At the end of the Second World War, Johanna Lehmann lived with her family in Silesia when the Soviet occupation army came. During that time soldiers were plundering towns they entered, shooting at will, and raping. She describes how she prayed in the face of this threat.
The Russians came in tanks, in endless rows of them, fanning out to the right and the left at every intersection and covering the entire area like a net. Everyone was quaking with fear. My father saw two big army officers approaching our house, their pistols drawn and ready. They came stomping up the front steps, and as they entered the hallway, they said, "Where woman? Where woman?"
My parents were horrified; my two younger sisters and I were there. As the soldiers were ringing the bell, I said to my father, "Let's just not have any fear, and everything will go harmoniously," and I took my sisters into the bedroom that my husband and I shared. Ours was the next-to-last room along a corridor with many doors. I could hear the soldiers coming into the corridor, saying all the time, "Where woman? Where woman?" as they went from one room to the next.
