Cold Victory

“Maybe,” Georgina conceded, but the shock had turned to indignation, “but those girls aren’t out there selling themselves for fun! Every single encounter, whether it’s transactional or not, is an act of violence!”

“For a white woman, you understand more than I expected,” Anna remarked, giving Georgina an approving look.

“Anna! What does race have to do with this?”

“Just that blacks are more likely to be victims. I don’t imagine you knew many girls like these where you grew up.”

“No,” Georgina admitted, “but I’m not deaf and blind! Those girls said their fathers have rejected them, their mothers are exploiting them, and the young men who ought to be protecting and loving them, despise them instead. When I was briefed about the rapes, they were depicted as an example of Russian brutality — which they certainly were. Yet it’s the Germans callousness towards their girls that has turned victims into whores! Not to mention that it’s our troops who are now taking advantage of them day after day!” Georgina was livid with indignation.

“Now you sound like a vicar’s daughter!” Anna quipped. “No power on earth can stop cocky young men with money in their pockets from preying on poor women with nothing to sell but their bodies. There’s no point bemoaning how they got into this situation. We need to focus on what we can do to help them.”

“You and me? But what on earth can we possibly do?” Georgina protested.

“You took the first step by encouraging them to become part of the chorus. That made them part of something respectable. This sewing course is important, too, because it gives them skills useful for a lifetime. Provided I can get access to antibiotics, I can treat their infections, and I was thinking about offering a first aid course. Maybe we could ask Jasha to give cooking lessons, too. What do you think?”

“Frankly,” Georgina replied sharply, still too incensed to be positive, “that all sounds frivolous! After the horrors they have endured and considering the situation they’re in, sewing and cooking classes are almost insulting. They need to recover their self-respect!”

“But the best way to regain that is for them to stop selling themselves,” Anna countered. “My aunt was raped when she was 13, but she was rescued from a life on the streets by a kind woman who took her in, helped her put her baby up for adoption, and gave her a job for life — yes, a job as a servant, but a servant who is very much a part of the family. She’s had a good and fulfilling life, and the child of that rape was adopted and has done even better. We can’t give all these girls a new home, but we can help them find other ways to make a living.”

“Anna!” Georgina protested, “They can earn more in a weekend than a German teacher earns in a month. The same is doubly true for nurse’s aides and household staff.”

“I know that, but girls addicted to the money they can earn on the streets don’t bother to go to school. The girls who crave luxuries don’t take time off trawling for customers to sing in a chorus — and they don’t sign up for sewing lessons. The girls in the class aren’t a representative sample of Berlin’s streetwalkers. They are a self-selected subset of those girls engaged in transactional sex, who take an interest in other things and want a different future. Silvie doesn’t want that baby, and she doesn’t want to keep living this life. Hannah and Petra are the same. Although I’m not sure about Dietlinde, I believe Gisela and Ulrike, despite seeming brash and cynical, haven’t accepted that they are as worthless as society tells them they are — which is why they are embittered and cynical. If we can show them a way to get back on the respectable side of the street, I think they’ll take it.”

“But what they want most is a young man to love them and cherish them as they had every reason to expect,” Georgina reflected sadly. “They want to be respectable wives and mothers.”

“Of course,” Anna agreed gently, “but we can’t bring back the dead or undo the damage that has been done to them. All we can do is try to offer them a different future.”

“And you think cooking and sewing and first aid can help?”

“Well, it’s all we’ve got,” Anna reasoned, “and it doesn’t hurt to try, does it?”

The only possible answer for a woman like Georgina was “No.”