Ieva retweetledi
“They say: ‘Our grandfathers fought.’
But did they fight — or engage in mass rape of children in front of their parents, mass murder, torture of innocent civilians, looting, and legalized pillaging?
The atrocities committed by the so-called ‘liberators’ began long before Germany. Even in Crimea, Soviet commanders were forced to acknowledge rampant violence by Red Army soldiers against civilians. As the war moved into Eastern Europe — Western Ukraine, the Baltics, Poland, Hungary, Romania, Yugoslavia, and finally Germany — the scale of rape, torture, murder, and looting only grew.
In Poland, mass rapes of women and girls became widespread, despite Poles having nothing to do with the occupation of the USSR. This makes it impossible to explain such crimes simply as ‘revenge against Germans.’
According to British historian Antony Beevor, Soviet troops raped around two million European women during and after World War II. German historian Barbara Johr estimated that up to 600,000 women may have been raped in Berlin alone.
Numerous reports and testimonies describe horrific crimes: rape accompanied by torture, mutilation, and murder. These crimes involved not only ordinary soldiers, but, according to multiple historical accounts, also senior Soviet officers and generals.
At the same time, looting was effectively legalized. In 1944, Joseph Stalin officially allowed Soviet servicemen to send ‘trophies’ home from occupied territories. Entire train wagons of stolen property later became linked to senior commanders, including Georgy Zhukov himself.
Even after the war, investigations inside the USSR uncovered massive quantities of looted valuables, furniture, paintings, jewelry, furs, and luxury goods in Zhukov’s possession.
Some documented acts of cruelty remain almost impossible to comprehend. Witness accounts and archival materials describe torture and killings of civilians, including children, carried out by Soviet troops in occupied territories.
So when people repeat the slogan ‘Our grandfathers fought,’ the question remains:
did they liberate Europe — or leave behind another trail of terror, rape, torture, and mass violence?”
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