European Resistance Archive/European Resistance Archive (ERA)

and at night she locked us into the cellar and went home.

She left two of her children, because they were bigger and took the youngest one with her.

So there were the two of us and the cousin.

We slept in the cellar.

It was an earth cellar, in the rock

and it was very damp, cold and totally dark.

Everything was padded with hay and covers so nobody would hear us.

We weren’t allowed to cough or to go out to the loo.

We could always hear people walk around outside, but we didn’t know whether they were Gestapo or partisans.

It was very exiting but very dangerous.

Mass imprisonment, deportation

I was not at home.

I was at the neighbour’s.

When the neighbour saw that the Gestapo went to our house,

she hid us in an outhouse and warned us:

“Please, don’t look out of the window and stay quiet.”

But us children, we didn’t understand that and didn’t keep quiet.

We kept looking out to see what was going on

until we saw that they were marching our family and relatives off.

We were frightened then.