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

also their children." - A typical case is described by the émigré writer, Fyodor Kubanski:
"A young woman with her two small children ran to the edge. She embraced the first child for a
moment, then suddenly flung him into the abyss. The other child was clinging to the bottom of her
skirt and shouting, 'Mama, don't! Mama! I'm frightened!"
"Don't be afraid, I'll be with you,' the frantic woman answered. One jerk of her arms and the second
child was flying into the waters of the River Drau. Then, she raised her arms to make the sign of the
cross. 'Lord, receive my sinful soul', she cried, and before her hand reached her left shoulder she had
leaped in after her children. In a moment she was swallowed by the raging whirlpool."
"General Naumenko estimates that twenty or thirty people were drowned in this way."
FAMILY SUICIDE PACTS
"Davies's most terrible memory, and one confirmed by many other witnesses, is of a Cossack who
first shot his wife and three children, then shot himself. He (Davies) found them himself by a sharp
dip in the ground, the wife and children lying side by side on a grassy bank and the man lying
opposite them, a revolver in his hand.
Davies says: "I think it was this that brought the horror of it all home to me, that a man could do such
a thing. He remembers as he looked at the bodies, how could the man have killed these four people?
Could he have got them all together and then shot them quickly, one after the other? Davies thought
this unlikely. If he had done it this way there would have been confusion and disarray. The bodies
would not have been so carefully lined up. What the man must have done, Davies concluded, was to
take one child to the bank, kill him, then go and collect another child, kill him, and so on until all four
were dead and he could be sure that none of his family would fall into Soviet hands. Naumenko
writes that the man's name was Pyotr Mordovkin and that his wife's name was Irina."
Davies wrote in his report: "Terrified and hysterical people threw themselves on their knees before the
soldiers begging to be bayoneted or shot to death as an alternative to loading." He went on to describe
how soldiers broke down completely. "There were soldiers pushing people along with rife-butts -
with tears streaming down their faces." - The Last Secret. Lord Bethell
CHILDREN, TOO SHOCKED TO CRY OR PRAY
"The camp was only a few hundred yards away and Smith (Corporal Donald Smith 'B Company')
could hear the commotion. 'These poor devils are going back to be shot.' an officer told him. Then
the first trucks began to arrive.
Smith remembers, 'frightened, desperate old people and children crying', as well as 'two or three aged
men with white hair and beards, their heads bleeding from being beaten with rifle-butts.'
Smith writes: 'We helped the aged, who were praying all the time. Some of the children had been
separated from their parents. Some where, I think, too shocked even to cry or to pray, but climbed
into the vans quietly to squat in a corner. I was at this point sickened."
"Davies came down to the train and saw it standing there, full of screaming people, waiting for the
signal to depart. In all, 6,500 Cossacks were sent East that day. Zoe Polaneska describes the scene:
'The flags and the platform where the priests had been had all collapsed. I had a good look round and
139