The “whores of the Nazis”: Malena, bourgeois monstrosity and the punishment of sexuality

Browsing through my Facebook newsfeed, I recently came across some shocking material: black and white pictures of head shaving and lynching of women after the end of World War II, in France, Italy and elsewhere. Horrifying images of mobs physically abusing and forcibly head shaving women accused of “collaboration with the enemy.” No mercy was shown for “the whores of the Nazis.”

    Who are we talking about exactly? The categories under which “collaboration with the enemy by a female” was classified were roughly four: political/ideological collaboration, it goes without saying, meaning women that actively collaborated or sympathized with the Axis cause and/or relevant organizations. Secondly, women that were accused of financial collaboration with the enemy, having benefited and profited from business dealings with the Occupying forces. Thirdly, if the woman originated from a country that had sided with the Axis. And, lastly, women accused of having forged personal relationships with occupying soldiers.

     Public lynching is neither legally nor morally acceptable as a punishment for any of the above mentioned activities. But it is particularly outrageous when it comes as a punishment of sexuality and personal relationships. I read an academic’s very succinct comment on this:

“What crime was it exactly, to sleep with an occupying soldier? What form of military cooperation was it to bear the child of a German? And why were there only women punished for their sexuality?

   I suspect that the main reason for which the “whores of the Nazis” were lynched in France and other countries was in order to hide the national responsibility, and the undeniable fact that the majority of the country collaborated with the occupation; not in bed, but giving away Jews, working in the Axis factories, and in other forms.

   Equally savage was the rape of German women by explicit directive of the Red Army. Which war crime had they committed, and how an actual war crime in reprisal could work as a punishment of the former?

  Pure vengeance never equals to more than concealment of our own failures, using the worst prejudices and actually destroying the moral superiority of a just cause.”

   

   I would like to throw the spotlight on the last phrase, “... actually destroying the moral superiority of a just cause.” Having had a grandfather that fought in the war against Nazism and a grandmother that suffered thoroughly because of this, I could not agree more. These acts of cruel “vengeance” destroyed the moral superiority of the just and holy cause of fighting Nazism. These acts followed in the ideological, vindictive trail of inhumane overkills such as Hiroshima and Nagasaki and, as many jurists have claimed through the decades, the legally flawed Nuremberg trials.

 Who perpetrated these acts of “vengeance” and why? Usually it was a mob of “indignant citizens” acting based on a sense of self-proclaimed moral superiority, unable to accept in their communities “tainted women”, “the whores of the Nazis”.  These were people that, deeply ashamed of their own insufficiency and cowardliness, thought they could steal some of the War veterans’ splendour by attacking the weaker. One attacked woman outnumbered by ten. This was:

“Jealousy masqueraded as moral outrage, because people envied the food and entertainment these women had received as a result of their conduct.   Some were daubed with tar, some stripped half naked, some marked with swastikas in paint or lipstick. [...] Women almost always were the first targets, because they offered the easiest and most vulnerable scapegoats, particularly for those men who had joined the resistance at the last moment. Revenge on women represented a form of expiation for the frustrations and sense of impotence among males humiliated by their country's occupation. One could almost say that it was the equivalent of rape by the victor.”

   I will never forget the first time I watched Giuseppe Tornatore’s film “Malena”. Even though the film, overall, did not overwhelm me, there is this specific scene that haunts me up to this day. In plainer terms, it makes my stomach turn and fills me with burning rage. We watch a woman, who thought her husband dead at war and who had slept with German occupying officers, getting lynched by a mob of “respectful houswewives” of her town, on Liberation Day, while the men, that had so much admired and venerated her over the years, stand as hapless by-watchers. A few days later, we see the other side of the coin: Malena’s husband has made it back from the war, a war veteran missing one arm. As they stroll peaceful through the small town’s market, heads turn right and left and greet them both respectfully. They can still gossip away as much as they want, but the married couple has been re-instated as a member of their “respectful” community. Their victim is not weak anymore. She has gone back to the same cage of social conventions that they’re in.

   Giuseppe Tornatore has managed to make a very strong dramatic statement on this obscure and monstrous corner of WWII history. He managed to vividly and pungently depict a wide range of emotions and uncomfortable truths: how much jealousy is hidden behind these atrocities, how much Christian guilt, how much sexual deprivation and puritanism, how much grudge towards an exceptionally beautiful and sensual woman… And how many of these “respectful housewives”  wouldn’t have switched positions with her any day, for any price, for a life of food, make-up and nice dresses, only if they had the guts to go against the social conventions…

     Watching a woman getting lynched by other women as a punishment of her sexuality, I cannot help but wonder: is it maybe ourselves, women, that have pushed the situation to these extremes and are equally responsible for our victimization? Women being the sidelined an, in many parts of the world, still oppressed majority, is it our fault that we didn’t raise more open-minded boys and girls? Is it our responsibility that we have not fully realized that we are simply and plainly “the other half of the sky”?

      So, here is what I suggest: next time we are about to celebrate a major national holiday, another anniversary of a glorious war won, of another national struggle that, through sacrifice and valor, was brought to its illustrious ending, let us take a minute to remember and ponder on all those lives of women and children ended or stigmatized. The perishing of these lives, the killing of those dreams never served any military purpose. It serves just as another proof of what I read recently in one of my favourite Greek columns:

“I believe that in revolutions, even if they start out of justified and holy indignation, women and children are (once again) victims greeted with great indifference; the weak are the ones that continue to suffer even during the re-adjustment period.”