European Resistance Archive/European Resistance Archive (ERA)

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.

We all decided that we would do it. So in Krasnogrosk we were prepared, they changed us …

it’ll sound a bit wicked how I say it … from Fascism to Bolshevism, or from Nationalism to Bolshevism.

That’s how we imagined things were at the time, because there was no sentry or guard watching over us in Krasnogorsk.

I think we were there in Krasnogorsk perhaps about one month.

Once, Mesic came to visit; by rank he was a general.

He was the father of the current Croatian Mesic, the one who is now president or something.

So his father came to us and said boys, whoever wants to join the brigade can go and fight the Germans.

It was either to get away from the encampment,

or maybe just to get away from being controlled,

or maybe even we were fully conscious, but we chose to join the units.

I joined the Yugoslav brigade; that’s what it was called later, but then it was a detachment.