Oleg Mandić

On that second day, they opened us again, the same procedure with only one novelty, which was that on the wagon on the outside was written Auschwitz with chalk. Auschwitz, is that the destination, what is Auschwitz, nobody knew. In the July of 1944 nobody heard about Auschwitz, among 70 of us, and the train composition grew, so there were much more than 20, I mean wagons.

It was somewhere around July, maybe the seventh, eighth, or ninth of July, when all three of us were taken down again. “Have you heard anything”, because it was possible even to get some kind of mail from outside, “do you have any news about your family, do you know did they went to Italy?” And the German exploded, he hit the table with his fist, he said: “Enough with that stupidity and your stories!” The day after tomorrow, on the show on radio London for Yugoslavia, the guest was the journalist Watson. And when he was asked to comment on the situation in Yugoslavia, in Yugoslavia, some wars are happening, that we, the man from the streets, people from the streets, don’t really understand. There are Chetniks of Draža Mihajlović who are fighting with Germans, on the other side, or not on the other side but the other part are the partisans with Tito as their leader, who also are fighting against Italians and Germans, and besides that, also Chetnics and partisans fight each other. I even don't want to mention that there are Ustashe also. To that question, Watson answered: „You know what, to you, people from the street it might seem weird and odd. To me, the situation is completely clear. I believe that the only right side in Yugoslavia is Tito and his partisans. And you want to know why? Because among Tito’s second in command is also Doctor Mandić, my good friend from First World War.