Stands Among The World's Most Stands Among The ... - Index of

"When in October, 1944, Russian units... broke through German defenses and advanced as far as
Nemmersdorf, they tortured civilians in many villages south of Gumbinnen, nailed some on barn
doors and shot many others. A large number of women were raped. The Russian soldiers also shot
some fifty French prisoners-of-war. The effected villages were reoccupied by German forces within
forty-eight hours."
Major-General Erich Dethleffsen, Chief of Staff, German Fourth Army testimony to American
Tribunal
"On the road through Nemmersdorf, I saw a whole trek of refugees had been rolled over by Russian
tanks; not only the wagons and teams, but also a goodly number of civilians, mostly women and
children, had been squashed flat by the tanks. At the edge of the road and in the farm yards lay
quantities of corpses of civilians who evidently had not all been killed in the course of military
operations but rather had been murdered systematically.
On the edge of the street an old woman sat hunched up, killed by a bullet in the back of the neck. Not
far away lay a baby of only four months, killed by a shot at close range through the forehead.... a
number of men, with no other marks of fatal wounds, had been killed by blows with shovels or gun
butts; their faces were completely smashed. At least one man was nailed to a barn door. Yet, not
only in Nemmersdorf itself, but also in the nearby villages between Angerapp and Rominten similar
cases were noted after these villages were cleared of Russian troops. Neither in Nemmersdorf nor in
the other places did I find a single living German civilian despite the fact that the Russian invasion
had come as such a surprise that no appreciable number of civilians could have fled...."
Dr. Heinrich Amberger
"At the edge of town, on the left side of the road, stand the large inn, Weisser Krug.... in the farmyard
further down the road stood a cart, to which four naked women were nailed through their hands in a
cruciform position. Behind the Weisser Krug towards Gumbinnen is a square with a monument to the
Unknown Soldier. Beyond it is another large inn, Roter Krug. Near it, parallel to the road, stood a
barn and to each of its doors a naked woman was nailed through the hands, in a crucified posture.
In the dwellings we found a total of seventy-two women, including children and one old man, 74, all
dead... all murdered in a bestial manner, except only for a few who had bullet holes in their necks.
Some babies had their heads bashed in. In one room we found a woman, 84 years old, sitting on a
sofa... half of whose head had been sheared off with an axe or a spade.
We carried the corpses to the village cemetery where they lay to await a foreign medical commission.
In the meantime, a nurse from Insterburg came, a native of Nemmersdorf, who looked for her parents.
Among the corpses were her mother, 72, and her father, 74, the only man among the dead. She also
established that all the dead were Nemmersdorfers. On the fourth day the bodies were buries in two
graves. Only the following day did the medical commission arrive, and the tombs had to be reopened.
This foreign commission unanimously established that all of the women, even the woman of 84 years
had been raped." Karl Potrek
"The women who had been surprised in the village, including several nuns, had been herded together
by the Russians, raped and gravely abused. The women had been bestially stabbed or shot. The
Army (Wehrmacht) immediately invited the neutral Press. Reporters from Switzerland and Sweden
as well as some Spaniards and Frenchmen from the occupied parts of France came to witness the
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