During the Great Patriotic War, in one of the Russian villages, a mother accompanied her son to the front. The son was a man far from church life and did not wear a pectoral cross. His mother, blessing him, put a cross on his neck and asked him not to take it off under any circumstances. The young man, although he grew up in an atmosphere of atheistic propaganda, obeyed his mother and fought with a cross on his chest. It happened that he and his military unit were surrounded and captured by the Germans.
All the prisoners were lined up in long lines. An officer walked along them with a group of soldiers. Peering carefully into the faces, the officer sometimes stopped, poked the prisoner in the chest and said:
- Der Jude! (Jew)
The guards pulled the said prisoner of war out of the line and took him aside. The group of Jews selected for execution grew and grew.
The young man, whom his mother blessed with a breast cross to go to the front, was born in a Russian village, but he was dark-haired, curly-haired, and his facial features resembled representatives of the Jewish tribe. He looked at the officer approaching his line and heard exclamations more and more clearly:
- Der Jude!.. Der Jude!..
When it was his turn, the officer pointed his finger at him and said:
- Der Jude! - and moved on. But fortunately for the prisoner, the officer’s gaze glanced at the unbuttoned collar of his tunic. The German noticed a cross on his chest. After thinking for a moment, the officer commanded:
- Aufheben! (Leave aside) - and walked further along the line.
The soldier, who had already put his hand on the prisoner's shoulder, took it off and moved after the officer.
The prisoner wiped the sweat from his forehead with a trembling hand and remembered his mother.
Translated from Russian · original on wisdomlib.ru