Saturday, December 22, 2012

The Madonna of Stalingrad

An icon of the Madonna of Stalingrad hangs in the Gedaechtnis Kirche in Berlin.

It featured significantly among the troops of the Sixth Army in the days before Christmas 1942. The army was encircled by the Soviet Army.

On Decembr 23, 1942 it was officially announced that the rescue attempt by Manstein's army had failed. It would be another two months of senseless slaughter before Paulus surrendered.

One million dead, 90,000 German troops were taken prisoners of whom 6,000 survived and returned to Germany.

Soldier Rocholt was one of the last prisoners-of-war to return home from the Soviet Union in 1954. But he decided to detrain in East Berlin and live in the GDR.

Later he returned to Fulda to his fmaily and rediscovered his belief in God, which he had lost in Stalingrad.

He along with a number of survivors from Stalingrad made an annual pilgrimage to the cathedral in Trier where they prayed to the Madonna of Stalingrad.

Do we, the citizens of the EU, ever appreciate our good fortune?

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