European Resistance Archive/European Resistance Archive (ERA)

Another one said: “You shouldn’t do that.

The partisans have to be buried, everything cleaned.

In two hours time a patrol will come and there mustn’t be anything showing.”

And they did that.

The farmer buried the partisans and the farmer’s wife cleaned up, wiped the blood up.

It was hard for her to mop all that and she cried hard, kneeling in the blood.

My cousin and I were totally shattered.

The farmer’s wife said: “You stay indoors and don’t go outside.

Don’t you tell anybody what happened.” We didn’t.

If somebody told us to keep something to ourselves, we did.

We protected the partisans so much when we were kids;

they were our friends

and the Germans were our enemies.

Back to Carinthia

We went back over the mountain to Carinthia, when the snow was gone.

We got to a farmer’s where the cousin’s grandmother was.

The aunt asked the grandmother whether she could leave the youngest daughter there,

because she was very ill.

This woman said she could. The girl would die otherwise.

I thought: ‘Oh, she can stay and I have to go again; and it is so nice and warm here.’