women in resistance: in the past and today
Women resisting against dictatorship, suppression and unjustness – it has always been. The courageous suffragetes for example at the beginning of the twentieth century who fight for their rights. Then the brave women during the NS regime resisting against a dictatorship. May it be as political prisoner at the concentration camp Ravensbrück or as heroine of a novel, called Charly in the Gereon Rath thrillers by Volker Kutscher. And finally lately the brave women of Iran demonstrating against suppression. At no time those conflicts are peacefully solved by the state. The resistance has a price tag: brutal violence and intimidation are often the oponent’s answer. Reactions that leave marks over generations.
Women in restistance
„Women in resistance. German political prisoners at the women concentration camp Ravensbrück: history and aftermath“, that’s the name of the exhibition which was shown at the Städtisches Museum Braunschweig until recently. Even eighty years after Hitler’s takeover the incidents from this time period and the fates connected to it are incomprehensible.
The show focuses on the vita’s of eight political active women who were arrested at the concentration camp of Ravensbrück. It is not only the shocking description of the living conditions in the camp. Also the fact that those women are not supported by their male party members is thought-provoking. One of these woman, Rita Sprengel, says: „I virtually felt the horror of the men I had to stand in for. But to me it is especially the aftermath of these women who have just survive the terror. Either because they were raped after their release by soldiers belongig to the Red Army or because the compensation for the damages suffered are rejected to them by the German government, including but not limited to their memembership to the communist party. It is not infrequently that suicide is the last resort.
It is the story of Orli Wald (1914-1962) that left me speechless. Wald survived both, concentration camp Ausschwitz and Ravensbrück suffering from severe physical and psychological annoyances. After the release beginning may 1945 she’s being raped by soldiers of the Red Army. In the 1950ies she is confronted with repeated rejections of consequences of her arrest by the German compensation office. In 1955 it claims that the psychological consequences of her arrest are internal to her person and not caused by the arrest. I have my doubts that you can be more cynical about it.
Some of them still succeeded in leading a „normal“ life after the concentration camp. I am thinking of Marth Fuchs, for example, the later first mayor of Braunschweig. An almost superhuman achievement which deserves more than just respect.
Berlin of 1936
Another but fictious example is Charlotte („Charly“) Rath from the „Gereon Rath“ book thriller series by Volker Kutscher. Kutscher describes the rise of the Nazi regime. He communicates quite clearly how radical and far-reaching this change was and how all-embracing the interventions by the administration into the single lives of everybody are.
Charly, the wife of Gereon Rath, quickly takes the appropriate measures and breaks off her trainineeship for superintendent. At first she tries to become an atorney. Upon the rejection of this carreer path by the government she signs on at the detective bureau of a former colleage who has been crowded out from the police department by the Nazis. Together they support Germans who have to flee from the regime. Both are working at the risk of their lives. Finally Charly becomes her own client.
Holy Spider
Holy Spider is a white-knuckle thriller taking place in Iran. The film is currently shown in German cinemas and retraces the story of the „spider murderer“ who kills 16 prostitutes at the beginning of 2000. Here once again, it is not only the murdering itself that shocks. It is also the society’s reaction on the brutal deeds. Saeed’s (that’s the name of the murderer) wife as well as the police are convinced that the homicides are justified. Finally it is just prostitutes who have been murdered. According to Saeed’s religious understanding it is almost his duty to clean the streets of Maschhad from this „dirt“. It is the fercency of his wife that is hard to bear. In the end it is a female journalist who hunts the women murderer down, risking her own life. A film that casts a „new“ light on the demonstrations in Iran nowadays.
