Sexual Violence and the Bulgarian Occupier in Yugoslavia during the Second World War

Abstract

Sexual violence in a war varies depending on the scale, form and kind of the conflict. The Bulgarian occupation of Serbian and Yugoslav territories in the First and Second World Wars had a lot of similarities both in the form and character of the occupation system, but also in how sexual violence was executed and utilised. During the Second World War, Bulgarian forces committed fewer crimes of this nature than during the First World War. Still, the use of violence and terror in response to resistance remained the same and extremely brutal against the civilians. Rape was even officially proclaimed as one of the ways of reprisal against the population in regions where rebels were active. At the same time, arbitrary attacks against civilians were punished to the greatest extent. During the so-called “punitive expeditions”, the number of rapes committed and their cruelty were highly striking. Numerous cases testify that some women were victims of violence repeatedly. The perpetrators considered neither their age nor their social and health status. Moreover, they were frequently exposed to additional humiliation, so it often happened that the rape occurred in front of family members and their closest neighbours or that the raped women were pregnant. The perpetrators of the rape were both soldiers and military officers. Some of them were repeatedly recorded in the post-war testimonies and memories of the victims as multiple culprits of this violence. The post-war recording of committed crimes of rape, which was carried out for a peace conference, although insufficiently reliable, provides illustrative data on the use of sexual violence in the war. It also testifies to the politicisation and instrumentalisation of these crimes both in war and in peace.

Keywords

• sexual violence
• rape
• Second World War
• occupation
• Bulgaria
• Yugoslavia