Lev Kopelev, who was arrested soon afterwards for the ‘propagation of bourgeois humanism’ and ‘sympathy with the enemy’, described what happened when his Red Army unit moved into East Prussia with the offensive of January 1945:
We reached the first East Prussian villages: Groß-Koslau and Klein-Koslau – they were burning. The driver had to keep to the middle of the road. On both sides the houses were aflame under their tiled roofs. The tall tree in front of the burning church was smoldering and smoking. There were no people in sight. […]
A horse-cart stood in the village square, next to it a couple of soldiers. We stopped: ‘Was there heavy fighting here?’
’Fighting? Why? They just took off before we came – not a civilian remained.’
’So they laid mines and set them off?’
’Who? The Germans? No – there were no mines here at all, the fires were started by our side.’
’Why that then?’
’Ah, who the hell knows why? They just did it, for fun.’
A bearded, surly soldier growled with a casual anger: ‘That’s just it: here is Germany – so: smash everything up, burn everything! Take revenge!’
Source:
Bessel, Richard. “Revenge.” Germany 1945: From War to Peace. New York, NY, HarperCollins, 2009. 152-53. Print.
Original Source Listed:
Lev Kopelev, Aufbewahren für alle Zeit! (Munich 1979), pp. 95-96.
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