re: #75 rwdflynavy

Just read Hitler’s Army by Omar Bartov (a good read). I was amazed at the meme the Nazis used over and over that the Soviets were controlled by “Jewish-Bolsheviks” as if the Soviets weren’t the second runner ups in antisemitism.

This just reminded me of a story that I love, so I tell it when I get a chance. At a synagogue I went to for services while I was shopping around shuls, I heard that one of the ladies in the congregation, a member since the early 50s, was a camp survivor, and for years she told how when the Soviet forces came, there was a young Jewish officer in charge of a group of them. She spent some time working with him, helping with translation—he had Yiddish, which allowed him to speak to many of the prisoners, and they passed things on to the non-Yiddish speakers. She said it was a wonder, seeing a Jewish man in an officer’s uniform, being treated with respect by his Gentile troops. After what they’d been through, the very idea was like something from another world.

Anyway, she made it to the States, raised a family, and a lot of time went by. Then, in the 1980s, she volunteered to do some outreach to new Soviet immigrants in the area, went to meet some people—and guess who’s there, with his kids and grandkids?

His grandson called her up for an aliyah at his bar mitzvah, and they told the whole story.