Ingrid Alina Fotino (născută Popa)

And so we arrived in Yugoslavia. The plan was to wait for a cart, I don’t know where from, but nobody was waiting. So, we disembarked and I shall never forget – I was eight years old – probably children feel what adults feel, but I looked at the Romanian bank and I wondered whether I would ever see that bank again (weeps). And my whole life, from the age of eighteen to fifty-three, from eighteen, when I realised that we would never go back, I tried to accept that I would never see that bank again – and I was wrong, it was the great miracle of my life. And so we disembarked on the Yugoslav bank, the Yugoslav border guards arrived, the adults said they wanted political asylum in the West, they put us on a boat, we travelled down the Danube to Belgrade, we spent the night in Belgrade. Mother, who is enthusiastic by nature, wanted to send a telegram to Tito, Marshal Tito, to thank him for not sending us back, because he could have sent us back. So, the next day we went by train to a place called Kovačica. We got off the train, we walked for a time and came to a place where there were tall white walls and a big gate and we went through the gate and there was a small, white, rather dilapidated building. It looked very ugly and I asked Mother what it was: she told me it was a hotel. I had been to Switzerland and Italy, I knew it couldn’t be a hotel. And we went into that building, which was dark, and in front of us there was a staircase leading up. It turned to the side and led up. On the left were some bars and a barred door in the bars, and it opened… and there was a small corridor and on the right there was an iron door and we went through the door into a room with a single barred little window high up, with straw on the flaw, with grey walls… and they closed the door. I shall never forget that feeling, that thick metal door with a little window in it, through which anybody could look. Fortunately, they didn’t lock the door, because that’s a horrible feeling, to be locked in like that. And so I don’t remember there being anybody else in that cell when we arrived, but we were women and children, that is, Mother, Mrs Bezi, the other mother, the three boys, my sister and myself. And in time others arrived. Father Surducan’s family arrived: the priest, his wife and son, who they called Puiu. Another family also arrived, whose name I don’t remember, with a little boy. Puiu was seven, the other boy was nine or thereabouts. And in time the cell filled up with women. I remember that a peasant woman and her fiancé arrived, they wanted to get married, and so we all tried to find something to give them as a present. And we each had a shawl, which was precious, because the place was full of flies, and when we lay down after the meals to rest, we’d cover ourselves with those shawls, but even so we gave them as a gift. Whoever had one, gave it as a gift. And on Sundays we could go outside. There were two other priests there: Father Florian Gîldău and Father Vasile Leu, besides Father Surducan. And one of the priests married the couple. And I remember that the young newlyweds sat all day in a corner… It made an impression on me. The men were held upstairs, where it was more crowded… There was a Naum Neagoe, who used to laugh at how they were like sardines: at night when they slept, if one turned over, then the others had to turn over too.

And so the group left, with the Economu family, and they made them go out by the window, the window of the cell where we slept. One after they other, they went through the window. The last was a young medical student, who turned to father, and said: “What shall I do, Mr Popa? Shall I go or not? I don’t have the shoes for this mud,” and father said: “Here are some shoes the priest left me” – that must have been Father Boștinariu, who was Catholic, I don’t know – he had been left a pair of shoes and he gave him the shoes and he left. And we went to bed, dreaming, as you can imagine, of Greece. They were going to eat oranges, sardines, olives… What a dream! When we woke up the next morning, it was a beautiful day and again we imagined what they would be eating that morning, lucky them… and the peasants came to start work and they told us they’d been summoned to dig a grave that night to bury a group of some twenty persons and they described their clothes and we realised that it was the group that had left the evening before. R: But why? I: Who knew? But I shall tell you why later. The adults said: “What about going to Greece? You said they were going to Greece.” “They are in Greece. We took them to Greece,” when you asked them why and what they had done. They were just lies. So, they kept saying that they had been taken to Greece. In the end the peasants told us, they came and told us they had been summoned, they described their clothes. In the end, the druzhi said: “Yes, it’s true, we had to kill them because they tried to escape.” “What do you mean, tried to escape? You took them away…” They took them. R: They took them to freedom, yes. I: “Well, the proof they tried to escape was that they left by the window.” R: So it was all a game? I: A set-up. But I’ll tell you why later. They did that set-up, and it was all lies, in the end communism was based mostly on lies. So they left. You can imagine how we felt.