뉴스레터

Historian Regina Muhlhauser is a senior researcher at the Hamburg Foundation for the Advancement of Academy and Culture and one of the founders of the international research group <Sexual Violence in Armed Conflict> (www.warandgender.net). Her main research topics include issues such as armed conflict, gender violence, and sexuality with a particular interest in the study of sexual aggression during World War II, not only by aggressor countries like Germany and Japan but also by Allied forces. She believes that to prevent sexual violence and respect women's rights, it is crucial to shift global citizens' awareness and listen to the voices of local activists and victims, beyond holding the aggressor nations accountable.

Interviewee: Regina Muhlhauser

Senior Researcher,

Hamburg Foundation for the Advancement of Research and Culture

Interviewer: Park Jung-ae, Research Fellow at the Korea-Japan Historical Affairs Research Institute, Foundation

Q. I'm curious about what made you start researching wartime sexual violence.

A. I became interested in this issue in the mid-1990s when I was a university student. I attended seminars on fascism and World War II, and I also worked as an assistant at a memorial hall for a Nazi concentration camp in Germany.

During that time, there was a feminist debate about women victims of National Socialism, World War II, and the Holocaust, considering them as either victims, perpetrators, or substitutes. This affair led me to start thinking about the gendered experiences of war and violence, as well as their relation of dynamics. In 1994 and 1996, I came to Korea to support the struggles for justice of ‘comfort women’ survivors, and I also participated in the Women's International War Crimes Tribunal 2000 for the Trial of Japanese Military Sexual Slavery held in Tokyo. I was deeply impressed by the courage of survivors who shared their experiences. This inspired me to ask what my grandfather's generation did to local women, girls, sometimes boys, and men in the occupied territories.

Q. Learning about the stories of Korean victims and going through various activities has transformed you.

A. Yes, thanks to the survivors of the 'comfort women,' I have gained an understanding of how pervasive such violence was during past wars. After returning to Germany, my colleague Choi Mira and I wrote a book about the Korean ‘comfort women’ and presented it at a public event. On the day, a German woman approached us and said, “I went through the same thing”. Around the end of World War II, many German women were raped by Allied soldiers. However, the perpetrators were liberation forces who fought against the Nazis, and the victims were German women who are from the aggressor nation, making it politically difficult to speak out.

After the Women's International War Crimes Tribunal 2000, I finally realized how little we knew about German soldiers as perpetrators of sexual crimes. It was about when I just began writing a book titled 『Sex and Nazi Soldiers: Violent, Commercial, and Consensual Encounters during the Soviet War, 1941-1945』. I discovered that German soldiers committed rape and other forms of sexual violence.

Soldiers engaged in secretive sexual transactions with women under the pretext of providing protection or food and even had ‘romantic relationships’ with local women. The army headquarters were aware of this, but instead of punishing them, they attempted to control and manage them. The most extensive measure was to establish military brothels. Some women worked for money here, while others became sexual slaves. However, even women who were paid also experienced sexual violence and oppression.

Q. I'm curious if there was any backlash when you talked about the past sexual violence of the German military in Germany. It must be a very sensitive issue.

A. When my book was published, there were two types of reactions. I received letters from veterans accusing me of bringing disgrace to the German military and the German state. There were even physical threats, so I didn’t post my photo online. On the other hand, many positive reviews came from the media, celebrating the fact that such crimes were finally exposed. However, no one asked what this type of crime meant for the survivors, or how it affected the perpetrator's family relationships. People accepted such violence as obvious and normal affairs. The materials I analyzed weren’t even ‘classified documents’; many historians had already seen them before. Do you know why they haven’t addressed this issue? Because they implicitly believed that it was “something that happened in every war”. Furthermore, even if they found the violence horrific, they didn't feel the need to analyze or research it. Not only historical deniers but also such a lack of awareness is the problem.

Q. Germany is often perceived as a country that deeply reflects on its history, yet the reactions to sexual crimes seem similar everywhere.

A. The German government, unlike Japan, has willingly acknowledged the fact that Germany committed horrific crimes during World War II and the Holocaust. For example, in 1970, German Chancellor Willy Brandt knelt in front of the monument commemorating the 1943 Jewish Ghetto Uprising in Warsaw, Poland. It was a gesture of seeking forgiveness for the crimes committed by the German military during World War II. Additionally, starting from the 1970s and 1980s, German civic organizations have been actively engaged in establishing memorials and museums. However, this does not mean that Germany is willing to offer reparations to individual victims. Similar to Japan, Germany also claims that everything has been resolved through the payment of reparations to occupied countries' governments after the war. Furthermore, the issue of sexual violence is noticeably absent from discussions about memorials and reparations. This is because no claimants assert that Germany acknowledges responsibility for this violence. In Asia, ‘comfort women’ survivors have been encouraged to step forward directly through active civil movements. In Europe, there have not been similar efforts.

Q. ‘Comfort women’ survivors are those who endured the violence of war and the indifference of the post-war period. What was the most impressive thing when you first met them?

A. When I first came to Korea, I was a 23-year-old student from a middle-class family in Germany. I felt ashamed to inquire about the kind of sexual violence Korean grandmothers faced when they were my age. So, I tried to observe them from a distance without asking direct questions. However, the grandmothers were not ashamed at least towards us. They laughed a lot when teaching us how to play flower cards. During my three-month stay in Korea, whenever we attended the weekly Wednesday demonstrations, hearings, and visited the 'House of Sharing,' the survivors extended their hands to us. Once, Grandma Kang Duk-kyung invited us to her room and showed

us how she was forcibly taken to the front line and how the soldiers fixed wooden sticks in the ground. Then she laid down on the floor and covered herself with a blanket. She demonstrated how soldiers built the tents for comfort facilities and told us about it. Grandma Kang Duk-kyung told us, “You are young and from a foreign country,

so you are the seeds that will spread our stories to the world”. She seemed to know exactly what she was doing. She was a political activist, and it's clear that she wanted us to get involved. Although the grandmothers had such a hard life, both physically and mentally, and had to endure so much pain, they never gave up hope.

Q. Most of the victims have passed away without realizing their wishes. Someone argue that this issue needs to be resolved while survivors are still alive. What are your thoughts on this?

A. The most important thing for us now is to support the needs of the last survivors and enable them to spend the rest of their lives in peace. I think the Japanese government should take this opportunity to officially and directly apologize to the survivors and seek forgiveness from them.

Q. During your recent visit to Korea, you participated in the Wednesday demonstration. The atmosphere there has changed significantly over the past few years. How did you feel about it?

A. I was very upset when I first saw that Korean deniers occupied the area around the ‘Statue of Peace’ where the Wednesday demonstration was held. They are trying to turn this issue into a conflict between Korea and Japan, and they brand the participants of the Wednesday demonstration, as well as prominent activists like Yoon Jung-ok, as anti-Japanese. This is clearly incorrect. The ‘comfort women’ issue is not merely a matter between Korea and Japan, but a women’s rights issue in a patriarchal society and a human rights issue in a post-war decolonized society. I believe it’s necessary to shift the discourse so that deniers cannot exploit and instrumentalize this issue for their ideological purposes. However, my concern is that this might be difficult in the current political situation, where supporters of ‘comfort women’ are divided into several groups.

Q. There are Holocaust deniers in Germany as well. What would happen if they behaved like the people you saw at the Wednesday demonstration?

A. According to the German criminal code, the public, who tolerate, deny, or trivialize mass killings, crimes against humanity, or war crimes in a manner that incites hatred or violence and is likely to disturb public peace, are subject to criminal punishment. For example, if a neo-Nazi were to deny Auschwitz, one can report it to the police. Then an investigation might follow, and it could lead to a trial. It’s not all the time that the government handles such matters perfectly, but at least the possibility exists.

Q. In what aspects do you think this foundation's academic conference is meaningful?

A. It was an extremely inspiring meeting, with a special combination of experts, topics, and approaches. I realized the importance of questioning the history before the Japanese military ‘comfort women’ system. This allowed us to emphasize the continuity between the pre-war and post-war periods while examining the differences between countries. In Germany and Europe, this long-standing tradition hasn't been deemed significant until now. It's also important to be more curious about how women navigated the state’s sexual governance policies, or the sexual slavery systems at that time.

Q. One of the purposes of this conference was to intervene not only in the current Russo-Ukrainian War but also in the everyday situation of sexual violence.

A. What concerns me is that the academic discussions surrounding sexual violence in armed conflicts seem to be disconnected from what is happening in Ukraine, Syria, Afghanistan, and others.

Baek Jea-ye, who was a presenter at this conference, spoke about the most influential literature in the United States at the moment and criticized the lack of local knowledge in these studies. What I'd like to add is that the first responders to victims of sexual violence in conflict areas are, by and large, local women activists. However, their experiences and knowledge are hardly considered or documented in academic or political discussions. Moreover, their knowledge has tended to be pushed aside in major debates in the last few years.

This might be because their knowledge openly invites criticism of the gendered power structures that enable sexual violence in war. But, to gain a deeper understanding of such violence and to explore who did what to whom, when, and why, activists and scholars from different regions, backgrounds, and disciplines must share their knowledge and combine diverse perspectives. I believe that research on ‘comfort women’ in Korea can be a good example of

such an approach.

Q. Alongside your research on wartime sexual violence, you have also been steadily involved in practical activities. What plans do you have for the future?

A. My international colleagues and I have just started an oral history project to document and revitalize knowledge about feminists and regions regarding sexual violence in armed conflicts. We are conducting interviews with feminist activists from the 1990s, primarily from former Yugoslavia, who remained active even after the conflict, to question how they perceived these issues and what actions they took. The feminist movement at that time was very international. Women from Bosnia and other parts of former Yugoslavia interacted with women from Korea, the Philippines, Japan, and engaged in conferences, courts, and other activities. Therefore, we are trying to create an organization chart of those who are globally involve in these movements. We hope this will help the younger generation of activists and scholars understand and work on this issue.