Irma Nedvědová

“They told me they were supposed to take the rich ones, but usually took the younger and cleverer ones. They took those. The rich stayed, but there really weren’t any rich people here, someone had an extra ox or cow, but nobody was rich. They said they had to send someone, so they took… My husband’s Dad was a cook with the Germans during the war. They took a few boys from here, saying they’d teach them a trade and instead conscripted them. My husband’s Dad didn’t say anything, he thought that’s why they took them [to Bărăgan]. There were also more of those boys who thought it was for the war. But then they found out different. Suddenly, nobody knew anything, at night they came to get them, gathered them up and loaded them on the coal train and that was it. They had no idea where they were headed. They said they were unloaded in the fields somewhere, I think. There was nothing there. There was a storm, they had nowhere to hide, they had small children. They dug a hole in the ground and covered it up a bit. My husband said – he had a brother a year younger – that their mother stuffed them in a cupboard so they wouldn’t get wet. They built these various hovels there and then came back when they let them go.”