We sang and danced, of course! We even sang and danced for the Germans, and they would give us food. Some of them were good, and some were cruel.

When my brother picked up cigarette butts, they beat him to stop him from smoking.
They wouldn’t even let him touch the stubs.

After our parents were killed, my brother and I were left alone. And my little sister… she froze. She went to beg for bread and froze to death. They brought her back already dead. We laid her in the annex—it was forty degrees below zero. There was no door; my brother had taken it down and burned it because we had nothing else to heat the house with. There were no forests near us, only mines. And then the dogs came… They gnawed at her body.

A German man lived at our neighbor’s — a good one. When our parents were shot, he asked me, “And where are your parents?” I said, “They were killed.” He took me, held me close, and began to cry. Then he ordered for us to be assigned to their mess hall so we would be fed.

My brother went to get the food. The cook hit him with a whip and yelled, “Gypsy!” My brother came back in tears. I told him, “Don’t go anymore… We’ll eat potato peels. He’ll kill you…” I was crying too. The German learned about that and went to the cook himself — he yelled at him and even struck him.

After that, we were given food every day—pea porridge, bread that was left over from the Germans. He would say, “Give them the same thing the soldiers eat.”

When it was time for him to leave, he hugged me, kissed me, and said, “Well, that’s it, I’m going. You will not see me again.” I just stood there, not knowing what to say.

He was tall, handsome, and slender. He had black hair—like a Romani man. Maybe he wasn’t German… Who knows.