Would Hitler have won World War II if he had left Russia alone?

[Sunlei]

105. millions died in Ukraine. A few brave people hid in caves there, underground for years.

a lot of written history.
On the dining room table lay one of their most precious family treasures: a memoir of their survival, originally written in Yiddish by their mother, Esther, and then privately published in English in 1975.

“My mother never trusted authority,” Shulim told us. “The Germans, the Russians, the Ukrainians. It didn’t matter. She taught us early on that no matter who it was, if they told you to do one thing, you always did the opposite. If the Germans said, ‘Go to the ghettos, you’ll be safe there,’ you went to the forest or the mountains. You went as far away from the ghettos as you could go.”

In the early 1930’s, Esther Stermer was the proud matriarch of one of the most well-regarded families in Korolowka. Her husband was a successful merchant. It was a rare time of opportunity for many Jews in Western Ukraine; Jewish cultural life and Zionist and socialist movements were thriving.

But with the rise of Nazi power in Germany, and increasing anti-Semitic violence at home, all that soon came to an end. In 1939 the Germans seized Czechoslovakia and then invaded Poland. Threatened by Hitler’s eastward advance, the Russians countered by invading western -- or Polish -- Ukraine. For a short time, a cynical non-aggression pact between the Germans and the Russians kept the region quiet even as the rest of Europe erupted in war. That shaky peace collapsed in June 1941, when Hitler’s armies stormed the border from Poland and rolled across Ukraine’s open plains toward Stalingrad and the oil fields of the Caspian Sea. Almost immediately, German Einsatzgruppen paramilitary units began roaming the country, executing Jews and others at will.

Priest's Grotto (also known as Ozerna or Blue Lakes Ukrainian: Озерна, meaning: "lake&quot is a cave in western Ukraine near the village of Strilkivtsi (Ukrainian: стрілківці , located within the Borshchiv Raion (District) of the Ternopil Oblast (Province).

Priest's Grotto is part of the extensive gypsum giant cave system, and is one of the longest caves in the world with over 127779 m. of explored passages. It is about 450 kilometers (280 mi) driving distance southwest of Kiev, and about 5.5 kilometers (3.4 mi) south of the district seat of Borshchiv. In World War II it was used as a refuge by Jewish refugees from the Nazi occupation during the Holocaust.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Priest's_Grotto