This cruel world

So much terrible suffering in the world in recent months: the terror attacks in UK, the appalling Grenfell Tower inferno, the devastating fire in central Portugal, the continuing daily traumas for civilians in Mosul and Raqqa, just to name a few. But a sentence in a story about the death of Chancellor Helmut Kohl in The Times this morning summed up for me the cruelty of this world of ours. The first wife of Helmut Kohl was raped by Russian soldiers at the age of 12 in the Second World War and "thrown out of a window". She committed suicide later in life. Raped and thrown out of a window like a piece of garbage. Having covered six wars as a journalist on The Times, I have seen how normal standards of behaviour are cast aside when people are fighting and hating each other, I have seen and spoken to children who have suffered as victims of war. But that story in The Times was so chilling! Were those Russian soldiers ever prosecuted or were they never punished? Did they go on to lead a full life, did they ever consider what they had done to this defenceless child, did they have children of their own, did any of them commit suicide out of anguish for what they had done? I have no idea but each of those who raped this child deserved to suffer in their lives in some way. I hope they did. The story has had such an impact on me I cannot write anything more today.