Aldo Mijandrušić

„Last time in October I haven't slept at home. My dad said: „Aldo sleep at home, I will keep the watch, don't worry. Dogs will not bark but on enemy, on Germans and fascists.“ He said: „If they're our own, the dogs will not bark.“ That was the truth. I said: „Dad, I better go.“ I had dinner, washed myself, they were able to heat up water, there were no bathrooms back then. When I finished washing he said. „Try to get some sleep, when was the last time you slept in bed?“ I couldn't remember when was the last time I had slept at home... I went sleeping, and early in the morning, I was still in my clothes, I only took off my shoes because I had a English machine gun which I kept by my side, sleeping with it in my arms. Then the dogs started to bark and woke me up. I was outside and could hear down the road, some 300 meters from the house, that an army was coming. A lot of footsteps, that's what he told me. I didn't tie my self, just put my shoes, ran outside, and my father went in the opposite direction. He said 10 or 15 minutes, they didn't arrive right away, they were certain that no one lives in the village. They were throbbing on the door. They did it to everyone, but my house was first. A fascist asked about me, not Brljafa, Brljafa was behid him, he said: „Aldo?“ „Aldo who, I don't know where he is.“ Brljafa then said. „How come, your son came here around 10 p. m.“ I did arrive home at 10 p. m. That means that someone...“ „..in the village.“ „I don't believe it was from village, because there wasn't anybody in the village, only the late Rudi's nephew, his brother, the younger with whom wi joined the partisans, but the older was sickly and didn't join the partisans...He was good, but didn't join the partisans..Zgrablić Franjo, he was born in 1915 too, he was committee man so it couldn't be him. Vlahović Poldo and Bepo, two brothers, one was phisicaly disabled, barely walking on cane. Poldo was involved in every action, he was twenty years older than I was, but he was involved in every action which we had organized. Even at night he was alwys with us. Accordingly, it wasn't anybody from the village. It most certainly that Brljafa, because Iw as...I don't know...“

„Four or five times they have been looking for me, and my father answered the same, that he doesn't know since the Germans had arrived, that he doesn't know anything about me anymore. But the hell he didn't know, he was the one who saw me when he had returned from the hospital, he saw me hundred times and we watched his every step. But still they, because they were everytime. First time, there were a lot of Germans, that was in first month after New Year's eve, when they captured my cousin and his took his sister into camp. Then there were lot of Germans, it was mixed, but later there were only fascists and only two Germans who have spoken to my father. We weren't done with my father.... until October when it happened. They looted, took some wine and ham. One of them said to my mother, she couldn't understand Italian, but he said it in Italian that left a bag of flour and put a blanket on it. He showed her where it was. She didn't speak Italian, he was probably from Italy, he showed her, and Franjo strucked her with gunstock in the back. Grandmother was sitting in the kitchen, a big kitchen we had, three times bigger that this room right here. He tied her with a red scarf and pulled out a rope and said that was meant for me to be hanged on a mulberry. He tied her with that scarf. „You're“, he said, „a communist like your grandson. Your grandson Aldo.“ He added: „Or he leaves the house or I'll burn it to the ground.“ She replied to him: „franjo, I will not leave the house. I came in this family because the house is big, and I came as 24th in that house, when I married to my late husband. I'm not going. If you are going to set this house on fire, do it, but you'll have an old lady of 95 on your conscience.“