All content elements gone, articles still present

We experienced a strange thing today.
All (25000) content elements that were linked to articles in a specific category were deleted in the name of a specific user (according to the log) while the articles were still available.
Needless to say that the user didn´t know what he specificly did that could have caused this massive action. On the other hand I can´t believe that it would be possible to delete that amount of elements with one click ore swipe without being asked and without deleting the articles as well.

Does anyone have this or similar experiences or can explain how that could have happened?
Thanks in advance.