Sonja Ritoša (Grubić)

“I remember my father had a horse, he found his way, grew watermelons, I remember when I was little eating those melons, we fed them to the cattle. We made bricks from dirt and straw and built things from that, everything was fine until April 6th 1941. It was Easter. Mother already set the table so there were, one sister married, there were seven kids and mom and dad, that’s nine, big table, everything festive for Easter, cakes, meat, hot soup. It was about noon so just as we were about to eat a soldier came on a horse and told my dad: “Put the white flag up now. The war is here and you have to be ready in an hour. Take what you can, leave everything else.” And then my mom, and everything she would bring because that many kids, only kids, the youngest was 3 and a half and I was 8. And then my mom and dad tried, baby chicken hatched, ducklings, and she went to the neighbours and someone was kind and gave us money because you could take as much money as you wanted. Somebody gave money and somebody said: “that will be ours too”. And we took what we could and mom took it when they came, soldiers told us we had to go and mom carried my youngest sister, she bought her red shoes for Easter, every child got a present, she got the red shoes. Gajski Rih, that means rain in April, mud everywhere and they made us walk with the horses, many families, those who were not from there. Who was originally from there, Hungarian fascists, they didn’t bother them. And they were on horses making us walk through the mud and my sister lost her red shoe in the mud and my mom tried to pick it up and he hit her with a whip and that shoe, I know the baby was crying.”

I contracted diphtheria and I almost died, I was very sick. And everything was fine, my father was a resourceful man and he brought a few bottles of schnaps because he couldn’t get anything but money and those bottles of schnaps, he added water and through the wire he managed to contact passers by and all those poor people passing by, you know what it’s like with the wires, you can’t move and so we would feel sorry for them and he brought them schnaps and sold it so he had money and he would buy, he did that mostly. But one day they singled him out and told him to dig a hole outside. And he did that for a few days, they were going to shoot us, us children. And they lined us up, I remember that, us kids and we held our mothers and cried and when the hole was dug and he was like antifascist and since they were all lined up, soldiers and one, two he’s counting in Hungarian and we were crying, and then a Hungarian came and just as he was about to say three another officer came and says “wait”, he argues with the man and says “If he’s a communist what did the children do? Let them go” and they argued and we stayed alive. And then they put my dad away somewhere separately and we were there for three months, it felt like a year, I don’t know, I don’t know exactly. A long time. One day this man my father talked to told him “mr.Jovović we heard you are going to be deported in two days, from this camp, I don’t know for Auschwitz or where. So if you can hide behind a corner or something” and he told us where “I will arrange a boat to get you to Pančevo”. Because it’s through Danube, not from Novi Sad. And so the day came and it was not just us but two or three families his because there was a lot of people. And the man waited for us and we got on the boat to Pančevo...in Zemun. But when the soldiers called our names, when they were putting people in wagons, the camp people, they called our names and we weren’t there, the other family was not there. They knew what was going on right away and they called Pančevo and met us there.