One more day of cruelty, Excerpt from ‘Zwiespalt der Gemüter’ by Alexander Hoyer

Excerpt from the book  ‘Zwiespalt der Gemüter’ by Alexander Hoyer:

“In the night of May 4-5, 1945 the mass murders began in Prague. The most gruesome events of the Middle Ages pale in comparison to the murderous blood lust that played itself out in the streets, houses and most of all the hospitals of Prague.

After the all-out war effort had been proclaimed in 1944, medical student Ingrid Langer had signed up as Red Cross nurse. She was stationed in the Luftwaffe hospital on the right bank of the Moldau River in Prague. In the morning of May 6 a sizeable group of young Czech men and girls arrived howling and yelling at the main entrance of the hospital and, threatening with submachine guns, demanded that all Red Cross nurses, as well as all the wounded who could walk, should come out. When the doctors tried to dissuade the mob from their demands, and pointed out the regulations of the Red Cross, under whose protection the hospital was, the riotous mob roared with laughter. The armed ringleaders stormed into the hospital rooms and drove the wounded in their striped pajamas out before them.

Other heroes of this kind brought out all the nurses on duty, lined them up and selected the ten youngest and prettiest of them. Ingrid Langer was among them.

After lengthy arguments among the teenaged hoodlums as to what sorts of abuse they would engage in, they agreed to march their victims into town.

Along with a selected 10 wounded patients, the nurses had to line up in rows of two and march off, singing the German national anthem. Anyone who did not sing loudly enough, or at all, was beaten until his or her voice was audible. To either side of the street the compatriots of the wild mob stood applauding. The procession was stopped in Peter’s Square, which seemed to be the arena best suited for the planned macabre game.

A bow-legged descendant of the Awars shrieked: “Undress! Everyone undress completely!” Since the unfortunate victims made no move to take off their clothes, he gave his accomplices the sign to start beating.

The wounded and the nurses were smashed to the pavement, some beside and on top of each other, unable even to move.

“Undress or die!” the sadist kept screaming.

The wounded soldiers soon took off their hospital pajamas. Stark naked, they were at the mercy of the goggling crowd. The nurses as yet retained their underwear. No-one minded that their undressing took a little longer, for the surrounding crowd relished the sight of these half-naked German Red Cross nurses. But then the ringleader demanded that the stripping be completed.

“Undress! Finish undressing!” he roared again, “strip to the skin, you swine!” At last, when all ten finally stood stark naked in the middle of the square, hiding their faces in their hands, the Prague citizens’ merriment rose to a fever pitch. But Ingrid Langer, who had grown up in Prague, knew her Czech fellow citizens only too well. She knew that the final act of the drama staged here would be a deliberately drawn-out but all the more gruesome death. Like lightning she made a break for it, darted through a weak point in their encirclement, and dashed off towards the lower end of the square. Before the baffled bystanders realized it, she had escaped the arena of death. But at the square’s end Ingrid Langer ran right into the hands of her next tormentors!

A band of plunderers, heavily laden with rugs, paintings, furs, tableware and more, caught the naked fleeing girl in a flash. They dragged her into the house they had just left, up to the first floor, into the home they had plundered. In the hallway on the floor lay a dead woman about 25 years old. Next to her huddled a child of perhaps two, blood-bespattered and sobbing bitterly. The captured naked beauty was shoved into a bedroom to a host of obscene comments. At the sight of the pretty young girl all the plunderers had turned back, in the certain expectation of a good time. There was not one among them that did not participate in the ensuing rape. More Czechs who came running in continued their predecessors’ disgraceful deed. At last the victim mercifully lost consciousness.

Meanwhile, the macabre spectacle in Peter’s Square had continued. The nine yet surviving Red Cross nurses had been lined up opposite the injured men, naked as they were, and the nurses were ordered to tear the men’s private parts off. An unbelievably brutish idea. The victims themselves could hardly believe the perverted orders. “Rip it off! Rip it off!” And right away the entire crowd joined in, roaring and chanting and clapping their hands in rhythm. None of the German girls could be forced to even try to carry out the bestial order. They ignored the ever more threatening demands of the crowd, which was literally going wild. Not one made any move to comply, even after most of them had already collapsed, unconscious, under the blows from the rifle butts.

Never before in history had the world seen human cruelty to equal what happened here!