European Resistance Archive/European Resistance Archive (ERA)

That's all, it was a long time and we were freezing and starving.

We did have food, but when you're 20 or 22, you're always hungry.

There was no fruit, the land was a desert just like here,

there was nothing to eat,

just the meals they gave us when something arrived, and only a few things.

A sad thing I remember took place when we were in Slovenia,

just outside the capital, in a place called “the Sawmill”, in the woods.

The partisans attacked us and we reacted.

The fascists and the snipers came

and emptied out the village, they killed more than 400 people, shot dead like dogs.

That's the truth, and we were around the hills checking if the others were coming.

After this desaster the fascists went away.

They had carried away women and children, they brought them to Fiume,

and then they committed this big massacre.

It was up to us bury the bodies, and so we did.

We threw them all in a hole, covered them with sawdust from the nearby sawmill

and then we burned down the village. That was a terribly sad thing we did.

Years later I have travelled through Yugoslavia three or four times as a tourist,

I knew a little Croatian, I could speak quite well.

I was talking to a bartender, he asked me why I knew the language