The Contribution of Women to Peace and Reconciliation

Many came to südost. It was not possible to send them away, for there
was now nowhere else for them to go. In therapeutic facilities, they
would have had to wait up to two years for the treatment slot. Südost
offered them the opportunity to come to a supervised self-help group
for two hours, one day a week. They didn’t want to speak in front of oth -
ers, for fear of being considered crazy. In the group, they soon learned
that the others had the same symptoms – the normal results of the horror
they had experienced. The first group session was attended by eight
people, the second by twenty, and the fourth by 540. Soon, a hundred
men and women gathered for every meeting. Some had trembling
hands, others had no voices, still others feared closed windows.
The women needed their own group, for many had suffered rape and
could not talk about it in front of men. Initially, the psychotherapist Christiane
Angelmann-Küster took over the women’s group with over 300
women. The group of former camp inmates included 178 men. After a
while, the group was broken down into smaller groups. At times, fortyfive
psychotherapists at südost accompanied thirty groups and a number
of traumatized individuals.
In the groups, the people learned that each person has his or her own
set of scales, and that there can be no comparison, since for each person,
what he or she has experienced is what is the worst. In those two
hours a week, some people could only listen before they were able to
speak; some could only do so after two years. The group sessions developed
into places of trust, in which they learned again to be a part of
a living society. In war, people become part of a mass, they are robbed
of their individuality and feel afraid and lonely. In the therapy group, they
were able to share their bitter experiences, and also their feelings of
shame and guilt. Some fathers reported that they were unable to bear
the noises that their children made, or if their wives said something they
didn’t like, and that they even became violent. They needed a lot of time
to feel and act “normal” again.
Many people were far enough along after two or three years of therapy
that they were able to speak about their hatred and their revenge fantasies.
They told how they wanted to torture or kill their tormentors. One
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