The granddaughter of the woman who was eaten at the Bug

LMC: Today the 21st of September 2004, we are in Drăgănești, Olt County, in our uncle Nini’s yard. Before us, we have several old ladies. Be lucky and healthy!

Adies: God bless you with health and wisdom to choose the right path to Him!

LMC: God bless you with luck and health! I want you to tell us who you are.  Introduce yourselves. We start from this side. Who are you?

Marița: I am Marița, the wife of Iru.

LMC: Whose daughter?

Marița: Doughter of Șobolan from Strehaia.

LMC: Be blessed with luck! Șobolan was whose son?

Marița : Not even I know that. He died back there at the Bug.

Ludi: I am Ludi daughter of Mațuțosti.

LMC: be blessed with luck! And you?

Mitica: I am Mitica, Londeari’s.

LMC: Londeari whose son, was he?

Mitica: His father was called Mita. Yes, I did know him. Mita was his name.

LMC: Mita. And what was your mother’s name?

Mitica: My mother was called Roca.

LMC: Whose daughter?

Mitica: Of Bășicari.

LMC: Wasen’t she daughter of Ristică?

Mitica: Ristică, yes, Ristică.

LMC: You, see? Be healthy! And you aunt?

Ludi: I belong to Toma, son of Baleari from Piatra.

LMC: What was your grandfather’s name?

Ludi: His name was Binari.

LMC: And his wife?

Ludi: I forgot her name, I did not know my grandfather’s granny.

LMC: And you are?

Jeny: Jeny from Fălcoi.

LMC: Who was your father?

Jeny: Rista son of Șorcovanu from Coșoveni.

LMC: Be blessed with luck! And you are?

Coarna: I am Coarna.

LMC: Whose doughter?

Coarna: Doughter of Măria.

Ludi: Now we mention our good relatives!

LMC: And you?

Rina: I am Rina.

LMC: Whose daughter?

Rina: Of Tenta and Mătasea.

Ludi: Now we come from our own lineage.

LMC: What about Tenta, whose son was he?

Rina: Muca’s.

LMC: Be blessed!  Now please tell me about your testimony on the Bug.

Ludi: I was at the Bug.

LMC: Tell us how that happened, how did they take you there?

Ludi: I was at the Bug.

LMC: You were all at the Bug.

Ludi: There was my father, with his wife, with his children. I was 10 years old when we were there. When I was 10 years old, my father died there. My mother died there, my brother, they all died there. Only I survived, left alone, and there was also my uncle Muca. He left his wife there at the Bug, he left his children, and he took me on his back and brought me back to Romania. To bring me back to Romania, he left his children, his wife and carried me around his neck.

LMC: Why that?

Ludi: Because there was nobody else to do it. Because his children were dead, same was his wife, they were gone altogether. Only I survived, alone.

LMC: Oh, did his family died too?

Ludi: His family died so he brought me around his neck. He was my father’s brother. And we once went where we stayed.

LMC: What kind of people are your kind?

Ludi: We had tent, cart, we had an anvil and an ambos, we had hammers, bellows. We had big pillows that we put inside our tent, and we made buckets, we had our faces darkened with ashes, that is how muddy we were. We ate our food full of ash and full of mud. When bread fell on the floor, we would picked it up, we would shake it and eat it.

LMC: This was before, while you were still in Romania?

Ludi: Right, when we lived in Romania, before, when we lived in tents and worked and laboured. When we blew the bellow, and we handcrafted and we blew.

LMC: How did the order come for you to go to the Bug?

Ludi: They took us to the Bug, and they promised us villas over there, that we would get a cow with milk, that they would give us wealth and get us rich, because we were poor here where we were. They said they will make us rich over there. For the place we went to, we traveled for a long time. How to say this, for almost a year we were only traveling on the road, with carts and horses, tormented, impoverished, all sandy and dusty, famished… When gendarmes saw you out of the line, they shot you.  

LMC: Gendarmes as in

Ludi: Our gendarmes, Romanians. Wherever they saw us, they shot us and beat us up. When children run out in the fields to pi, they shoot them, same they did with women. We were travelling in a row, in a convoy. There were people from all over our country, from the whole country. Many people, how should I put this, so many that there was no more space. Our people would kill the smoke out of you if they met you. And they forced children to dishonor their own mothers.

LMC: Who did?

Ludi: The children of that woman.

LMC: Who was with you at the Bug?

Ludi: I was with my father, my mother, my siblings and my relatives. But all of them died there. At the Bug died all. They died there, they remained there, poor souls. We were quite troubled. They put us in those huts and kept us there. We ate wheat that we used to bake. We crushed the grains in a stainer and ate it. And Parole’s Rista gave my father a gold coin, so he had food because he had nothing to change for there. People were poor as mice, they died of hunger. Dead people piled up like these bricks and we stepped over them. There were blizzards, there was need there-The Germans came and shot us there in the huts. My father was in the hut and had nothing to put on, he took the trousers from a child, he took the footwear and left the child there because he was dead, he left him there on the plain wood dead and we got out. There was a blizzard, and a plague, women and children would fall and die in the snow. They froze to death. What where people doing, the Germans? Just listen to what we did. I went with my brother to the village, to begin the village because we died of hunger.

LMC: How did you get out of the camp?

Ludi: We sneaked out of the camp. I took him by the hand, so we bag together for food. The Germans caught us. They beat us so hard that we fell on the ground. They grabbed my hand, and they threw away the bread we got, they threw the bread on the garbage pit.  … I was crying on the Germans and, because he held me by the hand, so he slapped me too, but I was little, I was ten years old. That one they beat to the ground and beat him purple. After this they set us free, and I took my brother by the hand and brought him home to my father, and my father said: „What did you do, you did not bring a thing home?” The Germans caught us and beat us up.” My father shouted and got mad. One week passed and my father starved to death.

LMC: Did he die of hunger?

Ludi: Of hunger. People died, just like chicken die when they are scratched. They died of hunger.

Mitica: Of famine they died.

Ludi: Do not talk, now. We stayed for two and a half years and people died. Who returned from there? A few returned from the Bug. Many were left behind. The dead were left behind, poor souls, troubled and naked. Women would walk naked, had no skirts on because they sold the skirts for food.  

LMC: Let’s rewind. Where did we stop? When you return from the village.

Ludi: We didn’t bring anything from the village. Three days passed, four days, He was laying because of hunger and then he died. When my mother saw this, she was quite dizzy too, she fell off her feet and died too.  

LMC: Did she suffer from typhus?

Ludi: All my brothers fell, as a fountain falls.

LMC: Were they infested with typhus?

Ludi: They were ill. Typhus and famine. Cold and hunger… and thirst, because we did not have water either. There was a great plague there.  

Mitica: People ate dogs.

Ludi: Stop, now. That one from Craiova, ate from my grandmother.

LMC: What was your grandmother’s name?

Ludi: Bina was her name.

LMC: Bina was your grandmother.

Ludi: My grandma was Bina, and she had a pot of gold coins. Burdufu took her and ate her as he had nothing to eat. One of these, what was his name, who ate the dog?

Mitica: Barco’s Cociola.

Ludi: At the Bug he ate the dog, as he had nothing else to eat. They cut the dog just like that and ate him. At the Bug they did that.

LMC: I heard.

Ludi: People eat one another. They would eat anyone if they saw anything they ate it up. Mitica: Tey ate

Ludi: You should stop talking.

LMC: What else can you tell us?

Ludi: About the time we returned from there, when we got out of the huts.

Mitica: We came to the Dniester (he is whispering)

Ludi: We barely escaped from there, from that land that we couldn’t even see the hut. You could only see an opening of the hut and we would get in like this on our bellies, that is how we entered. On our bellies we would enter the huts and when he took us out, he would pull us out by one hand or by one foot. And we said: „Is this what Antonescu gave us? Did he send us to die here?” He said that he gives us villas, that he gives us big houses, cows and riches. He took us from our Romania and impoverished us. It put us in the ground so much that many families died.

Mitica: They took our carts, our mules, our gold …

Ludi: Stop. The carts remained when we crossed. The carts remained on this side, on this side of the water. The carts remained there, the horses. The gold remained, that was hidden in the cart axe, or where the gold was hidden in the woodware. The Germans took it and brought it to the woods, the gold, the clothes the skirts and all the wealth we had.

Mitica: They set everything on fire.

Ludi: They burned down carts and tents.

LMC: This was before you crossed to go to Russia.

Ludi: In Russia: That was when they killed us and took our horses and our gold. When they took us to Russia we didn’t die of hunger because they took our gold from there, from the cart axe. They impoverished us. They left us only our heads before they passed us on the other side. We only managed to take a pillow, the goose feather blanket and one more blanket. The Germans took all the rest, they took it all. They took the carts and the horses, and they even killed our horses, they killed them. The children were staying, that’s how they were sitting there, just like those over there. They fell off their feet and died. From hunger. And we could see how they were dying of hunger. Out of so many people, only I have survived, only one person alone.

LMC: may you live long and be healthy!

Ludi: May you be healthy too!

LMC: Did you still have pain after suffering in that cold?

Ludi: Well, I have. I caught a cold: I have no uterus, no ovaries, tangled guts I had three times. Look, my gall blather is taken out, look. I came very sick from the Bug; I came near to death, but the doctors put me back on the track.

LMC: How did your mother die?

Ludi: She died of hunger. That is why she died. The same reason all my brothers died, and of typhus. Your uncle took me and got me back on my feet. When we returned from there, we were bombed and shot at. And they would put women’s children to dishonor their mothers: ´If you do not dishonor your mother by sleeping with her, I shoot you´ And that man did it out of fear that he would be killed. They would kill us when we returned, as we stayed for two and a half years there at the Bug. But when we returned from there, the Germans killed us just like that. There were dead cows in the fields, and we used to take just the liver out and ate it and let the rest of the cow lying there on the field.

LMC: But why were you not cooking it?

Ludi: Where do so, we were on the run because the Germans beat us up. Once, those we called Moldovans, deserted a village. Those people were running away from the Germans and after they run away, we passed that village. We entered the cellars and drank water, if we found wine we drank wine.  

LMC: There was vine in the wells.

Ludi: Yes, they had wine in wells. We took food, but we could not carry much as we were on foot. At the very end, when we got to the train, they killed us just like that. We came from there, from the Bug and settled in a village. Just listen. And when we came to the village, my uncle was sleeping like this near some fences. During nights we slept there. And people would bring us a blanket, because we were sleeping there outside near the fence on the road. We had no other place to shelter. There was great poverty amongst us! That Bug ate our souls, may it never come back. I returned, poor me, sick and by now I am still sick. I feel like drinking beer!

LMC: You’d drink a beer?

Mitica: This one does drink beer every day.

Ludi: What else should I do? This keeps me healthy.

LMC: May God keep you healthy.

Ludi: God keeps me. He gave the beverage to the world.

LMC: God gave water.  

Ludi: So, now that we were back: why don’t we receive our gold back, the one that was left behind in the cart’s axes, in our pillows? From over there we returned like this, with the finger in …  just like that we returned. No more carts, not even a plate to eat from. No spoon to eat with, nothing. We came carrying our heads and nothing more.  

Mitica: We were two girls and two boys in our family. They gathered us up and took us; we did not know where they were taking us. We were told that they take us to receive cows, sheep, houses. And when we got there, we stayed there. Huts, some took huts, some others did not. Some remained without shelter poor things, these died and cried and were pitiful, dear.  The place they gathered us from, the first time, from there they brought us to another city, where they killed us: it was night and they took our wagons, they took our horses, some of us remained like that in their linen, some like that and there were some Moldavians there and those remained lords. Our ones died impoverished. Lațea the old one took me, my brother and me, he took us from a well. He pulled me out with a hook. That old man took me, and my father looked two days for me. For two days my father looked for me. ”Where are you, child!? Where did you see two small children uncle?! ” And then Lațea and his wife  Lîțoaica said: ”Look at them, they are with me Roșcodino!” They called her Roșcodina, they did not call my mother Roca. So, our mother took as brought us away. At the place she took us, we had no pillows, there was no wagon, there was nothing because those people burned everything down. They burned everything down, we had no place to live in and she gathered us, and we were living like that all together like piled up. From that place, when we arrived, we were shivering and we remained there for some time. My father was selling salt bless him! He traded salt.

LMC: Is that where the name Londeari comes from?

Mitica: Indeed. Londeari was the name he had from before. But there, dear, I do not know, as I do not remember.  They beat us to death. From there we came back here.  

LMC: What were your brother’s names?

Mitica: Busuioc, Bangolea. And one was called Bărculica. And one is called Badea.

LMC: Are they still alive?

Mitica: Bria from Vâlcea, my sister, she died.

LMC: And what about the others?

Mitica: Two died, two are still alive.  

LMC: Two are still alive.

Mitic: Gheorghiț brought us back, your grandmothers and my mother’s brother. He brought us, as he was a lad.

LMC: What else do you remember?

Mitica: What else do I remember? I do remember that we got swollen feet, this size, on a blizzard, rough weather. He put us round his neck. When we fell, we got up again. We were put in some huts, and we were dying inside. I do not remember that I forgot…

LMC: What were you eating?

Mitica: We ate, and we did not eat.? Potatoes directly out of the fire, and those seeds.

Ludi: We used to eat backed wheat that we crushed in a sieve. Paroles Rista ate baked wheat grains too. It’s true that he had no gold, but my father gave him one coin so he could survive.

Mitica: Corn grains. The anguish we’ve been through was not known in the world.  

LMC: What about that pit that they used to throw dead bodies in, did you see it?

Mitica: I saw it, dear.

LMC: Can you describe it for us?

Mitica: That was a large pit, huge it was… and when someone died

Ludi: They were thrown in there.

Mitica: They were dragged like dead dogs and thrown inside, and there was a blizzard and an urge. People were crying in the huts, had no chimney and they were running away from that smoke.

Ludi: Where did those unseen blizzards come from, wasn’t it something else? It was cold indeed.

LMC: That is the weather like, in that region.

Ludi: For two years we stayed there.

Mitica: We had no light.

LMC: And where did you live? Was it in  Dumanovca?

Mitica: In Dumanovca.

Ludi: That is the place where we stayed.

LMC: What about the Bug, was it nearby?

Ludi: It was not close. It was further away. There were woods and further on was the Bug.

Mitica: People would go and bring wood on their shoulders. Some would burn their dead.

LMC: Did you go to the Bug to get shells out of the water?

Ludi: We gathered shells, but we had no salt to put in the food. We ate them unsalted. Some people got worms.  

LMC: The salt was quite expensive back there.

Ludi: There was no salt at all. Salt was the most important thing back there. My father paid a golden pol (* a golden pol was a Romanian 20 lei coin made of gold, quite rare, estimated at 100,000 euros in our days) on a spoonfull of salt becouse there was no salt.  People got worms in theyrs guts becouse they ate unsalted food.  

Mitica: Once me and two other children got out and a blizzard started so heavyly that our father could not find us anymore.  

LMC: Typhus. Did any of you get typhus?

Mitica: No, we did not.

Ludi:  But there were those others, my brothers, my father, who got typhus and died, of hunger and thirst they died, as we had no water either.

Mitica: There was suffering there was trouble.

Ludi: They took snow from the huts and melted it into water.

LMC: They melted the snow so that they would have water to drink.

Ludi: The snow was dirty many times.

LMC: So that they can survive.

Mitica: When they went for seeds, dear, they would shoot them there.

Ludi: Great trouble was there. You see, I was just 10 years old, but I remember.

LMC: Do you know the story of that child, Mardelo wo was shot?

Mitica: I saw him there. He was bigger and he went in to get seeds and they shot him.

LMC: Sunflowers.

Mitica: He went into the sunflower field and the women shouted at him:” Come back, come back or they will kill you”

LMC: You do remember when they shut him and cut off his arm?

Mitica: I do remember

LMC: What happened?

Mitica: They cut off that hand

Ludi and Mitica: That German, cut his hand off.

LMC: No. The German shot him in his arm.

Mitica: He shot him, that was a high rank colonel.

LMC: Yes, the hand was cut off by his own father.

Mitica: His father cut the hand off, because it was perforated by the bullet.

LMC: The arm was loose.

Mitica: He cut it off from here, from the shoulder.

LMC: Do you remember, were you there when it happened?

Mitica and Ludi: We were. Because we wanted to enter that field too, to take some seeds.

LMC: But he went beforehand?

Mitica: He went first, because he was older, and he was tall. Women would shout at him: „Don’t go into the field boy or the German will shoot you.” And when that guy shot, the boy remained on the spot.  

LMC: Do you remember stories of other people? What about your father, how did he die?

Mitica: He died.

Ludi: Inside the hut he died.

Mitica: Inside the hut he died.

Ludi: The hut fell on him like that.

Mitica: The hut broke over him, it had no windows, it had nothing. My mother died of typhus.

Ludi: And the German came to kill him once again, but he was already dead inside and the Germans were jumping on the top of the hut and this is how Londeari died there.  

Mitica: He died. We had a lot of suffering and many problems. My mother’s feet were swollen so my uncle dragged her like that with a hook through the snow.

LMC: What were you doing there at the Bug?

Ludi: She stayed around like those kids over there.  

Mitica: We stayed in the hut, and we had no windows and there was that thick smoke that we had no eyes while we were inside. And we ate grains. My father rubbed that corn in a sewer and we boiled a kind of polenta out of it and we ate it as it was. Polenta with grains this big and we ate it on haulms.

LMC: Did you get any compensation for being deported at the Bug?

Mitica: I did not get a dime!

LMC: You didn’t?

Mitica: We got nothing although we sent in the paperwork and there have passed over seven months since.  

LMC: Before that, three years ago, didn’t you prepare any paperwork?

Mitica:  We did not, because my sun threw them away. I tell the truth. But now we submitted them, but we did not get anything jet.

LMC: Is there anyone else who has something to tell us?

Jeni: I had a brother and a sister. My father died here when he returned from the Bug. I was five years old when it happened. My father left me in a ditch. He kept fooling me, kept fooling me. He could not carry me, we were tired. So, my father took me and put me in the ditch. But then, my aunt Rijina said to him: “What did you do, brother? You left a grown five-year-old. Let’s go back and get her.”

Mitica: So many were left behind as they crippled on the way. So many were left behind,

Jeni: And my father went back,

LMC: Rijina from Coșoveni.

Jeni: From Coșoveni.

LMC: That woman is very dear to me.  

Jeni: So, my aunt and my father listened to her: ‘Brother, you leave her all grown up, after we struggled so much to raise her, let’s get back and take her. ‘And my father and my aunt came back and took me with them.  After they took me back, we traveled for some time when they got hungry. What should they eat? They had nothing to eat and nothing to work. They did not have anything to trade, no pillows, nothing.

Ludi: What should they have as we came with the finger …..

Jeni: And then said, my aunt Rijina from Coșoveni, you know her?

LMC: I know her.

Jeni: She said:” I do have what’s left, let’s give it away or else we will starve and if we die, we die’ that is what my aunt said. So, she took out and gave away those last two small golden coins and got all she could for them. And so we ate. What did they do to us? They brought us to the Bug telling us that we will receive houses, that they give us cows and richness but they took us and brought us away.

Ludi: They took our wealth.

Jeni: And they took us to the huts, and we saw that they had no windows.

Ludi: Huts were those

LMC: Please madam, do not talk now.

Jeni: When we saw where they took us. Where did they take us? Antonescu did it. There, those who had gold survived. Thes gave away a golden coin and got corn flower, potatoes and flower. Those who had gold coins have swallowed them and bent them in order to keep them. They tried to hide 3-4 coins. When we returned to Romania and crossed the river, do you know what my father-in-law did?  He took and bent 5 big gold coins and swallowed them

Ludi: He died there, and the gold remained inside him.

Jeni: He did not die. After we crossed back, please forgive my language and be blessed, he threw it out, took it and washed it! We left behind horses and wagons, we had been beaten, starved and we had no water. Dead people like the earth cuts after plowing with a tractor. And our parents fooled us when we left there: “Do come, please come it’s not far to walk. Just a little bit more” There was suffering, people died of hunger and thirst. Wherever our parents went, they searched for some water to squeeze into our mouths. They took it from where they found it. Nobody was asking if it was fresh or dirty, we drank it because we had no other option. When the army withdrew, we withdrew too, we joined our people. We returned with the army; we came along. I was five years old, but I do remember.

LMC: I see that you remember it quite well.

Jeni: I remember. Whoever had coins, had something to eat and drink, who didn’t, remained there. If they died or survived, no one new

Ludi: Like they were dying.

Jeni: They would put the gun at boy’s heads and force them to disgrace their own mothers. Out of fear they did not see an alternative. „Mother, I can´t help you, see they kill us, these people.” I cannot even speak about this. He put the hand and cut the braid on a woman, and he said:” Do you stay, or don’t you stay? What is he to you, is he your son, or what is he.”

Ludi: The Germans were the hell out of it.

Jeni: They forced them, raw force. So, we gathered, in pain,  bitter and suffering and we did not know where to hit our heads on. We slept in ditches, we ran, and we had no shelter at all. And when we came on this side, my father died, my mother died too, and I was left with one sister and one brother. And we suffered a lot. This is all I knew, and this I told you.

LMC: Live long and be lucky!

Now Aunt Rina is next.

Rina: What can I tell you, I was in diapers? I was little.

LMC: I know you were little.

Rina: My mother put me in a backpack and carried me back home.

Ludi: She was a baby, still in diapres.

Coarna: I am Coarna. Toma son of Orjica is my father and my mother is Maria daughter of Bălan. My aunt was Biza from Vâlcea.

LMC: Be blessed!

Coarna: You too!

LMC: Tell us, you were born in May 1945, when did you came from Bug.

Coarna: When I came from Bug. People passed me like this. Yes, when we came in 45, they crossed me just like that. Well, I was born at the Bug.

Ludi: On the road she was born, on the road when we came back from the Bug.

LMC: On the road when you’ve left or when you come back?

Ludi: When we came back.

Coarna: When they left, my mother was pregnant with me. I was born over there. I had an older brother, and my mother brought us back in backpacks. My brother was older. My father had a wooden tub, and our gold was hidden in there. He gave it to a cousin to get it over in his cart, to bring it back here.

Ludi: Where did he get it to?? The Germans took it.

Coarna: My brother was behind the cart seat, and there was another sister of mine, Lucica, in Strehaia married to Gojea. The boy and the little girl and my sister Leana and me as a baby. Now when they saw my brother was dead, they threw him out of the cart. My sister was dying too. After this, my father looked for that wooden tub, but it was gone. That was when they stopped at the place they arrived. My father looked for the tub, there was no tub. My father quarreled with them, went after them but did not get a thing. Everybody knows that fact, all people know this thing. My father did not recover a dime up to this day, He did not get anything back from that man. When we came here, we did the paperwork that we are settled. The gendarmes wrote us down as being settled. That was the reason Antonescu took us away, because we were travelling around from here to there, and had no stability. That was our way of travelling by carts.  

LMC: We had no domicile. Now we have settled down. We were not like this, back then.

Coarna: Now we have stability, and this is why they sent us there in the first place. After that episode we made documents to testify where I am from, and a day and a year were entered there.

LMC: Well, have a long life and be blessed!

Coarna: Likewise!