Daily Mail
October 25, 2013
Originally published October 14, 2013
A statue that shows a Soviet soldier raping a pregnant woman as he holds a gun to her head has been removed and the artist arrested by authorities in northern Poland.The statue, entitled Komm Frau (Come Here Woman), appeared on Gdansk’s Avenue of Victory on Saturday evening.
Artist Jerzy Szumczyk told Polish Radio he had researched the subject of rape by the Red Army as it made its way across Eastern Europe between 1944 and 1945 towards Berlin.
The fifth-year student at Gdansk’s Academy of Fine Arts was so emotionally affected by what he read he felt compelled to express his feelings through art and created the sculpture.
But the Polish artist’s attempt to pay tribute to the victims was short lived and the statue was removed this morning.
Police spokeswoman Aleksandra Siewert said: ‘The artist was detained and released after questioning.
‘The matter will now be taken up on Monday by the prosecutor’s office.’
Before Germany invaded Poland in 1939, Gdansk was a free city and more than 95 per cent of people living in Gdansk at the time were German.
But millions of German women were raped by Red Army soldiers between 1944 and 1945 during the dying days of Nazis Germany.
Polish women and even Russian women released from captivity were also raped with numbers reaching 100,000.