The dead stripped of their clothes

 LMC: Today we are at our uncle Muti’s and his wife Silvia’s house.

Live and be healthy!

Muti and Silvia: May you also be healthy and may God give you strength and luck!

LMC: Uncle, first, I want you to tell us whose son, are you?

Muti: I’m Lemi’s the elder one son and my grandfather was Iața o phuro and his mother was Cioha daughter of Hîrța the Old.

LMC: And what was your mother’s name?

Muti: Zînca.

LMC: God may bless her soul.

Muti: She is from Pipărconi.

LMC: And you, aunt, whose daughter, are you?

Silvia: Gheordi’s the elder one and Câmpeana’s daughter.   

Muti: Just say Melalo’s sister.

LMC: I want you to tell us your testimony about the Bug as it was and please do not forget anything that happened there.

Muti: Not a thing.

LMC: Tell us.

Muti: I was at the Bug. They took us from here, with a transfer. They took us from here, from Poiana Mare, they took us to Bug.

Silvia:

LMC: Don’t hurry, please don’t hurry because then you were 30 years old. I want you to make a more detailed presentation about your life back then. What were you doing before the Bug? How were you living? What were you doing?  you made boilers, cauldrons

Muti: We used to work in villages. We traveled, put the tents on the outskirts of a village and walked with the cauldron on our backs to sell them for flour and two coins. We walked through the village.

LMC: And could you live out of that?

Muti: We could. We used to take pigs in winter. This was the territory where Miulo travelled with us through the villages. Miulo the elder, with his wife, they traveled with us through Poiana.

LMC: And how was this life in tents, was it more beautiful?

Muti and Silvia: It was beautiful, and we were all fine.  Nowadays we are always sick.

LMC: Now tell us how you heard that you were to be taken at the Bug.

Muti: I heard it in „41. And they gathered us and took us into the Bug. They gathered us and took us away

Silvia: With horse-drawn carriages.

LMC: Tell us how they gathered you and how they took you?

Muti: They called us from here and we went through transfer.

Silvia: We were taken in convoys.

Muti: They gathered us and took us from station to station, one station to another, beaten and  tormented and suffering.

Silvia: We didn’t get out of the carts for fear that gendarmes would hit us.

And when we arrived there, they put us in a large camp with huts. Huts like in an icehouse.  They had no chimney, they had nothing. And our people died, many of them.

And there was Seacă’s Diamanto, there was Bărculică, Mirado.Those were our men, those were our leaders.

Silvia: And there were Moldovians, and our people and others

Muti: Also, Pollo and Lupașcu.

Silvia: And they put us in some huts with no windows, with no chimneys in the dark and they became guardians, and they beat us so that we could not go anywhere to get food.

Muti: And they built huts and a city hall for us over there. And Negruț’s poor people got in there and died. They stayed in there for just one evening and died. And they shouted: where is my chisel? Where are my scissors? And my father and Ghinula’s Gheordi together with my father-in-law were laughing at them: „Look, they’re asking for scissors and chisel, and they are crying out, but in the morning, we found them dead.”

Silvia. You talked to them in the evening and in the morning, they were dead as straw. And the gendarmes, dear, they collected them. They collected them and put them in a pile…

Muti: And the gendarmes took us and beat us and mocked us. And we left from here up to the Prut. Village after village, the gendarmes changed and beat us, and we suffered.

LMC: Who were you with?

Muti: Me and my wife and my father and my mother and my father-in-law, Ghiula’s Gheordi.

LMC: Were there many Roma?

Muti: We were 7-800 Roma. There were both men and women.  Ionișor died at the Bug too. In the ditch he died. Ionișor the elder one.

LMC: Tell us now:

Muti: When we got at the Bug, people were taking wives for a corncob. That’s how it was.  He would give a corn cob and get a wife. Women were cheap. And I told to Curcă’s Goguț, to get a wife but he didn’t want to. He got one when we came back to Romania. He took Ludi the crooked.

And they beat us to death at the Bug. They took our horses; they also took my father-in-law’s horses.

Lulla: They took our carts; they left us on the ground…

Muti: And the gendarmes shot

Lulla: And they burned our tents and burned our clothes.

Muti: 40 people were shot in the carts. The Germans shot them in the carts.

Lulla: They were piled up one on top of each other, one on top of the other…

Muti: Piled up with meat and bread in their hands… 40 people were in the cart

LMC: Why did they kill them?

Muti and Lulla: They shot them to stop suffering on the road.  So that they do not suffer. And he fired his pistol to shoot me too. And a German came and said: Why did you shoot the man and did not shoot the beef. So, he didn’t shoot me anymore.

Lulla: And they took us there, dear, and put us in those huts and we ran to the village and the gendarmes caught us and beat us to death and we suffered. No..

Muti: And they beat us and killed us and tormented us

Lulla: We used to go and sell our skirts and clothes; we didn’t know what else to do and we gave them away for a bucket of potatoes and a tablespoon of salt.

Muti: We have our clothes and gold left there

Lulla: They set fire to our tents, and we remained in the field…

Muti: our carts and our horses. They took three pairs of horses from my father-in-law.

Lulla: And we returned on foot. When we came back it was raining and snowing

LMC: Let’s stay at the Bug a little bit longer, you come back too quickly, tell us what happened there.

Muti: My father-in-law used to put the bat upside down on his shoulder. Ghiula ‘s Gheordi, that’s how he walked.

LMC: Please be quiet, just talk.

Lulla: Get out of here, they are filming only us old ones.

Muti: People ate horses and dogs out of hunger. They had nothing else to eat in the Bug.There was no food. And when we went with salt, they took the salt from us and didn’t give us anything for it.

Lulla: And they set fire to our tents and our pillows and took us to the camp.

LMC: Who has set the fire?

Lulla: The gendarmes and the Germans. Our Romanian gendarmes were doing us more harm than the ones over there. Now when we got there, we had nothing to eat. Now, a woman was gone with her child

Muti: It was said, it was said, she knows these words.

Lulla: A woman, Lina, they made her make love to her own child. She didn’t live long because of the trouble over what happened, and she died. She died. Gendarmes came and picked us up from there. They made people to make love, the brother make love to me, my father, it was …

Muti: They were making fun of us…

Lulla: Out of fear, we did not go anywhere and were starving of hunger and thirst. We were digging holes in the ground and drinking water and water was flowing from women’s feet into that water…

Muti: And we came on the road. Our ankles froze, blood flowed out of them and caught on our pants, on the skirts…

Lulla: And we drank water from the mud, suffering, full of mud we drank … we used to walk miles for a pinch of salt to put it on the potatoes and we ate them, dear, without salt and without polenta. We rubbed the white corn on a sieve and made flour, flour and made polenta out of it and cried.

Muti:We suffered a lot, dear.

Lulla: When they gathered us back to come back, to return

Muti: In Mentelași, 800 kilometers, through the Prut, up to here.

Lulla: we were walking through deep water and you could see only our heads, that’s how we crossed the  Prut and the water was up to here and at night where we arrived, we heated our skirts at the fire and they got wet as the skirts were full of ice and so much ice that it hurt us, look here, blood flowed here, look like this, please forgive me the blood flowed and when I sat down it glued to these and when I got up blood flowed from my feet

Muti: And I made her opinci (slippers).

Lulla: And the gajou took our mare and my father said: ” Go Lulleauă and take the mare back because the gajou took her. And I said to him, ” I can’t get up, father.” And the thief took her. So, we had to come back on foot. Where did we come from?

LMC: And how did you raise your children?

 

Muti: Woe to them, woe to them. Some would leave them behind on the roads

Lulla: Some remained with those people,

Muti: Some others became crippled.

Lulla: some people would tell their children: „Stay here, I’m going to bring you food’’ and they would leave and let them there

LMC: Could their hearts bear to do such a thing? 

Muti: That’s how the times were, they had no other option, they could not walk anymore.

Lulla: They left the children behind, and so they could move on. There was my sister, she took two little children with her and ran away

Muti: And she wrapped them in a blanket…

Lulla: she wrapped them in a blanket, and they died there in the field and the crows ate their eyes…

LMC: May God forgive them!

Lulla: And the crows ate their eyes. And I went on, dear, and I stiffened. I got stiff because the blizzard was doing it to me, only, I froze, I stiffened… And then my father said: „Oh, woman, look, this one is going to die too, the others died back there…”” Well, what should I do to Gheordi? “.” She took me and threw me on some man’s saddle, but the man threw me down. The snow was this high, and he threw me with my face down and I remained like that. my legs hung like this.

Muti: When Pitanu’s Toma died…

Lulla: As I stayed there, my legs were stiff, like this, then my father took me, pulled me down, and said: „How are you, Lulla?” Let it be better for me, father. He had a small horse in his hand, and he was only spinning it on the road in the snow, because there was nothing we could do. And we continued walking, crying, on foot. How far did we get to the train?

We came to the Berești Bucharest train station.

Lulla: Do you hear? From there we took the train, but until there on foot, through the mud and snow in suffering we slept in the snow.

Muti: On the roads. A man crossed us at night with a boat, some fell into the water, in the Prut, just fell into the water. Those who escaped, those who didn’t, remained behind on the roads

LMC: And how did Pițanu’s Toma die? He froze.

Muti: He died behind me, he was behind me, he was my wife’s uncle. That, her uncle he was.

Lulla: And Toma shouted, he had three children and ate with the teeth of a child and then my aunt tried to take him. And he was just like, „Mom he is eating me.” And my aunt got into the cart to take him away.

Muti: And my father shouted: „Duda, pull his boots off his feet and put them in yours, or else you will be dying too. And she pulled boots from his feet and remained barefoot…

LMC: That’s what she did, she took the boots off his feet?

Muti: That’s what she did, or else she would have died too.

Lulla: Another hour has passed. It came out, dear, the sun so much death, after the blizzard

What did she do? She ran back and made a hole for him with her bare hands, just like this in the plough…

Muti: With my father and father-in-law.

Lulla And she covered him with earth so that the crows would not eat him.

LMC: May God forgive him.

Muti: May God forgive him!

Lulla: From there, we gathered, Luminita, and continued crying through the mud and snow…

My brother died, we left him on the road just like that, and we walked on the road crying and my father would have died too but we took him like this. The Germans would shoot us, if we sat down to end our sufferings.  I would also sit down to rest but so you did not sit down at all, you walked on your feet. We took the weaker ones under their armpits and carried them…

Muti: If the German saw you sitting down, he put the gun to your head and shoot you.

Lulla: Come dad, come dad. That’s how we pulled him until it got dark. There was a lot of snow on us, Lumina. I was barely dragging myself through the snow and shaking myself. I was young and strong, and I was pulling snow from my father, from my mother

Muti: We reached a big shed. Who was there? Seca’s Diamantu, Bărculică, Pulică, Lemi my father, my father-in-law Gheordi and I brought them calf meat because the Germans ate, and they ate there in that shed. And a strong sun came out…

LMC: Did they share with you?

Muti: Of course?! They gave us meat to eat, just not to stay in one place because they shot us so we wouldn’t suffer, they shot.

Lulla: Kill you. We didn’t know what to say in their language.

Muti: When I left there, I fell into a cellar where I fell into the cellar over wine barrels. There was a winery there.

Lulla: Pasarabia was there. It was a village of the rich.

LMC: I know they had wine in the wells.

Muti: In wells. And Toma the elder and I , we fell into that cellar. When he put his mouth on the barrel, 10 people couldn’t take him away. Toma the elder, Lucica’s father.

Lulla: Luminita. We were mocked by the people. They made us mock anyone who was your brother, your father. As soon as my brother heard it, he said, „You won’t come with me anymore.”

LMC: You were beautiful!

Lulla: Out of fear. We suffered as people were lying dead like these leaves are

Muti: And I was walking over them…

Lulla: Dead people, all people were dead.

Muti: It was a woman. Manta was her name. Manta of Gogoloiașesti she was some relative of Ionișor and she died. My cartwheel rolled over her. Who is this? Who is this? It’s Gogolași’s Manta.

Lulla: Better to have died than the suffering I took. We returned impoverished when we came back. We slept, we slept under trees, we had no more pillows, no more clothes on, we had nothing.  

LMC: Look, God has kept you praised to be His name!

Muti: God kept us.

Lulla: Better to have killed me there, I suffered a lot there. My lips and tongue were cracking from the cold in my mouth, and no one would give you a spoonful of water.

Muti: And look, many of those who weren’t in the Bug got money, but we, who suffered so much, didn’t get anything.

LMC: You didn’t receive any money?

Lulla: Nothing, ever.

Muti: Nothing, not even a dime.

Lulla: They all took and saw the world. I came home and cried out of spite. Oh God, what’s wrong with us, only us and the poor ones do not get…?

LMC: And did you do the paperwork?

Muti: We have done paperwork. I sent it everywhere. I also sent the id-cards original and mine

LMC: When did you send it three years ago. ?

Muti: Now I sent in 41 in 42.43. I sent the papers.

LMC: No, no, no. Did you send in 2000,2001

Muti: We did the paperwork in 2001, 2002, and 2003 I sent it.

LMC: Who did your paperwork?

Muti: A lady from Strehaia , also one from Băilești, one from Craiova, one

Lulla: How do you say that place beyond Craiova?

Muti: From Feliqași. Where Cioaba took them. And he ate 13 million from me. They still need money, need more and I gave it.

LMC: Which Cioabă?

Muti: From Băilești. Buna’s Cioabă.

Lulla. He took our money, and I have a nephew, I go with him so sick, who has a kidney, look like this. He took money from us, and I have a nephew who walks with a kidney like this.

Muti: Has a transplant.

LMC: And how are you living now, are there traces that hurt, left from the Bug.

Muti and Lulla: We didn’t take anything. Nothing.

LMC: How did you not get into pain? You said you froze and were in pain.

Muti: we froze, we froze on the roads

Lulla: We froze, this one was left with asthma

Muti: I’ve had a bad time since ’44.

Lulla: My legs hurt, I can no longer walk, my eyesight is bad; I put my hands to see you. And my chest hurts just here.

Muti: My legs do not work either, but I’m also old, I’m 91 years old.

LMC: Uncle, can you tell us a story about your father, about your mother, about your grandparents, that I didn’t see there in Bug, you were 30 years old then

Muti: Yes, I was 30 years old, I was grown up.

LMC: What did your grandfather do?

Muti: Grandpa Iața used to shovel gold coins with the barter.

Lulla: Here, when we were in Romania. Back there, not anymore. Whoever had gold would live good.

LMC: Did he also return to Romania?

Muti and Lulla. He came, dear, he came.

Muti: They came. My father and grandfather came because they were healthy. Here’s where I buried them.

Lulla: They came because they were strong, dear.

Well, and those who didn’t have coins, you talked to them today and tomorrow you saw them dead. The gendarmes would pile them up. They made the Roma people dig holes, big ones, and threw the dead bodies away like dead dogs.

LMC: I want to ask you, can this money that is given pay for your suffering and pain.

Lulla: I don’t know.

LMC: How do you not know that you have experienced this pain and the pain you have gone through.

Lulla: Well, the money I was given, I cannot tell, as they did not reach me.

LMC: Now put your hope in God and you will receive it as well. We will help you.

Muti: May God help you and help your word as well.

Lulla: Lucky to be both you and your children.

LMC: You don’t have to pay anyone a penny. That is your lawful right. Now, I want you to tell me something else.

Lulla: Listen to Lumina. I remained crippled on the road. And my father was crying that he would let me on the road and leave. These legs were no more, I was crippled because of the cold, could not walk any more.

Muti: She’s 82 years old.

Lulla: And my father was crying, and he had five gold coins, and he went to a man and took a horse and a cart. He put me in the cart. I didn’t go with him on a road, dear

Muti: And the Germans came and took him.

Lulla: And my mother would drag me after her and I would cry

Muti: They put me on camels, my father and my mother put me on camels.

LMC On camels?

Muti: On camels when we came from there from Russia when we ran to come back because the gendarmes shouted „Those who can come, should come, who doesn’t, should stay there. Interruption of the war.

LMC: And were there camels there?

Muti: Shure, in Russia there were.

Lulla: There were those big ones

Muti: Big ones. And my mother put me on a camel, and I rode 30 km on it.

LMC: There weren’t any camels at the Bug?!

Muti: In Russia there are, dear, in Russia and I got on that big horse. There they are. A

Lulla: And I stayed there for two years. A woman died and her son put her under a bank and pulled earth over her.

Muti: Gogu’s mother.

LMC: How come you did not get typhus?

Muti. Ehei, a woman got sick. It was a woman, Gogu’s Marița fell ill and blamed Luba the old for it, that is because she had gone mad and did not think right by then.  Her uncle Gogu’s Marita.

And how did Mîrado set fire to the huts?

Muti: The huts were set on fire by Ciorică. Ciorică and Mîrado. They set them on fire because they had stolen beans. They stole beans and the gendarmes came to kill them. And Mîrado said: „Uncle Iața, where are the beans from? Didn’t my enemies give them to me?” And Ciorică burned their huts. Orja’s Ciorică. Mîrado set them on fire.

Lulla: He was made Guardian at the Bug.

Muti: Mîrado was one of those big ones, he was the boss over us: Mîrado, Bărculică, Pulica, they were big over us.

Lulla: Ah Lumitita, the gendarmes and the Roma were beating. They filled us with blood. We were not getting out of the huts of that camp.

Muti: Look, Luminița, what the gendarmes did to me.

Turn around, turn your back.

LMC: Not like that. Take off your shirt and show us.

Muti: they hit me with the rake in the cellars because they stole the flour and they wouldn’t give us the share anymore, all because of the allowance.

Lulla: They gave us a ration there at the Bug.

Muti: Let’s take the allowance ration, but he put the gendarme to beat me, kill me, put it in the cellar because of the flour. They took each other’s flour.

LMC: Isn’t it a shame not to take your money?

Muti: God grant that I take them too. It would be good for me to buy my wife a gold coin.

Lulla: Oh, Luminița, we’d better have something too. Those people didn’t suffer what my boy and I suffered there. Because we are older than them.

LMC: That’s what I want you to tell us.

Muti: I am the oldest of all the Roma here, amongst those from Coșoveni and Strehaia. There was Gogu the great, Gogu Impiedicatu who lived 105 years and died.

LMC: May God forgive him!

Muti: May God forgive him!

Lulla: Yes, we had a lot of trouble. We have been asking for death for a long time.

Muti: To end our suffering.

Lulla: I have suffered enough; I have troubled enough in Russia. I was dying, the Bugu ate me up and I entered Buga after the shells in winter and the water was up to here…

Muti: And her cousin was Grancea who was shot.

Lulla: Snow, stop your lips so I can talk…

Muti: Her cousin was Grancea who was shot when he was diving after shells

LMC: Tell me what the Bug was like because I want to go there too.

Lulla: Ho, ho. The water was red. We were sitting here, and the Bug was over there

LMC: How can the water be red?

Lulla: The children would dive in and pick clams, red ones and we would eat them. One went and the German caught him and put his head on the bag, where he went to the village to feed,

Muti: Tht was Lupiț.

Lulla: Lupiț it was, and he put his head like that and fired a shotgun. You hear that Luminița?.

Muti: And the cakes remained on the ground and after him they killed Lena’s Gheordi.

Lulla: He jumped into the water and the German shot him

Muti: Rijina’s nephew from Coșovei

LMC: They told me, they told me…

Lulla: They told you. We suffer, dear.

LMC: They also told me about that child they caught stealing seeds and cut off his hand

Lulla: After seeds and they shot him in the seeds in the sunflower.

LMC: and they cut off his hand

Lulla: And we just went to get seeds because we had nothing to eat.

LMC: What were those seeds like?

Lulla: Sunflower, the usual one.

LMC: Was he far away?

Lulla: O the other side of the road.

Muti: There were holes in the ground, that Lolică and Gheordi the baker had made, and we were going to steal potatoes and the German shot with a bullet and the bullet passed by my ear, so I said: „Well, romale, let’s run because the bullet passed by my ear.” And we took what we could carry of the potatoes, and we ran…

Lulla: They would take frozen potatoes in bags and when they brought them home the frozen potatoes and the water would flow out of them, and we would eat them because we had nothing else.

Muti: I brought flour for a polenta. Where I brought flour for one polenta, a guest to my father came to us. Where he came, he sat down and ate the whole polenta my father, and one man and I was left without polenta. I was left with potatoes. …

Lulla: You ate it, all of it, you didn’t leave some for my child?

Muti: What was his name, dear? Puica’s Gutui. He came to me to talk, and my father put him at the table and talked to him. He ate my quarter polenta. I ran out of polenta and ate the plain potatoes. Rista entered too, Rista Cibi. What did Rista do? He cursed his mother and threw him out.  He kicked him out. I was upset that I ate the potatoes without polenta, I ate them plain.

Lulla: Now Lumina, when people made fire, they didn’t let us, they kicked us out, they didn’t let us. „Oh, let us warm up because we are dying.”

Muti: Across the street from me, Liva’ s Bandi slaughtered a pig and when he cut the pig he didn’t give me a piece of meat, Liva’s Bandi.  

LMC: Where did he get the pig from?

Muti: He bought it from the Russians because the man had gold coins. He changed them and bought it from the Russians… And he sent his daughter-in-law to bring him water, and she brought him some mud in the water. „Dad, I did not see it…”

Lulla: That’s how it was there.  Didn’t I tell you, we dug wells and the water from the women’s feet were draining into them and we drank it with mud, we endured a lot…

Muti: And I had an uncle, whose name was Paraschiva’s Gogu. He went to the field, a woman came and turned, and he said: Wait, woman, how far do you come on me…”

Lulla: Great poverty…

Muti:  Paraschiva’s Gogu, whom my aunt Marița of Cioha was chasing him. I have seen great suffering that was never seen before.

Lulla: A great tribulation that has not been mentioned on earth before.

Muti: Gogu the child of Ceandiri is here. And that’s Marica Biua.

LMC Have a long and healthy life!

Muti: BY Gods mercy!

LMC: Live and be healthy! And may God bless you with health. Please do no longer be upset; you will get your money, just be patient.

Muti: Your words in Gods ear!