Frau Mutter Renate

When I was a child, I knew this much: if I didn’t become a journalist, I would end up a prostitute. Because the one thing I never wanted was to lie to a man the way my mother did. “I love you.” She said it and killed love with the same breath. You can’t choose your mum, no matter how fiercely you want to love her. I couldn’t. I tried to raise her, to educate her, to carry her chaos into some kind of order. I failed. Every second year I ended up back in the children’s home—two years locked into a cycle of discipline, absence, abandonment. Our home was under the protection of the Polish Navy. Soldiers everywhere. For the obedient kids, they organised military camps—two weeks of drills, uniforms, rifles, shouting orders. I wanted in so badly. That was the birthplace of my fascination with the army. Not because I was aggressive, not because I wanted to kill—but because I wanted structure, command, a place where my heart could stop being the villain and start being just a soldier. When I stood there, a child with a rifle in my hands, I felt something I had never felt before: control. My mother couldn’t beat me there. No knives flying. No chaos. Just a uniform, a command, and the illusion of safety. It wasn’t aggression. It was survival. The rifle wasn’t a weapon to me, it was a shield. And here’s the thing: my story isn’t unique. Research tells us that children who grow up in institutions, in foster homes, in broken families—those who carry early trauma—are far more likely to be drawn towards the army. Not because they want to fight. But because the army promises something they have never had: structure, belonging, and a way to stop feeling guilty for simply existing. A U.S. study on soldiers with PTSD found that it wasn’t just the battlefield that broke them—it was the childhood battlefield they carried inside. Early neglect, abuse, the constant sense of danger. That was the true training ground. And once you’ve grown up in a war at home, marching into a war in uniform doesn’t feel so strange. It feels like home with rules. In the Polish children’s homes of the nineties, there was an unwritten law: if you cried, you declared yourself guilty. Nobody stopped to think that maybe you cried because the shouting reminded you of violence, or because your nervous system was already wired to panic. No. Crying meant weakness. Crying meant shame. And so, when the military camp came, I wanted in. Twice I made it. Twice I stood there, holding a weapon, pretending I wasn’t the child who had been locked in isolation rooms for stealing or crying. Twice I believed that a uniform could erase my chaos. To make it clear: I wasn’t a thief. I was a child doing my mistakes only once. If I ever took something, it was a single act of survival. But in the logic of the orphanage, once you were caught, you became the guilty one forever. Other girls learned quickly that it was easy to blame me. And I never knew how to defend myself. So I grew up with a dream of the army. Not because I wanted to kill, but because I believed a weapon could stop people from hurting me. That military training could function like armour, like magic—like Xena, the warrior princess I saw on TV in the nineties. If I carried a rifle, no one would choke me again, no one would push me under water until I stopped struggling. I only wanted to be human. And I wasn’t alone. Studies show that many children raised in institutions, in broken homes, or with violent mothers, are drawn to the military. Not because of bloodlust, but because the army offers what childhood never gave them: rules, structure, protection.

• A study on U.S. soldiers with PTSD revealed that the strongest predictor of trauma symptoms wasn’t combat, but childhood abuse and neglect (ScienceDaily, 2012).

• Research on active-duty soldiers confirmed the same: childhood maltreatment—emotional neglect, physical violence—was directly linked to later psychiatric distress (PubMed, 1996).

• And reports on former East German children’s homes show that trauma, violence, and institutional neglect leave scars that shape adult lives, decisions, and identities (MDR, 2022).

I wasn’t an exception. I was a pattern. A child trained by chaos, seeking order in uniforms, dreaming of safety behind the barrel of a gun.

Now I’m a grown woman. Not a teenager anymore.

At 19 I moved to Germany. I truly believed I could achieve something in a country where women were said to be equal. I can’t even remember if Angela Merkel was already in power. But in Poland the story was simple: In Germany, women do what they want. In Poland, patriarchy still ruled.

I was sold. ( But that’s another story…)

After I escaped the brothel, I was lost. Directionless. And then I met Dennis, a Bundeswehr officer with Russian roots. I liked him. One day, I accompanied him to a test. Three men in uniform were standing there. I was still completely lost in my own existence. Part of me wanted nothing more than to be a housewife, bring Dennis a couple of children, and hide away in silence. But then there were the uniforms. Three men talking among themselves, watching me closely. After a few minutes, one of them stepped forward and said: “The lady will go to the Navy. The man will take the test.”

I laughed. “The lady will go to the couch. Nowhere else.”

He didn’t understand. He said I wasn’t too small, that delicate women were valuable in the Navy. I told him about my weak periods, thinking it would end the conversation. Instead, he said the Bundeswehr had a second educational path—I could finish my Abitur in a single year, not in four. And once I had my Abitur, I could outrank Dennis, even without a German passport. Marriage could fix that, he added. In three years I could be naturalised, high status, uniform, respect.

I only grinned. What was I supposed to say?

Later, in Israel, I had the same conversations again and again. With women soldiers. With American volunteers. With men in uniform. Why didn’t you join? You would be a perfect soldier.

And every time I said: Because I have authority issues.

They laughed. They told me the Mossad doesn’t even need respect for authority. They need people who protect instinctively, who make quick decisions, who risk without hesitation.

The truth? I wasn’t fearless. I was reckless. I didn’t see risks, because secretly, I wanted to die.

And such people—people who no longer have anything to lose—fit perfectly into armies. Because what is supposed to hold us back, to keep us alive, to keep us safe—was already stolen from us in childhood. I chose not to fight.

I chose not to wear the uniform, not to march, not to obey. In Germany, for the first time, I met people outside of barracks and brothels. People from the medieval arena, from retro circles, who showed me that it was fine to take off the army trousers and the Doc Martens and still be someone. Still be a woman. Still be alive. Not everyone gets that chance.

I was abused—again and again. Not by strangers with exotic names, not by Ahmed or Alejandro. No. By Polish men. Abroad or at home. Always the same script, always the same lesson: trust is a battlefield. And that is why today, I am watchful. Hyperwatchful.

When I enter a room, I map the exits. I count the cameras. I scan the crowd. People call it trauma response. They call it PTSD. But when a man does the same, they ask: “Were you in the army?”

This is the paradox: what is seen as discipline, vigilance, strength in men, is seen as damage in women.

A man with scars is a hero.

A woman with scars is a diagnosis.

Women rage now, because only now they discover they never had their own names. Social media explodes with voices that once were silent: we always belonged to a man. But who claims children like me?

While my partner tries to support a boy who built him into a father figure, I see the truth. Children do not go to the army for the tempo, the discipline, the uniform. They go because they want one single thing: the power to say No.

Last year I trained with an incredible Krav Maga fighter. He told me I was difficult to train. Of course I was. Because years ago I made a decision: I will never overreact again. I will never allow myself to become dangerous to another human—even if it means that someone else abuses me, even if it means they kill me. That is my decision. But what about the children who break under the weight?

What about the boy who sees my partner, strong, disciplined, in control, and thinks: If he made it through the army, I can too.

But I see him differently. I see a broken child screaming silently so loud it gives me migraines. A child who only wants to exist.

And what about the girls? The ones who freeze when someone moves too quickly beside them. The ones who can’t live without alcohol, without pills, without smoke. Why? Because no one ever told them: You are human. You have a body. You have a soul. You are valuable. And that is enough.

So they believe: if I just prove myself, if I advance quickly in the army, if I sacrifice my life for the greater good, then I will be free. Even if I die in a war that was never mine.

So I ask you:

Is the army really the solution?

Or is it simply acceptance?