Fear of death
LMC: Today the 7th of August 2004 we are in Băilești and we talk to our aunt Bria. May you live a long and healthy life, aunt!
Please tell us who you are.
Bria: Who am I?
LMC: No. Whose daughter you are, who was your father?
Bria: I am Piedar’s daughter.
LMC: What was your mother’s name?
Bria: Piada.
LMC: And your grandfather?
Bria: My grandfathers name was Gheordi the elder, he was from Bănățeni.
LMC: What about your grandmother?
Bria: From Bănățeni she was Bănțăneancă (*from Banat county).
LMC: May you live long and be blessed!
Bria: You shall be healthy, too!
LMC: Please tell us the testimony of the Bug as it was, full of passion and pain.
Bria: I will. I was 13-14 years old. But I was small, we used to run behind my father, we had no polenta to eat, we were starving, had nothing to eat. The gendarmes were chasing us, through sand, trough dust, wherever we fell we raised and as we raised, they caught us and beat us, 25 beats on the but each.
LMC: Please continue.
Bria: In the end we ran once more, again we did our best and ran because of starvation, because we had no food and no place to hit our heads. What were we supposed to eat? Wood? We were far away from our country, far away we were, on a field, between some aspen trees, that kind of tree.
LMC: Tell us what it was like there at Bug.
Bria: How was it in the Bug? What was there? We were far away. There was just one kolkhoz there, one single villa…
There were no houses, there was nothing there… only the rich stayed in the villages. We were staying far away on the banks of the Bug.
LMC: And where were you?
Bria: In huts
LMC: And how was it there?
Bria: A glacier, without a chimney, without light, without anything…
LMC: And who were you staying with?
Bria: With my father, with my mother, with my brothers…
LMC: And what were your brothers’ names?
Bria: My brothers? One was called Jandari, one Hîrța and one Tuia. My brothers died there at the Bug…
LMC: May God forgive them!
Bria: May God forgive them! We were starving and crying. We returned on foot; we did not take the trains because we were afraid, they might take us back to the Bug. When the freight train would move forwards and backwards, we were scared to death that it might take us back to Russia.
LMC: What happened there in those huts, how did Roma people live there at the Bug?
Bria: They worked for the kolkhoz in the fields, they cut the entire corn stalks with everything.
LMC: Tell us, tell us…
Bria: They took the potatoes out of the ground, they worked because that’s how it was done there at the kolkhoz, because that’s how it was done there. And they piled them up far away in the fields, heaps… just there.
LMC: What do you remember from there? What do your old eyes see?
Bria: What is there to see?! I saw trouble…when we fell down, we would raise and continue because there were people dying wherever we went and we were afraid that we can die too.
LMC: Do tell us.
Bria: That is how we will die, like that one died …. also starving also freezing out of fear that the gendarmes would take us and beat us, kill us and throw us in pits, so we got up, we struggled there on the ground….
LMC: Do tell, did you see that pit filled with dead people?
Bria: I saw that there were huge piles: one above the other, there
LMC: How was that pit?
Bria: It was large and round, huge.
LMC: How did they throw the dead inside?
Bria: People would starve to death, so they put them all together in that pit and they died and our Romanians, our gendarmes would beat them while we were there in Russia, as we were on the banks of the Bug, far away …
LMC: Romanians, were beating you?
Bria: Our ones beat us, they hit us, they killed us. The Russians did not hit us too much, they pitied us. They hit us too from time to time, usually 25 hits on the bottom, that is what they did, and they grabbed us by arms and feet and threw us ….
LMC: Did they force you as children to labor?
Bria: We used to follow them, we gathered potatoes as well in buckets and stashed them in piles and when we were hungry, they baked potatoes, and we ate the potato shells. Depending on who our big leader was at work, he would do that. We ate one potato in the fields, what else to do? We ate it like it was, no salt, nothing. We were tormented in unbelievable ways, sister Lumină. We were tormented and suffering , pour souls, we slept with no light, no chimney, no windows, no covers.
LMC: You had covers, did you not have goose feather blankets?
Bria: We had tents that we slept in and all we needed, but because we were starving, we sold them. We slept on the ground. There were beds carved in the earth, and we slept on them. We slept down there, we made fire, but the smoke had no way to escape the hut. …
LMC: Did you have water to wash yourselves?
Bria: Where from?! We brought the water out of the Bug, but that Bug, where it was large that Bug…
LMC: And that filth made you sick?
Bria: We got sick, sister. Our parents got ill, our people died, they were full of sickness, they lost their hair.
LMC: Did you get typhus too?
Bria: Yes, I was sick too, my head hurt, look here in the back, I could not see any more, but we went to doctors, and I got well.
LMC: When did you return home?
Bria: We took all that filth, we got diseases from the smell of the dead, the dead dogs and the dead horses smelled so there was no escape.
LMC: Did you see people eat horse meat, how?
Bria: I saw some eating, others did not eat, their eyes were swelling this big ….
LMC: Why?
Bria: Because of the horses, because of the horse meat that you should not eat horse meat. They had chest pains, tummy aches because of the horse meat, they got diarrhea on the way and fell and died.
What else were we eating? Whatever we found, some ate dog meat, some ate that for real, some others whatever they found or what they could find. We did not really eat because it smelled bad, and we got the disease and did not eat any longer because of the smell and others got the disease too and …
LMC: Who else weas staying there at the Bug?
Bria: We stayed because we had no place to go.
LMC: No. Who were your neighbors in the huts, were there a lot of Roma there?
Bria: There were many, there were really a lot of us. There were Roma people from Banat, from Moldova – many of these, they gathered many Roma groups, and we were afraid of them. We feared one another because they were beating us. Wherever we went to bring food they caught us and beat us and took our food away, because of the hunger, the hunger…
LMC: Can you sing a song about the Bug?
Bria: I knew, but I forgot, I forgot.
LMC: Do sing a song for us.
Bria: I forgot.
LMC: Remember.
Bria: When should I remember?
LMC: Now. I heard that you know how to sing beautifully?
„From the Dniester to the Bug.”
Bria: Well, yes „From the Dniester to the Bug.” I only know 2-3 words like that. A word or two that I used to sing out of anger. I was crying.
LMC: Who made these songs, Aunt Bria?
Bria: They were made by our people who were from Dăbuleni, they were your kind, your relatives, MitaȚs people.
LMC: What did they say in the songs.
Bria: Well, they said, they sang in those songs, their sufferings and they were crying for not having what to eat. Back in those days that was sorrow and misfortune.
LMC: You were a child back then?
Bria: Yes, how else. Your relatives were from Dăbuleni the ones who were around, from here from Călărași. They were Mita’s all of them, your grandfather too, all of them.
LMC: Do you know that other song: „Nistrule când te-am trecut, erai negru și urât?” (Dniester, when we passed, you were black and ugly)
Bria: Yes. I knew this one, I cannot sing it anymore, I do not remember. My husband would sing it, but he died. He could speak Russian; he could speak over there. I was young, about 14, 15 years old…
LMC: Well, you were big.
Bria: I was big. I used to go there, I used to run… they gave us polenta with a spoon.
LMC: Who gave you polenta with a spoon?
Bria: The Russians, the Germans.
LMC: Well, were they good to you?
Bria: How else?
LMC: Only Romanians treated you badly?
Bria: They were bad. They beat us, dear, they killed us when they got us. We, the smaller ones, used to get 25 heaps on the bottom, and afterwards they threw us away, so that we could not see the Bug. Some fell into the canal, some fell into the Bug, some fell into the pits, this was happening because we were hungry and had nothing to eat.
LMC: And the Germans used to come there to the huts?
Bria: They came.
LMC: And they were shooting you?
Bria: How else. You weren’t allowed to sit and not rest, they used to say that you suffer, and they would shoot you. They shot in a cart all people at once because they pulled the cart on the sideway for a while to rest the horses; but they shot all of them, even the smallest of the children, there was so much blood as from here to that pile of straw over there. That is what they did. Suffering, no stop for resting.
LMC: Do tell what else you remember, sequences of these, tell us about those frozen people, the babies, women with frozen babies…
Bria: Frozen babies? The frozen women who came on the road on foot with their children in their arms because there were no more carts and horses; they took them away and we came on foot and the snow was high, we drowned in snow. One foot was caught in the snow, the other one slides in another direction, one here the other there and you could not get out of there, not even be pulled out. People fell and died on the ground. Those who could get on the trail survived, the others were left behind.
LMC: Do you remember that big blizzard?
Bria: I tell you about that great blizzard: Our carts and horses remained there, as the people took them, and we had no vehicles to travel in, so we came on foot. It was a small path. Because of the cold, our knees were shaking like this, one leg slipped here and the other there and the legs remained just like that, the path was only under our feet. People got stuck there in the snow and died because they were covered and when we followed, we stumbled upon them and grabbed them like this on a foot and threw them out of the way. We suffered enough, have mercy with the mother who gave birth to us!
LMC: Please tell us aunt Bria, did you help each other there at the Bug? Did those who had food give some to those who did not have it?
Bria: They didn’t, because they didn’t have anywhere to get it either.
LMC: They didn’t give…
Bria: No one was giving anything to others, if you had a boy, you had someone to help you, as you felt, so for your boy or your girls, so you gave a bite to your child. You, the older one, the mother, would give away from your own mouth. But no stranger let something for you!
LMC: Would she give it to another child?
Bria: No, only to her own children because she pitied her children, her son and her daughter. But, if she needed help, she got from the one who run and brought and was beaten by gendarmes, was beaten by the Germans and by the Russians and he still run with his small bag on his shoulder to bring some polenta, to bring food to those who stayed in the huts. You hear me? Was this what happened there?
LMC: And did your father bring you food?
Bria: The Moldavians caught my father and beat him, so he was lying for 6 months.
LMC: Did they beat him that hard?
Bria: And there were my older brothers, same age as these kids here, and we were running around following each other when we entered the village because we stayed on the field. In the huts, in those glaciers.
LMC: were the huts far from the village from you?
Bria: They were far, far away.
LMC: How far?
Bria: 20 kilometers away.
LMC: And you went so far?
Bria: We did. Because we were hungry. As far as you can see there was only a field. There was only corn, there were wheat fields, and when people went to work, potatoes. The bigger families, where there were many people, gathered from that mill that was there on the water, they gathered flour for a polenta. Where there were only two people, they could not take much.
LMC: Was there a mill there on the water?
Bria: It was on the water, where watermills are built. …
LMC: Tell me please about it?
Bria: Where they made flour, molasses, where the grains …
LMC: Aaa…
Bria: So, the children, like these small ones, went over there to help. Put the seeds in and helped, and for that they got a chunk of molasses, also they brought grains in their pockets. Some of them ran around there until they were breathless. You hear? What else is there to tell.
We came back on foot as well, dead tired, we could not feel our feet anymore, our backs either, there was nothing fine because we had no place to sleep. On earth maybe. We came on foot all night and you came like that …. We did not step in trains as we were afraid of the gendarmes, that the Russians catch us and kill us. You hear?? We did not eat food. Those who could have it, took a small piece of polenta. We celebrated Easter and Mardi gras on the roads in the snow away in no man’s land, with no means to survive. We barely crossed the river by boat, ready to flip over, drown in the water and die. They wouldn’t let us cross the bridge.
LMC: Did many people capsize in the water when they crossed by boat
Bria: The boat flipped over sometimes. There was a fatter woman, look like this: „Don’t put us on the boat with her or we will turn upside down” We, as children, cried out loud for them not to put us in the same boat with her because the boat was bending so they put her in the middle to steady the boat and she is not at one edge. …
LMC: And you didn’t turn over?
Bria: But he was a child, about the same as this child, your nephew and held on to the chain and pulled the boat and it went straight: one in front and one in the back. We also had some mules. What were we doing with them in Romania? Damn them, we brought them for nothing as they succumbed. We barely passed those. We cross, and were crossed over that big water, the Dniester over there, and we were here. We slept until the others passed. At night the Germans passed, the gendarmerie troop crossed, and people did. We were scared to death and huddled together for fear not to be shot. The road was like this big and we stayed near the water, there, trembling with fear. Some died, others survived. Each as they could. What could one do with the elder ones? Because the ones who were older and had some problems, a weak heart, sickness, because they got sick after eating the dogs they ate, those who ate horses and dogs, they barely survived. You hear? We were twenty like that twenty thousand people, that many, but they died and only 2000 Roma made it back. There were so many of us. They all died. They threw them away in the water, in that big ravine and in that big pit one on top of the other, one on top of the other like you throw dogs.
LMC: Who died from your family at the Bug?
Bria: My brothers.
LMC: Your brothers.
Bria: My brothers died. Two brothers. My father died because he was caught in the fields, where he was gathering some wood; He stayed ill and suffered because they hit him on his head and beat his back. He stayed there for 6 months, the time we stayed at the Bug, with the Germans and he was ill, and he barely, barely escaped and God made him well again. God came to him and got him up. He told him: „What is it with this man, Piedari, how long does he lie here?” He grabbed him like this on his hair and got him up. That was Saint Peter, God and Sain John. .
LMC: Is this true?
Bria: True that he did not raise any more, he was dead.
LMC: But in the end, he did get up?
Bria: Well afterwords he got better!
LMC: Praise the name of the Lord!
Bria: God got him up. In the end, what else did we do? We stayed, we stayed 3 years, 4 years, we just stayed there. We stayed there suffering, tormented, we were poor souls. We had not even been to the village to see a house, to see one of those promised villas, there was one single villa there on the banks of the Bug.
LMC: What was in that villa?
Bria: The oven, where we baked the bread.
LMC: Did you bake bread over there?
Bria: We baked because we used to put together everything that the children gathered. We all collected a handful or two with flour from everyone, and we made bread out of it.
LMC: And who baked your bread?
Bria: We did. Because we were in the field far away and there was no one there: there were no Russians, there were no Germans, there was no one. Only when they came and passed with their planes.
LMC: That’s it, aunt Bria. May you live long and be lucky!
Bria: You too should be blessed with luck!
