A very credible friend, retired businessman, shared this story: in 1945, right after Germany lost the war, he (age 8 at that time) was hiding in a Vineyard (northern Germany by the coast) with his mother, and other women and children. He remembers that the allied forces came in - the first to come in were Russian soldiers on horseback with sheathed swords. They raped the women there.. soon after, Russian soldiers with tanks came to town (downhill from Vineyard), and occupied his family home and that of others in town. He He recounts how when, his mother and his brother and him approach their own home, the Russians shot a machine gun over their heads to keep them away. History buffs: is there any record of Mongolians on horseback coming to Germany/Austria toward the end of WW II?