The fate of German women in the face of Soviet soldiers in the closing months of World War II and afterward is a pretty appalling one, as the Soviets took their revenge on pretty young girls and old women alike, and is pretty generally ignored, with a feeling that the Germans, as a people/ethnic group, don’t get to complain because of what they, as a people, did to others. (Likewise, the fate of Germans who lived in what became the re-bordered Poland, and the Danube-Swabians in Hungary, Czechoslovakia, and Yugoslavia, who were ethnically-cleansed away from their homelands and into Germany postwar.)
Here’s a report from Der Spiegel about a Polish sculptor attempting to bring awareness of the issue, arrested for “a possible charge of inciting racial or national hatred” and the predictable outrage of the Russians for “defiling” the memory of the Soviet soldiers. I’d love to see the Poles stand up to their most recent oppressors — but I suspect they aren’t wholly at liberty to do so.
Update: the commenters over at National Review Online think that the Poles are upset at the reminder that their town used to be German — that is, upset at the “Komm Frau” label on the sculpture. I’m skeptical of this explanation.
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