A rare experience last night! A once in a life time!
The Final Four Championship game. Kansas v. North Carolina.
Kansas won 72-69. The path to victory was not easy.
North Carolina cleaned the floor with Kansas in the first half. At half time, the score was North Carolina 40, Kansas 25.
For all intents and purposes the game was over. In most minds, except for the Kansas players and their coach. Kansas came out in the second half and set the game on fire.
Kansas outscored North Carolina in the second half 47-29. Winning 72-69.
What a game! Dramatic! Exciting!
It will be difficult for the Kansas players to exceed anything in their lifetimes as that which they experienced last night.
Jim Boeheim once told me that when a team is far behind in a basketball game, it is impossible to win. They expend so much energy in catching up, they mentally slow down. Not realizing they are letting down.
It was not that way last night. Kansas never gave up.
The last 3 years I have spent living like a hermit. Coronavirus scared me. At my age, i was a likely candidate. So I became a recluse.
I have just begun going out. Yesterday was the third time in a week.
Donna called yesterday. Asked me to join her and Terri for a mid afternoon lunch at the Conch Republic. I almost said no. Glad I did not.
Met my lesbian wives at 3. The first time we have been together in a year.
Everything was terrific! The food, my companions and the yachts at rest in my view. As our time together progressed, I felt better. Left feeling like a new man.
I have to go out more.
Both ladies had COVID twice. They both looked terrific yesterday afternoon. Chipper the best way to describe them.
Donna a knockout. Going to be 75 this week. Does not look it.
It always amazes me how the Terri can see. If you did not know she was unable to see, you would not be aware. Additionally in spite of all her problems, her personality always up.
She is back to singing around Key West again.
What I am about to share could have been the lead or sole topic today. However the game and the girls had more to offer on a personal basis.
What follows is a story that needs to be known by as many as possible. In a sense involves Putin, the Ukraine and his dastardly deeds. Especially rape.
It’s in Putin’s chemistry. His Soviet chemistry. He is mimicking his hero Joseph Stalin.
In early 1945, the Allies were on the verge of entering Germany. Eisenhower was aware it was going to be a horrendous battle. Many Allied victims. His men were tired. The Ardennes and Battle of the Bulge had been unexpected. The men needed a rest.
The major Allies consisting of the U.S., Great Britain, France and the Soviet Union had agreed to split Germany into four zones at the end of the war. Stalin wanted and got the zone where Berlin was situated.
Stalin wanted to be the first in Germany and the first into Berlin. A number of reasons involved.
He was upset with Hitler. As World War II was beginning, Russia and Germany had entered into a non-aggression pact. Hitler broke it.
The Russian/Germany portion of World War II initially was fought in Russia. Hitler ravished the Russians as Putin is ravishing Ukraine today. Russian women subjected to mass rapings.
Stalin wanted vengeance. Alone. He pushed Roosevelt and Churchill to let him enter Germany and Berlin first so Russia could invoke the retribution it deserved.
Eisenhower, Roosevelt and Churchill agreed to let Stalin have his way.
The Allies entered a small portion of Germany and then held so Stalin could do whatever he wanted.
While approaching Berlin, Stalin had one million artillery shells dropped on its outskirts.
The Russian troops raped their way to Berlin and then Berlin itself. The numbers accurately tell the story. Most occurred within Berlin.
The rape victims’ ages had nothing to do with selection. Any age would do. Victims ranged from 8 to 80. It is estimated “as many as 2 million” were raped. Two hundred forty thousand died directly from the rapings. Another 200,000 from diseases acquired during the rapings.
Most rapings were “mass” ones. Some women were raped as many as 70 times in one session. One reporter wrote: “It was an army of rapists.”
Th Russians felt they had a right to commit the rapes. The Germans early on in the war had “violated” their motherland.
Another consideration justifying their misconduct was that the troops had not had contact with women for a long time causing “their animal instincts” to be heightened.
The Russians were “sex starved.” Such makes it understandable why they would rape older women in their 60s, 70s and 80s.
As terrible as this may sound, some of the older women found it a delight to receive the sexual attention.
Historians recognize the rapings as the “greatest phenomenon of mass rape in history.”
Even Soviet women were raped by their countrymen. Soviet women who had been transported by Germany to forced labor camps in Germany.
Stalin was very understanding and tolerated the rapings. He “understood it if a soldier has crossed thousands of kilometres through blood and fire and death has fun with a woman or takes some trifle.”
Another time Stalin is quoted to have said, “We lecture our soldiers too much; let them have their initiative.” One example of how women were subjected to gang or multiple rapings was to spread eagle a woman to the ground, have the Russian soldiers line up, and take her one at a time.
Many rapes intentionally turned into “rape-murder.”
Another reason for the rapings was that Russians felt “inferior” to Germans. Russians had not lived like Germans. Germans were more civilized in their life styles. The white house with picket fence concept.
This feeling of inferiority led Russians to seek “honor and desire for revenge…..women were raped in public in front of their husbands before both were killed.”
Russians considered women “spoils of war.”
Several years after the war, one former Russian soldier reflected 4 years of fighting without a woman was difficult. He was young and strong, and he and his comrades thought it was fun. No sorrow.
Russia had a policy. Three days of looting and rape were permissible. The problem was the 3 day rule was not enforced.
Another former Russian soldier wrote, “We came to Germany…..to take our revenge.”
European Soviet troops were not the first to enter Berlin. Soviet Mongolian Asians were. They raped the German women with as much enthusiasm as their white European brethren.
One Mongolian rape reported involved one German woman who was raped lying on the street by many soldiers. When they were finished with her, they walked away leaving a live grenade between her legs.
Besides girls and women, there is another group that requires mentioning who died. Died not from rapings, but rather hunger and lack of medical care. Children. The infant mortality rate was 90 percent.
Years after the war, West German Chancellor Hermit Kohl and Hannelove were married. Hannelove had been gang raped at 12 by Soviet soldiers and then thrown out a first floor window.
The rape and bad back were with her for life. A childhood trauma that never left.
She committed suicide in 2001 as a result thereof.
There is a sense of Putin throughout. To this day, many Russians claim the rapes during world War II were committed by Germans wearing Soviet uniforms.
Poems were born of the tragedy. A portion of one: “A girl’s been turned into a woman, a woman into a corpse….The mother begs, ‘soldier kill me.'”
Sick! All of it. Then and now.
Not easy to enjoy your day after this reading.
