European Resistance Archive/European Resistance Archive (ERA)

We lost 700 men in one night and one day in that slaughter.

When it was all over, I wasn’t in the headquarter brigade at the time yet,

but I was still in the troop and we had a mobilization in Cacak.

Upon our arrival to Belgrade, well we were there for only a short while, we were at Topcinder.

We were split up in battle and some of us went to Bosnia, some of us went up towards Srem, towards Sid, and we went to Drvar.

Then we were on the Srem front, where there was plenty fighting

and we headed in one direction once and another direction another time … Slowly, slowly, we moved towards Slovenia.

It was 1945 already.

We spent the New Year on the Srem front,

but we continued heading north and we came to the Croatian – Slovenian border on 11 April.

We came to the Sotla River. Sedlarjevo was on the Slovenian side. I don’t remember the name, it was a small village.

Joining the Yugoslav Brigade

Then the order came, you’re going out.

I don’t know if there was any guard there at all; where would one escape to anyway?

Winter was perpetual, no not perpetual, but the snow…

They brought us to Moscow, or really it was Krasnogorsk.

There was a prisoner of war camp in Krasnogorsk. There were all sorts of nationalities represented there:

Slovenians, Croatians, Czechs, Polacks and even French.

They sort of trained us in Krasnogorsk.

That’s what I think and we also debated it among us - we were going to be sent in against Hitler, against Germany.