Rudolf Parobek

“They didn’t hit him either way. I let him go when I saw that he was running away. Those who stayed there hurt him. Eventually, he turned out to be the brother of one of the partisans, him being one of the Ustashi while his brother was a partisan.”

“One of them told me: ‘What have you got here? Who cut your hair like this?’ I said: ‘What do you mean?‘ He pointed to my cap and it looked as if someone cut a hole in it with a pair of scissors. It was from a shrapnel. It even cut away a part of my hair with it. It was very close – if the shrapnel had flown an inch lower I wouldn’t be here now.”

“All those things I have seen, the fighting I have gone through. I would like to live at least until I’m ninety years old, after I had to spend my youth in such terrible conditions sacrificing so much. My nerves were such a mess at the end of the war and even for a long time afterwards. If I had stayed in Yugoslavia, I would have gone crazy. I was almost crazy already. In particular when there was a loud bang - I would always shake like crazy… I am really glad that even today there are some good people around.”