Boris Edelman’s Story
“A few days after the Germans took over Bistricht, they came to our house and asked my mother to go and clean a bar- racks nearby that had been used in the past for Polish army cavalry shows. I went instead of my mother. As I started to walk up the steps, I saw a German coming down them. It was the first time I’d seen a German. The German saluted me without realizing that I was wearing the arm band with the Magen David (Star of David) on the wrong arm. Later that day, I had to go back to the barracks, and the same officer was there but this time he saw the Magen Da - vid on the wrong arm. He pushed me against the wall and said to another German, ‘Shoot him. How can a Jew live that long?’ The other man took a shot, but the bullet went into the wall near my head. He must have decided to let me go. The grit from the wall had flown into my eyes, so I couldn’t see anything, but I could hear the noise from my father’s flour mill, which was not too far away — the gas generator could be heard from as far as a kilometer away and these barracks were at most half of a kilometer away — and I walked toward the sound. When I got to our house, my mother rinsed my eyes with water. “For the next couple of days, similar things happened. I was getting in trouble. The police came for my older brother, Alex, be- cause a German needed someone to do something, and I went in- stead of him. The German had been watching the forest for Russian soldiers on the other side of the river, the Slusch, and wanted me to take a burnt cooking pot, dishes, and some other things to the river to wash. The pot was covered with soot from being used on a fire. I took the things and was starting to walk down the stairs
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