European Resistance Archive/European Resistance Archive (ERA)

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.

At the time there were perhaps about 200 of us, or 300, 400 …

I joined and I don’t know if I was weak or not; I probably was.  
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But I came to that headquarters where Mesic was the commanding officer and he said that I’d be going to someone.

Who? I didn’t know.

But it came to be that I went to this man who had been living in Russia since 1918, or maybe even earlier, since WWI.

His name was Jevremovic.

I came to this man wearing a uniform, and I spoke Serbian with him,

and he told me that I was going to be with him as his courier.

As prisoner of war in the Soviet Union

Perhaps it was a week or two or three, I can’t say because we didn’t follow calendar days.

They didn’t even know calendars in Russia at the time.