PLEASE NOTE: This book contains graphic description ... - HUNSOR

was not yet over sixteen, so he was too small to help our expectant sister. So the duty, and theluck, fell on me.""Well, it must have been quite dangerous to ride on horseback in those days", I saidsympathetically."I was not stopped by anyone on the way, although even the ditches were full of refugees,especially near the crossings where the traffic was very heavy.""How can you remember the events of that day then, if you had to go to Baja?""My mother preserved each hour of that day and the previous evening in her memory andshe passed it on to me."He fell silent, this time I did not say anything to encourage him, I just filled his glass."My mother said that hardly had I left, when at dusk, the armed partisans began to crossthe Danube on barges. She also heard some shots but no cries: they must have shot into the air.Early in the morning, the village drummer announced that everybody, for his own good, mustgather on the soccer field. Under penalty of death, no one was allowed to remain at home, noteven the sick. My father also climbed down from behind the chimney, he thought that thecrime of desertion was over anyway, since the death penalty announced by the Hungarians ondeserters was no longer in force. He decided not to go back to the attic: he washed and shaved,and obeying the order, walked to the soccer field together with my mother and my littlebrother. A gramophone was playing there. It played Serbian partisan marches, but sometimesthey put on the record "You are so beautiful Hungary" and "I am a soldier of Horthy Miklos",perhaps as an24encouragement. The partisans, who had machine guns, were not more than twenty, a partisanwoman was the loudest among them. With the help of interpreters, they ordered that the menbetween sixteen and fifty to remain on the soccer field and the rest, elderly people, women,children, leave the village and go to the farms. No one was allowed to go home, until they hadgotten permission. Shoving them with their guns, the partisans began to drive the people inthe direction of the farms. The women started to cry at that point, they were worried becausethe people had been divided into two groups. Fear fell on those who left, but also on thosewho remained on the field.My brother, who was not yet sixteen, and my father, who was well over fifty and belongedonly to the army reserve, wanted to join the majority, but the more they protested the strongerthey were pushed back among the group of men staying on the field. The partisan woman Imentioned before, hit them brutally with her rifle butt. There were one hundred and eighteenmen chosen to die, but the partisans couldn't agree how to kill them. First they drove them tothe bank of the Danube, where some of them were shot into the river by machine guns. Myfather and my brother were among these. Maybe they didn't find the current of the waterstrong enough, since some of the bodies were caught by some hidden whirlpools. Therefore,after some quarrel and debate, they began to drive the rest towards Zombor.In Zombor they didn't get anything to eat for weeks, every day dozens of people starved todeath were pulled from the barracks. Those people who were forbidden to return to the villagedispersed in the countryside in the nearby farms.My mother got back to the battered house only after more than a week, left utterly alone.While hiding, she had thought of walking over to our Julis in Baja, who gave birth to a healthy