大象传媒

Whilst doing some research into my family history in the Ukraine earlier this year I met an old woman who had flown in from Germany with her husband to try to find her long lost sister.
Whilst fleeing from her ancestral home with her family in 1945 she found herself in a convoy of civilian horsecarts which was overrun by Mongolian soldiers serving in the Russian army.

The old lady described it in German as "Hoelle auf der Welt" or 'Hell on Earth'. She witnessed her mother and older sisters being massed raped by Soviet soldiers while all the male members of all the families were taken to a field off the roadside, beaten to death and covered with a few shovels of soil. The soldiers didn't rape her because she was only 11 years old. When they were finished she could see the soil move a little here and there. She was then taken by her mother and one of the other sisters after the ordeal and struggled to get to the safety of the West. I met her in Volhynia this year and she was there to try to find her older sister who was abducted by the Soviet soldiers immediately after the incident and taken back to the Soviet Union. The Ukrainian professor found where she'd settled but unfortunately she died two years ago.
Its stories like this that should be told to explain the raw truth about man's inhumanity to man and how such a terrible war must never be allowed to happen again.

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