Katica Smojver

"When they had to flee, to El Shatt, they talked about it, each in their own way, that is, we had three stories, one, so mother from our family went to El Shatt with her small child, the brother was less than a year. Grandma went with her, that's how they arranged it, I guess, but grandma's daughter also went, this... Kata, who was deaf and she had two boys, it was already known then that her husband was wounded in the war and that his leg was cut off. And he, that husband of hers, was politically much stronger than my father. My father was younger, and this one has already proven himself. I mean, certainly with more experience and a more sonorous name. And she definitely had to go, that's what he must have told her, for the sake of those boys. And on this side, from Dida's brother, there were these women, Tatjana, Vojka, Milojka... there were five of them who went, they were already twenty years old at the time."

"But they talked to us the most about that time since they came, and how terrible the situation was, it was that curfew. And what did they call them, Italians? They, the Italians. So, they split up in those houses, because they, well, they just came and would take over one or two rooms, and in that house of ours there was their first main, that first, which was terrible because, let's say, he took the best room which was opposite the kitchen and every morning at breakfast he stopped by and said goodbye and in the evening when he came he would say good evening and he would even, allegedly, bring some candy or some small thing. And at the same time, he gave orders for our grandfather to torture him in prison, and he was actually in prison, he couldn't take it anymore and died there, because he was tortured, he didn't want to teach in Italian. And then they told him: "You have to go to prison." He said: "Well, kill me, but I won't teach." That's right, he wasn't there right away, but during his entire stay, every morning - good morning and goodbye, he didn't say, I don't know, dida is like this or send him something. In the same way, let's say, there is a cistern in front of our house and my mother would go and get water and they would shoot at her from there. So, they didn't, he didn't spare her because she is there in the house where I live. Also, that curfew, they strictly adhered to it. And that was just that... ugly, ugly. And then, when it was already tense, they pressured my mother very much about where my father was, he was her brother-in-law at the time. And they used to torture her, so let's say, maybe he let her go, because she actually breastfed my brother. So then, they didn't leave her there, but let her go home, but he interrogated her for, say, an hour or two and asked her to say."