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Since my aunts have all now passed on and my 94 year old mother no longer has her sisters for talk therapy, I played some of this German narrative from the documentary on the phone to Mom last night and told her what i saw on the film. After she learned about the 2,000,000 rapes in Germany, she finally spoke more about the war to me than ever before in her lifetime.



She said, "Now you understand how much I suffered." She admitted it was not 'one dead man' she saw on the side of the road like she previously stated, that in fact there were 1000s of corpses everywhere!



Hilter cut off all communication so most civilians didn't know he was losing the war, and only read his propaganda instead. My grandmother was murdered by the Russian soldiers who raided their house and repeatedly raped my mother and her sisters. And after the bombings in Berlin Mom walked 20km to try to find her aunt's house in the unrecognizable city. Their cars were all stolen & Russians were everywhere so walking was the safest method of travel. She knew then her aunt & four cousins died in the bombings and were all buried in the rubble.



Hitler humanely checked himself out in April 1945 and left the civilians to pay the retribution for what he did to the Jews and to the other countries ... 7.4 million Germans paid the ultimate price, including 500,000 while they were being expelled from their home country.



I realize now that any of my relatives who weren't mentioned "after the war" ... had all died. No wonder mom didn't want to marry a German ... her friends were all dead and everywhere she looked was a reminder of the tragedy that was her daily life until age 24.



So she disguised herself as a West Berliner and escaped from East Berlin ... to Scotland, then England, and finally, Canada.



At 94, Mom still wakes up in the middle of the night and vents about the rapes and horrific tragedies of Germany during and after the war, some 70+ years later. But the nurse at her care home told me she felt better today after hearing about this valuable account of the truth, knowing she is not alone with her post traumatic stress.

- March 26, 2018After multiple rapes & burying her mother, my mother escaped East Berlin