Demmin's People Committed Mass Suicide To Avoid Rape And Murder By Red Army (Germany 1945)

Towards the end of World War II, hundereds of people committed mass suicide in the town of Demmin (Germany). The suicide occured during the mass panic that was provoked by the atrocities including rape, murder and pillaging committed by the soldiers of Soviet Red Army. In the spring of 1945, about nine hunderd people committed suicide by guns, razor blades, poisons while others or drowned themselves in the Peene and Tollense rivers. Several mothers killed their children before killing themselves or walked into the one of the rivers with a rock in backpack and their babies in their arms. However, the suicides were not successful in every case. Some mothers who had drowned their children were unable to drown themselves afterward. In other cases the dose of poison was lethal for the children but not for heir mothers. Even though the citizens of Demmin did not commit suicide exactly ast he same time, the closeness of the act of suicide and the fact that they killed themselves for the same reasons makes this incident a mass suicide.