[The following is taken from a memoir of Irmgard A. Hunt, who grew up in the mountains under Hitler’s Eagles Nest during the Second World War.]
We were not at all certain what to expect from the victorious army, and when we heard that a contingent of French and Moroccan soldiers had arrived in Berchtesgaden almost simultaneously with the U.S. troops, we became alarmed and less optimistic about our personal safety. Because this was Berchtesgaden, the soldiers of both armies were given free rein to plunder the town for several days after the surrender – permission that resulted in many vivid accounts of theft and rape.
Most rapes were committed by the French and Moroccan troops, but one eyewitness report held that some U.S. soldiers who occupied several administrative buildings in Stangass, a section of Berchtesgaden, took the rings, watches, and passports of other employees and asked for schnapps and women. How a young woman was found was not said, but Alois Hamm, a civil servant, insisted that a sixteen-year-old girl was “produced” and gang-raped by the American soldiers.
I overheard Tante [German: Aunt] Susi say that the few doctors in town, even those opposed to abortions, terminated the pregnancies of young women who had been raped in early May 1945 without asking any questions of telling any secrets.
Source:
Hunt, Irmgard A. “The End At Last.” On Hitler’s Mountain: Overcoming the Legacy of a Nazi Childhood. New York: Harper Collins Publishers, 2005. 213-14. Print.
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