Vincent Laš

"I was sent to a certain location because there were supposedly German troops there. We came to that place and we saw the Germans about fifty meters away, even wearing these caps with these visors. They opened fire at us from a machine gun. One young boy from our troop stayed there. He was killed on the spot and the two of us were wounded. I didn’t notice anything at first; I didn’t feel any pain at all. And suddenly I looked down - it was in February – and I saw blood pouring out of my boot. I had a towel and so I wrapped it around my leg and tightened it. Then I walked for three and a half kilometers. I ran to our troops and they loaded me on the horses and drove me to the bunker to a field hospital. It was underneath the ground, in a dugout. A huge dugout. There were 27 patients there. When the Germans and the Ustashi were retreating, they were marching over the top of the bunker and they didn’t notice the entrance. It was all very well covered, even the vents which were located in the roots of the trees. There was one guerrilla with a grenade and a machine gun and if the Germans had discovered our hideout, he was ready to blow the place up. We were all in agreement with this as it was much worse to get into the hands of the Germans than to die such a death.”

“My sister was then still a child. She was grazing cows when a group of the Vlasov paramilitary troops - as they were called – emerged from the forest and placed land mines around the railroad tracks. The kids took the cows to the pastures and one cow stepped on the mine and exploded. My little sister's leg was torn up, the flesh was ripped out.”