European Resistance Archive/European Resistance Archive (ERA)

But when I arrived in Zagreb, the brigade was no longer there in Maksimir. I was still on that bicycle.

I left the bicycle in front of Maksimir and I went inside to the doorman.

When I came back outside, the bicycle was gone. Someone else had stolen it.

Easy come, easy go.

Of course I had a message. Mali, you must report to general headquarters in Belgrade.

I traveled on to Belgrade; it must have been 10 or 12 days. Sometimes I was on a train, sometimes I traveled by foot.

The routes were in ruins. I came to Belgrade; I think it was already the end of May.

I reported to general headquarters in Belgrade and I spent some time there, a week or two, or even a month.

Then I was sent to the headquarters of the 1st regiment in Nis.

I arrived there and was in the 'personnel department'.

My job was to question those who joined the Partisans and became noncommissioned officers.

I had to ask them where they had been, I had to thoroughly interrogate them and find out what kind of past they had.

So that’s how it came to be that I was in the 1st regiment up until November 1945.

Short visit at mothers home

When I arrived I went and found my mother. Then this man had to bring us across because the bridge was down.

It had been burned. He brought us across and my mother and I, me with my stolen bicycle and she with hers,

headed up through the Zadrecka valley. It’s about eight kilometers uphill.

Then the Partisans stopped me

and claimed that I was a German soldier dressed as a Partisan, who wants to stay in a liberated Yugosalvia.

I said listen, listen …