Replies

I wondered what had happened to my grandmother’s relatives since she was the only one of 8 siblings in East Prussia to immigrate here around 1890. I know two of her sisters, maiden ladies in their 70s committed suicide in 1945 when the Russians came in raping and brutalizing the women. One woman was a gynecologist, so she certainly must have heard what their fate might be. Others I heard had fled across the frozen Baltic in horse and sleds, which led to a number of deaths when ice broke and people drowned. Therefor, I am particularly interested in the fate of Kaliningrad. I was even told an ancestor was Mayor of Konigsberg.

So I guess you can see why I favor the Ukranians.

@gleeaikin: Not to belittle it, but your family's story is just one of millions that I've read about. Russian troops were positively medieval in their treatment of civilians everywhere they went. It's no wonder at all why German troops were welcomed as liberators in Ukraine and Georgia.

The book Bloodlands describes some of it. A book I cannot face reading for a second time.

One of the greatest crimes of the war was FDR's abandonment of Poland to Russian hegemony at Tehran. Churchill knew, but at that point was leading a nation made bankrupt by America's prewar isolationism, and could do nothing.