Gertrude Boyarski - Burning a Nazi Bridge
Transcript: Now I'll tell you an incident also. It was March 8th, a holiday in Russia, a woman's holiday, like here, Mother's Day, Father's Day. So what do you do in a time like that? You have to give a present to the government. What kind of present could you give? To kill a few Germans or to tear up a bridge, or to something, sabotage. So me and my friend, we went -- two girls. There was a little bridge that was wood, and that little bridge connected the Germans to go from one town to another -- for ammunition, for food, for things like that. And we put a fire underneath that bridge. The Germans saw it, a fire, they happen a fire on us with all the ammunition that they could do. We didn't chicken out. That bridge burned. We tried with our hands, grab that everything should be already into the water. And we burned that bridge. We got -- When we came back the commander said that we did it very good and we got Order Lenin, a medal. And I was so stupid. I mean, my husband had Order Stalin and I had an Order Lenin and we left it in Italy. We were afraid to bring it to the United States, that we [sic] shouldn't think that we are communists. So we left it there.