Regina Lavrovič

“They took us through Poland first, then Germany, into France; a total of 16 days. Once a day they poured us some thin ‘balanda’ soup into a bowl, once a day we got water. There was a big bucket covered with a canvas in the corner of the wagon instead of a toilet. When we were travelling through Germany, I saw that the Germans who passed by the wagons never lifted their heads. Then suddenly everything changed and we realised we weren’t in Germany any more. People would rush up to the wagons, try to throw us some food through the windows, and the guards would shout and shoot into the air. We crossed Belgium. A loaf of bread flew into our wagon through the window. We divided it up among the children, and I tasted white bread for the first time. Then people started speaking in another language – they took us across the whole of France. People would also come running up, shouting something, and when the train stopped, they gave us food. We reached the city of Cherbourg.”

“On carts, with children and cows, we blundered through the wood. Someone said we should surrender to the Germans. The women pulled out some white scarves and tied them to sticks. The men weren’t with us. We were a big group, half the village. A crowd of bawling children, crying women, cows – we exitted the forest. Germans in white coats came to meet us with sub-machine guns ready. They surrounded us and took us to the village of Trubyatsina. There they ordered us to leave all our belongings, cows, food, and they herded us into a large kolkhoz barn. They threatened to set the barn on fire if a single partisan fired a shot. We sat in the through the night and awaited our death.”