How women endured the war

According to some estimates, 235 million people lived under German occupation during World War II in the area between Norway, Greece, Russia and France. Among the most noticeable changes in the population of the occupied territories during World War II was the impact that the occupation had on gender and generational relations and the structure of society. Men were in military units, prisoners of war or forced labor, while women, children, youth and the elderly stayed at home. They were the groups that had to bear the burdens of everyday life under occupation.

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Steering it did not suddenly enter the lives of the inhabitants of Yugoslavia during 1941, but it gradually entered them, ever since its beginning on the European continent in 1939. In that period, war became a frequent topic of social conversation, and the presence of war gradually permeated all spheres of life. The population was particularly unsettled by the instructions for defense against air attacks, which could foreshadow the nature of future warfare. The local press reported in early 1941 about supply problems, rising prices and speculation, which were problems that would chronically plague the population during the years of occupation. The absence of men and the reduction of society to predominantly female it took place gradually and started even before the Kingdom of Yugoslavia was invaded, as a large number of men were called up for military exercises. Expectations that women would also contribute to the war effort by engaging in medical services existed on the eve of the Second World War in the Kingdom of Yugoslavia, when a large number of medical courses were organized and women were trained for this type of work.

Fighting sentiments and patriotism were also expressed by women in the period after the military coup and on March 27, and according to the memories of the politician Dragoljub Jovanović, they especially condemned the insufficient fighting spirit of the Yugoslav troops in the April War. Then came the occupation, and many mothers, like the mother of the communist Mitra Mitrović, got ready to travel and search for their mobilized sons in order to dress them in civilian clothes and thus save them from being prisoners of war. "Now the mothers wandered the roads and railways, with the bundles of the remaining civilian clothes of their remaining sons, which they are looking for behind the wires of the temporary prison camps. And my mother followed her son." (Mitra Mitrović, War journey)

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Adapting to the new situation, after the shock of a quick defeat, the disintegration of the country and the occupation, imposed daily needs, first of all, the procurement of food. It was necessary to go outside the house for supplies, and within a limited time imposed by the curfew. It was mostly women who came out, since the men hid to avoid being declared prisoners of war or sent to forced labor. Village women from the surrounding villages mostly came to the market in the cities to sell products.

THE ATTITUDE OF THE OCCUPIERS TOWARDS WOMEN

In the occupied European territories, the Nazi regime generally did not seek to impose its ideological views. The experience of occupation depended on the economic and military importance of the occupied peoples, but also on the status given to them in the racist evaluation and categorization of peoples. This caused the Nazi occupation regime to be much milder in Western European areas than in Eastern areas inhabited by Slavic peoples. In addition, the occupation brought significant changes and difficulties in all areas, which influenced the formation of a special, occupied society in which women played a special role.

Since there were no women at the top of the collaborationist leadership and government, they exerted influence indirectly, often by establishing close ties with the occupier. Members of the German minority and women who found employment with the occupation authorities had a more favorable position and good relations with the occupation authorities. Women could find employment with the occupiers as support staff, and women who agreed to work in the intelligence apparatus had a special position. As informants, women achieved temporary cooperation with the occupation authorities by filing individual reports against people in their environment or established regular cooperation in the status of intelligence collaborators. Some cooperated with other warring parties and were unreliable in their work.

Among them, Vera Pešić played a notable role in the territory of occupied Serbia, who, among other tasks, was engaged in an attempt to form a unique women's association in which she would have an important leadership role, but her attempts ended in failure due to strong resistance. a woman from pre-war women's associations.

In contrast to the women who collaborated with the occupier, a large number of women were killed by the occupier. In Serbia, women became camp detainees based on racial criteria, as Jews and Roma women, but also as hostages due to the participation of the closest family members in resistance movements and due to personal participation and support of illegal movements. Although they were partly spared suffering in reprisals, women suffered greatly in punitive expeditions in the field, and a large number of them were imprisoned in camps. During 1941, women who were considered racially undesirable constituted the most numerous category of camp detainees in Serbia. Since the male part of the Jewish population in Serbia was destroyed in 1941, the remaining Jews - old men, women and children - were imprisoned in the Sajmište camp until the spring of 1942, when they were exterminated with the help of a special truck with a gas chamber. In addition to having to face the death of male family members, Jewish women were forced to witness the suffering and suffering of their children and to suffer together with them.

SEXUAL COLLABORATION AND WOMEN'S HAIRCUT

Relationships with the occupier could be both social and professional, but sexual and love relationships caused the most reactions. The occupation shook family life in European territory due to numerous relationships of German soldiers with women in the occupied territories. Contrary to the expectations that they should turn to the family, some women in the occupied territories threatened the national unity through sexual relations with the occupier. Although entering into intimate relations with the occupier had no effect on the outcome of the war, nor was it a legal offense, that act strongly influenced public opinion. The sexual collaboration of women, as a type of exclusively female collaboration, was punished extrajudicially - by shaving heads, which was a widespread phenomenon in many occupied European territories. Shaving the heads of women who were in intimate relationships with the occupier was also a form of re-establishment of male dominance and revenge of previously defeated men.

Women entering into intimate relations with the occupier was recorded in Serbia during the First World War, and was expected by the public at the very beginning of the occupation of Serbia in the Second World War. As in other occupied territories, prostitution increased significantly in Serbia, brothels were introduced for German soldiers, and efforts were made to control and prevent the spread of venereal diseases. Apart from professional prostitution, there was also a significant number of women who entered into intimate relationships with representatives of the German authorities in anticipation of privileges, primarily in supply.

While in most European countries the forced cutting of women's hair was mainly a reaction of the outraged public, in Serbia it was openly propagated in the press of the Ravna Gora movement and became part of the strategy of this movement in order to preserve public morals. Although the punishment of women by forced haircuts is surprisingly similar throughout occupied Europe, this act often, in addition to punishing women who were intimate with the occupier, also involved punishing women who engaged in other forms of collaboration. In Serbia, it was also used as a method for dealing with women who were considered ideological opponents. The post-war condemnations of the communist authorities, in addition to real offenses, were also motivated by ideological differences. The women were mostly accused of having, in addition to intimate relationships with representatives of the occupation authorities, also intelligence cooperation, which in many cases was difficult to prove.

POLICY OF COLLABORATIONIST AUTHORITIES

The Nazi occupation regimes mainly relied on traditional, conservative, anti-communist forces that emphasized patriarchal values ​​and encouraged the cult of motherhood and sexual conservatism. The anti-feminist performance of the collaborators of the occupiers was in collision with the growth of the role of women to whom the occupation imposed new challenges and duties. The need for employment and increased engagement of women in terms of providing for and taking care of the family required a significant activity of women, who, due to the absence of their husbands, independently made decisions and led the family. The occupation increased the independence of women who experienced economic and emotional vulnerability but had to become more self-reliant and take on traditional male roles.

The occupation often represented a world without adult men, whose roles were taken over by women, and the propagated ideals - seclusion and passivity of women, were in conflict with the needs of everyday life, which required the constant engagement of women. As a result of general poverty, the everyday life of city women changed, primarily due to the decline of material standards and the necessity of adapting to new, harsher circumstances, which also influenced the appearance of rudeness, cruelty and immorality. For many women ensconced in a peaceful family life, the harsh reality of the occupation fundamentally changed their way of life and forced them to leave their previously limited circle of life and behavior. They had to ignore their previous status and engage in endless struggles with food.

Borislav Mihajlović Mihiz described his mother's life during the occupation: "Silently and without murmuring, she took on herself the entire burden of impossible occupation supplies to maintain and feed her family." She was also a private from the brave detachment of this war, from the column of mothers covered with headscarves who, clutching a bundle of textiles, the rest of the jewelry and the city's trinkets, needles, ropes, buttons, in the cold days of the occupation, left the Belgrade railway station at dawn to they cut up a kilo of cornmeal and a precious strip of bacon. And these welcomed them hardened by war and requisition and blackmailed them suddenly somehow cynically rapacious, as if they were devoted to the war, and to the city lord's nakedness that would ruin the country, and themselves. Then it was still necessary to carry that small, that huge booty, through the station guards and guards, tore it off as if you were ripping a piece from the heart and for them not to take everything, to get home before nightfall and cook the kačamak with the eternal: 'You just eat, children. , I'm full, I ate there in the village'.

In a word, my mother was also a Serbian foster wife during the war. We will not erect a monument to them. Because monuments are erected only to those who make war, not to those who, then, have to endure that war." (Borislav Mihajlović Mihiz, An autobiography about others, I)

Life was particularly difficult for refugee women who, in addition to the traumas they experienced, had to adapt to a new environment and provide conditions for the family's survival. A woman in the countryside remained neglected and subordinated, subordinate to a man and invisible to the environment, and additionally burdened with work and deprived of the possibility of social affirmation.

(To be continued)

The author is a senior researcher at the Institute for Contemporary History