Hoodwinked - the spy who didn't die. Lowell Ph.D. Green

      It didn’t surprise me, however, because I could see with my own eyes the fearless and truly magnificent role played by millions of our women in defeating the Nazi scourge.

      The torture reserved for female soldiers and partisans is especially horrific, and they all know it, but I doubt very much if the threat of it deters any more than a tiny handful of women from fighting with or even leading the men. There is no doubt, and the facts bear this out, that without the women fighting shoulder to shoulder with us we would never have thrown back the German advance on Moscow.

      And our women don’t just fight for the Motherland as partisans or in the trenches; they drive and command tanks, and man the huge guns of the artillery. As snipers, they pick off thousands of the enemy and what few people know today is that we had many women flying combat missions both as fighter pilots and with bomber regiments.

      One of our most famous female fighter pilots was Eugenia Ustimchouk who flew as a “wingman” with her husband, but the most famous of all were the group of women that comprised the 588 Night Bomber Regiment that incredibly flew a total of 24,000 sorties.* The Germans came to fear them so much they dubbed them “Nachthexen,” which translates to “Night Witches.”

      *FACT: When I looked into this, I was fascinated to learn that there were eventually three regiments comprised entirely of women—the 586th, 587th and 588th. The women were mechanics, navigators, bomb loaders, pilots and officers.

      In recognition of their feats the Soviet High Command ordered that they be allowed to take part in the final onslaught of Berlin.*

      *FACT: All of this is true. The heroism of women at the Eastern Front is well documented. Much additional information concerning the role women played in the Eastern Front air war is available by Googling “Soviet female combat pilots WWII.”

      All that I am telling you now I hope gives you a better understanding of why I am so proud of my country and its people. Even to this day I sometimes weep to think of how heroically we resisted the worst tyranny of modern times and how terrible was the price we paid.

      Yelena Mazanik, 1965

      Red Army woman sniper, July 1944

      Four women partisans in liberated Minsk, 1944

      The Murderer of Minsk

      MY MOTHER, GOD REST HER SOUL, tried to instill in her children the belief that there is an angel in all of us. “No matter how terrible you think someone is,” she would admonish us, “just remember, no one is totally bad; every one of us has some goodness inside that needs to be given a chance to blossom. You just need to look for it.” “Does that include Stalin?” my father once asked as the “black crows” made their daily rounds of terror. Her response was a glare in his direction.

      And I remember too, during the Detroit race riots of July 1967, the TV screen showing us a tearful black woman cradling a young rioter gunned down in the streets. “He was somebody’s baby,” she said softly, “somebody’s dear sweet baby!”

      No doubt Wilhelm Kube was somebody’s dear sweet baby once. Why his journey from cooing and suckling baby to the man in charge of murdering tens of thousands of my people took him down such a twisted path we will never know. How does one suck from a mother’s breast the curdled milk of bestiality?

      Out of respect for my mother’s memory I searched long and hard to find any sign of an angel in Herr Kube. I read every history book, every account of those terrible days in a mostly vain attempt to detect anything in him other than the very heart of darkness; a Satan walking among us posing as human!

      The accounts vary somewhat, but there do appear to be two instances where Kube emitted a faint whiff of humanity.

      On one occasion he is reported to have suggested that Jews who had won Iron Crosses in the First World War should receive more humane treatment than those being stuffed into the ovens.

      The other instance, of which there is much written documentation, occurred when he complained in writing that the special extermination squads, known as the Einsatzgruppen, should make sure their victims were dead before burying them. “The sight of badly wounded people digging themselves out of their graves is just too cruel,” he wrote. “The Führer must be notified.”

      Not too cruel for the victims mind you. Kube’s complaint, similar to Himmler’s, was that this kind of thing tended to put extra stresses and strains on those witnessing the events.

      Whether Hitler ever heard the complaint is highly doubtful. The only response from High Command was that Generalkommissar Kube was too soft!

      That Kube was considered too soft was yet another example of how depraved the Nazis had become. The truth is, Kube insisted on personally viewing all of the executions and took special delight in those in which children were killed. On more than 600 occasions, he ordered that the residents of entire villages be rounded up, herded into churches or municipal buildings, and then the entire village set on fire, often with the occupants locked inside and burned alive.

      The most egregious example of this is the village of Khatyn where more than 650 souls perished by fire at the hand of this Satan!*

      *FACT: This information is accurate and available from the Encyclopedia of the Holocaust, Gutman Israel, editor, Macmillan Publishing Company, 1998 New York and The Holocaust by Sir Martin Gilbert, published by Collins, London, 1986.

      I can assure you, nothing I have learned about the murderer of Minsk makes me regret what happened on September 22, 1943. What happened the following day is another story!

      Generalkommissar Wilhelm Kube (left) receives power as head of the newly formed Minsk German Administration, August 31, 1941