A Feltmadras (girl who was sleeping with a German soldier during the WW2 occupation) has her hair cut off in Aarhus, Denmark after the liberation. (1945)
It’s always easier to attack those with no power.
I’ve come to believe that the people most driven to abuse and humiliate these women were deflecting from the guilt of their own collaboration, as individuals or institutionally.
Yes, there were women who slept with German soldiers for purely opportunistic reasons, but there were also women who did what they needed to do to so they wouldn’t starve, and there were also women who had genuinely fallen in love with members of the enemy.
(A little old lady from Denmark told me once (and I paraphrase): “The occupying Germans weren’t all that bad- they were quite nice! Until the SS in the black uniforms showed up. They were nasty.”)
