We have already written about the brutal rapes committed by Soviet soldiers on the Germans in the final phase of World War II. However, thousands of women of other nationalities were also victims of the Red Army soldiers. Polish women were no exception.
Poland found itself in a different situation than Germany, Romania or Hungary, as it was formally an ally of the USSR. In that case, revenge was out of the question. Nevertheless, Soviet soldiers stated during one incident that:" they are fighting for the third year for Poland, so they have the right to all Polish women ". As it turned out, this was not an isolated approach.
A Polish-language propaganda poster by Willibald Kraina, the aim of which was to encourage Poles to fight the Red Army (source:public domain).
It is extremely difficult to define the scale of sexual violence of Red Army soldiers against Polish women. First of all, there is no account of the victims or direct witnesses of these events. The main source of information are police reports, private letters intercepted by censorship, or confidential official correspondence between various bodies of the new government.
Girl, you prima sort!
Also Polish women, along with German women, became the target of sexual assault in Prussia by drunken soldiers. Antony Beevor presented in the book "Berlin 1945. The Fall" this is the situation:
As alcohol warmed the soldiers' soul and body, the nationality of the victims didn't matter anymore. Lew Kopielew described the incident in Olsztyn, when he heard a "terrible scream" and saw a girl "with long blonde hair in a disarray, in a torn dress" who screamed frighteningly:"I'm Polish! Jesus Maria! I'm a pole!". The girl was chased by two drunk tankers, and all this took place in front of other soldiers and officers.
It seems that the first rapes in Poland took place in January 1945, right after the occupation of Krakow. There were cases of Polish women in Poznań tricked by the Red Army's pleas for help in treating the wounded and then brutally raped. Similar events took place in Gdańsk, where Polish women working in the Soviet garrison were "raped 15 times" .
Beasts in Soviet uniforms
Such situations repeated practically all over the country. Hordes of drunken soldiers roamed the villages and towns and organized regular manhunts for women. Entire villages were even pacified. This happened in the vicinity of Łódź, where on July 3, 1945, Soviet soldiers attacked the villages of Zalesie, Olechów, Feliksin and Huta Szklana, robbing houses and raping women, which resulted in a panic escape of all residents.
There were even kidnappings in broad daylight in city centers. The vicinity of railway stations was especially dangerous. There were also robberies on trains. The Polish teacher wrote:
On January 8 [1946] at On the 1st, during my return from the Christmas holidays from Radom to Szprotawa, between Legnica and Szprotawa, masses of Bolsheviks entered the car in which I was going, as well as other carriages, they began to torture and beat men, rob suitcases and rape women from whom neither one did not escape this disgrace and rape.
The Red Army soldiers entering Poland quickly showed that they pose an even greater threat to women than the Wehrmacht soldiers. The illustration shows the inhabitants of Praga in Warsaw welcoming the Red Army soldiers in August 1944 (source:public domain).
Even little girls have become the target of sexual abuse. How meaningful this police report from June 1945 is:
On the night of June 25 this year. at. 2nd to K. Wincenty's apartment in the district Kraków was attacked by two Soviet soldiers who raped a 4-year-old girl and then robbed a wardrobe ". fords in Masuria
From February 1945 on the so-called In the "regained territories" in Masuria and Pomerania, the foundations of Polish administration began to be installed. Gradually, an influx of settlers began to occupy farms abandoned by the Germans.
Much is said about the rape of the Red Army soldiers on the Germans, but it must be remembered that also many Polish women fell victim to the Red Army soldiers. In the photo, two German women from Metgethen (now a district of Kaliningrad), raped and then murdered with their children (source:public domain).
Poles quickly became the target of aggression by the soldiers of the Soviet army still stationed here in large numbers. In the then Masurian District, the district staroste in Szczytno, Walter Późny, reported in August 1945:
Complaints about thefts, robberies and rapes committed by military units located in the district keep coming from the Polish side. There have been cases recently that the settlers were shot to defend their property, and that the military raped their daughters in the presence of their parents.
Happy Red Army soldiers. At first glance, they seem friendly, but appearances are deceptive. Wherever the Red Army entered, rape, robbery and murder spread (source:public domain).
Similar accidents took place in all poviats of Warmia and Mazury. This led to a mass exodus of Polish people just settling in these lands. Stanisław Watras, the starost of Reszel, made an alarm in September 1945:
In the face of the lack of adequate protection and a sudden deterioration of security relations, and thus mass incidents of looting, robbery and raping women by Soviet soldiers, the settlers leave their farms en masse and return to the center of the country. In some counties, this escape affected up to 60% of the settlers.
In January 1946, the Soviets kidnapped an employee of the Column Against Epidemiology in Bartoszyce, who was robbed of money and clothes, beaten, and raped by about 30 soldiers . At the same time, in the village of Likusy in Olsztyn, Red Army soldiers beat and raped a 73-year-old woman.
Scale of barbarism
We will probably never know how many Polish women fell victim to Soviet soldiers. With regard to Czechoslovakia, it is assumed that 10-20 thousand were raped. women. In Poland, through which the main axis of the Soviet army's attack on Berlin ran, there must have been many more of them.
Monument of gratitude to the Red Army in Krynica Morska. The women who fell victim to the rape of the Red Army were certainly not grateful to the "liberators" (photo:Dariusz Kaliński).
Shortly after the war, in the years 1945–1947, there was a sharp increase in the incidence of venereal diseases, which took the proportions of a real pandemic. The annual number of new infections with syphilis was around 100,000, and 150,000 for gonorrhea. How many of them resulted from the rape is unknown. 
During the communist era, it was a taboo subject and the authorities were simply not interested in carrying out any credible research on this issue. It seems that also after 1989, this issue does not function sufficiently in the social consciousness, and the torturers are still called liberators.
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Thanks to the book by Dariusz Kaliński entitled "Red Plague" you will learn the truth about the soviet "liberation" of Poland.
Editor:Roman Sidorski; photo edition:Rafał Kuzak
Find out the truth about the alleged liberation of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth in the book "Czerwony plague. What was the liberation of Poland really like? ”: