennonite Refugees and Rape in the Second World War

Although contemporary studies of sexual violence against women are becoming more prevalent, until recently, historians have given sUght treatment to the topic of rape. Even less examined is the issue of wartime rape, although media exposA©s of widespread rape in the Bosnian conflict have similarly heightened contemporary awareness of rape as an integral part of mA1⁄4itary conflict, both as random incident and systematic strategy. Susan Brownmiller's groundbreaking study of rape, Against Our Will: Men, Women, and Rape in 1975 provided an introductory analysis to rape as a common act of war.1 While the media focus on Bosnia-Herzegovina in the early 1990s may leave the impression that wartime rape is a recent phenomenon, Brownmiller's brief survey of the history demonstrates the…