The life of Roma in the huts    

LMC: Stay the lucky and healthy Aunt Lulludi, what do you want to say to the people of the world?

Lulludi: I tell them what happened to me. How I got my husband in the Bug, how gendarmes took us.

LMC: I want you to start by saying a greeting to all Roma in the world.

Lulludi: May they be lucky, may God help them, may they be healthy and may God give them everything.  May they earn lots of golden coins, gain many fortunes and be healthy!

LMC: I want you to tell us now, whose daughter, are you?

Lulludi: I belong to Gogu and Lina, Goman’s Son and Lina my mother was Guțlan’s doughter.

LMC: Be healthy!

Lulludi: And you, be healthy too!

LMC: Whose wife, were you?

Lulludi: The wife of Brati´s Gheordi. Brati was my father-in-law and Veta was my mother-in-law.

LMC: May you live a life that is long an filled with luck,

Lulludi: Me and my relatives all together.

LMC: Now, please tell us.

Lulludi:    We went, and we were taken, the gendarmes took us to Bug. They came after us, they looked for us in the fields, they caught us and took us. Without horses and carts, impoverished on the roads.  We walked barefooted for three months with the children hanging around our necks

LMC Were there many Roma there?

Lulludi: Yes, but our carts remained in Romania. Where they took us, there we found some huts without a chimney, without windows and without doors, that is what we found. We were put there in the hut, we had nothing to eat, we had nothing to drink.

We had no fire, we had nothing.

LMC: What were those huts like?

Lulludi: Just huts dug in the ground, holes of earth.  And we were sitting, were gathering, tight to each other as the night had come to the world, to warm ourselves with a fire, and we all warm ourselves by that fire and we had nothing to eat, there was no escape. We would ask each other for a piece of polenta and some seeds. 

LMC: And when the food run out?

Lulludi: When the food we had run out, some elders went to the village to bring food because our children died in the huts of hunger. There, the richer ones gave them to eat: some mercy piece of polenta.

And those people [the poor ones] stayed around the huts to be eaten by dogs. Those who were rich had what to eat, those who were not, would starve to death, the poor ones, died there.

LMC: How old were you?

Lulludi: I was fifteen years old.

LMC: Were you married?

Lulludi: Yes, and I stayed there for three years. There, I got married. I took Brati’s Gheordi.

LMC:

Lulludi: I took my husband for a  bunch of wickers.  He just took me from my father, we didn’t have where to arrange a wedding over there.  He just took me, like that, Gheordi son of Mațu and Calulo and my uncle Pasarega. They grabbed me by the armpit and took me by force from my father. My father didn’t want to marry me because he didn’t have pillows or gold to give me a dowery. So, the men took me by force and married me to Brati’s Gheordi. There were many children in that household, small and tiny. I didn’t get to eat a piece of wheat chunk or polenta because the children were fighting on them. So, my Gheordi and I would go together to the village and wherever we went, there we would help the Russian women, and they would give me a bucket of potatoes and two handfuls of flour to make polenta to eat, so we had something to feed Gheordi’s brothers.  Well

.. And we returned from there.

LMC: Tell us more, tell us more, there  was a lot of suffering back there. What else can you see?

Lulludi: Yes, we came back from there. We did and we walked on the roads, distressed, and hungry, bitter and finally they decided, and they brought us documents to bring us back because many people and children died and were eaten by dogs… Some people ate dog meat, because they had nothing else to eat, they roasted it on the fire and their wives and children ate it. We had nowhere to go, and we could not do anything. The Bug was here and the huts over there. I used to bring water with buckets on my head from Bug for the children to drink. Also there, our donkeys were taken by the Russians for the kolkhozes. They took the carts too, and we remained without anything.

LMC: This was at Treidube?  

Lulludi:  Tridube right. We went to Dumanovka, we didn’t do anything, we went to Burilova, we didn’t do anything, they were killing our people, and we went to Krasneanka, we stayed near Bug. Our mothers and fathers came from there and were saying: „Give us something too, love, because your brothers are dying of hunger. We used to say: We are not the masters of food, mother.  She was begging us.

Calulo and Mațu’s Gheordi came, and he slapped my mother-in-law for making a scandal about two potatoes and two corn cobs.

LMC: That was a lot of food, two potatoes and two corn cobs.

Lulludi: Much. We had nowhere to go. We brought seeds and curuz (*corn) beans and baked them and gave them to the children to eat and the little children ate with their fists like you eat an apple. Those of us who went to the village, we went at night, and at night we came back. And the gendarmes would beat us, they beat us, and the Russians beat us, but we kept going to bring food. They hit us with pitchforks, and they hit us with guns, but we kept going, we took seeds and curuz grains and baked them and gave them to the children to eat.

LMC: Yes, you were going secretly because you were not allowed to go outside.

Lulludi: We weren’t allowed, but we went secretly. The gendarmes come just from time to time, they didn’t come all the time. They would get us in the evening and beat us. They took us, 5o people, to the kolkhoz and beat us to death. They forced women to bed their own children to bare dumb offspring, they took me out too, I was smallish, me and my husband too, so we did not fight them, the man kicked me out and looked me in a small room because I was little. But the older women were forced by them to have intercourse with their own sons there, just like that.

LMC: I heard that human flesh was also eaten at the Bug. They ate Titina, do you know about this?

Lulludi:  They ate dog meat. They cut up the dogs near the hut, caught the dogs in the forest, cut them up and roasted them on the fire and gave them to the children to eat because they had nothing else to eat.

LMC: Did they eat Titina too?

Lulludi: They ate. They ate her. This one, Lacio’s  Zînka, you don’t know her, this one was bedded by her son at the cobs,  as she and her son were hiding from the gendarmes  there, and the gendarme put her make love to her own son.

And what did we do?  We decided to run and hid in a forest, under a tree. And what did we do there? We huddled together because night had come. And what did we do? Two of those who were walking around came, they were guards…

„What are you doing here?” „We shelter from the cold.” ” You look like you are running away from home.”

And they beat us, almost killed us and we barely ran away from there. On the way back home, we met the gendarmes on the way, the one and only gendarme Ileu, whom all Roma and all the other nations feared. He took some beans and potatoes from my husband’s bag, well…

LMC: Was that a Romanian?

Lulludi: Yes, the gendarme who did the files and did all the things.

LMC: What was his name?

Lulludi:  Ileu. The gendarme Ileu that was his name. He gathered us and took us to Treidube and gave us 1kg of flour each. We received as many flowers as we were. Only when one was walking on the roads, would the gendarmes catch you on the roads and beat you and mock you and hit you. Yes, you had nowhere to go to tell upon them, and what they were doing because the superiors where gendarmes too. That gendarme came and gathered us all to tell us that.

 I went and stole a cart and horse.

LMC: How did you steal a horse and a cart, tell us?

Lulludi: How? Shall I say this?

LMC: Yes. Tell us.

Lulludi: So, over there, where I took Bratis Gheordi, what were we supposed to do? We heard people say that an edict was to be released so that we should go back. Some of us had carriages, some did not.  My father -in law and my husband decided:” Well, there are some beautiful carriages at the kolkhoz and some beautiful horses and mules! Let’s go one night and steal them.” This materialized when one morning , we woke up, went over , took two mules and a dark mare and I took the cart wheels, my husband took the back part and we came with it along the road, when we fell into a large pit and the wheels came over me, My husband did what he could and got me out of there and we returned home with all that stuff. Then Brati the elder started and built the cart ladder, made some furs and built the carriage up. We had found his mare, my father-in -law Bratis, Catarina, that had been given to … God, what was his name? To Mitas Onila. He took that mare to harness her to his carriage. And my father-in-law fought him” You, how can you take my mare, I brought her, I stole her, and you take her from me blameless. “But he took the mare from him. My father-in-law did the job, set out the carriage, prepared the horses, made the harnesses, cut some towels, cut some skirts and we made some ropes to bind the mules. The edict came and the gendarmes came too. We all hurried to gather all our belongings in the carts so we go first. People left feather blankets, pillows, all kinds of things were left behind, even children near the fire were left behind. We put all our belongings in that cart. That many relatives had Tomiță and Bratis kind, with wives, children and all. How high was the snow bless it, what should I tell you, it was up to my middle. We crossed the snow, how to describe it, we made paths with our knees, barefoot, the skirt was like a mug on my bottom …. Snow and ice froze on it, well… we arrived at the train station. Another obstacle there, how do we convince them to put us on a wagon. … We came over three months, with kids hanging on my neck, with blakets on our back, trobbled, starving….

LMC: Did you have a child there at the Bug?

Lulludi: I didn’t have any… I came from there and I looked after them. What was I doing? I’m bringing Poida, I’m bringing Ilie, I’m bringing Lena, I’m bringing all my husband’s siblings, they were eight children. What was I supposed to do with them? What was I supposed to feed them, what else were we supposed to do? We returned from there, it took three months in a train wagon. And then came our big day, Easter.

LMC: But how did you get on the train wagon?

Lulludi: We put those wagons and left the carts and mules. We let them back, as we had walked for three months until we reached the train, I mean we came from there, from Bug to the hut and another three months we spent on the train wagon back here because it kept going and kept leaving us.

LMC: I want you to tell us a little bit about how you crossed the water because people had broken the bridge so how did you cross?

Lulludi: We crossed the Dniester. My father-in-law paid a large gold coin at the customs  and the gendarms on both sides let us pass an get back here. The Bug people were left back there, and our people, Romanias people were on this side, in the end. Some people were left there on the road, but others have crossed. Mîrado, Onila, left my father behind, there were no gold left, poor man… He had one big gold coin, cut in the middle and glued with some small nails. I took that one and gave it out and we were saved. The mules were left behind, the carriage was left behind, the goose feather blankets, the pillows. What did we take? Only the clothes on our shoulders and the kids in our arms. And we walked, and walked, we walked … and got to the tarin. There we waited for a week until trainwagons from other countries arrived, wherever those came from, who knows. What did we do? We stayed there, and then a woman, and the station chief and a driver, they all told us: ”Good people, do you know what day is today?” „We do not, how can we know.” „It’s Easter Day. Its Easter! We will wait  here for a day and a night, that is a long time . Go to the village and get some eggs and bread for the children because you are starving, you are in need and your kids need to eat . .”

LMC: Were you in Romania?

Lulludi: In Bucharest. When Brati’s Gheordi heard this, he said: „Come, let’s go to the village” And he got out of the wagon. The other people were on the train, in the wagon with their children. And I brought a skirt full of bread. I threw the skirt off me, because I didn’t have a bag…. What did I have in the wagon? So many little children ….and Biza, Ionita’s one, were there in my wagon, and her feet were oozing, were rotten, poor thing, because of walking barefoot in the snow….

LMC: And did the people give you eggs, bread?

Lulludi: People gave us eggs; we brought bacon and shared it with everyone in the wagon to eat.

LMC: What did Romanians say to you when they saw you?

Lulludi: „You came from the Bug! You came from the Bug ” And they were feeding us. „We came, we came!”, that’s what I told those people. And people came to the wagons to bring us food: bread and meat and all kinds of food. After this, we kept traveling in the train wagons for more weeks and we arrived in Craiova. What was in Craiova? People as far as one could see that many. All the gypsies who came from the Bug were now all gathered there.

LMC: Where in Craiova?

Lulludi: In Craiova, next to the main train station. We arrived later because we had many children and were numerous. People used to take 3 or 4 elder ones and run off. We remained to bring the little ones, pour souls. But there, in Craiova, we found Tomiță, we found my father-in-law, Calulo, Mață’s Gheordi. Biza and I were in the train together, and Ioniță was waiting for her. He took her and asked: „Did you bring them?” „We did”„Take her, now take her!”. It was not that we came from the Bug, but Ochi Strâmb ( Mad Eye) took me and brought me to the county administration and I had to give away all the gold that I brought with me back.I brought Ioniță 25 gold coins, I got them out of the snow, of the cold and out of that misery. And Ioniță gave me two golden dimes, but that one took Ioniță and got him to the county administration and beat him dead thats what he did. Now, what did we do? We each took what we had: each took his wife and children and each left for the villages nearby, in all directions all over the place. …We too got togheter and went off. What were we about to do, only two people: we had no pillow, no goose feather blanket, we had nothing, no brass pots, we didn’t have a thing… So, I just said to Brati: “Let us follow the elder ones, because they still have some things. If we stay just the two of us, we will be killed by the people”, that is what I told him- An he replied: “Oh come on, you scare me here as you did at the Bug, just sit in your place, fry this hen on the fire and I will mend those pots” That is what he used to tell me. So we gathered our stuff, God bless you, and we came, as we could, as we suffered, as we endured, as gendarmes beat us, as they hit and shoot at us with their pistols because we would steal corn , we would steal potatoes as we had nothing to eat. We would steal beans too and Brati would beat me with it. We would do work too…

LMC: I want you to tell us, what do you remember, something that you have not forgotten. Why does your soul cry / what were the pain and passions you endured there? Did people die there of cold.,

Lulludi: They were dying….

LMC:  Of pain, of typhus, of filth…

Lulludi: They were dying because of diseases and there was a large town hall, like the church. They took the dead ones from the huts, from where they were and took them over there. And from there, other people would go and take them from there and roast them on the fire and eat them. They ate the hands, the head, the liver. I could see how they took them… They took Grandma Bina,  you know about her, as your family is Bina too.

LMC: I’ve heard about it.

Lulludi: They took Grandma Bina and tore the skirt off her because that was an inch long skirt. They took her and cut her in the hut and roasted her legs on the fire and her bones and her hooves to be eaten by those:  Vadiași and Bandi’s Toma … The people who were rich lived, but the poor ones were still poor, and they begged for mercy and ate from others. And they walked, ran and did what they could. I ran and organized, and I gave to the poor and to the rich: „Take it, you too, you too. ” We cried, we fought with those who could not get.

LMC: May the Mighty God bless you, as you did lots of good to others. Those who give, will receive, and that is the right thing.

Lulludi: May all Roma in the world have luck and be healthy because I suffered a lot. May God give them health and luck! The things we have endure should never ever be endured by others, now that they are abroad. We were poor and we suffered at the Bug, we were shadows of ourselves: Those of our people who live now, may they live in peace and with respect women together with their men and all of them should live in richness as we lived in poverty over there where we were abroad. People did not know each other anymore and we were not talking to each other anymore. Houses were at large distances between and village from where I brought flour and seeds from, were far away but nowadays, look, we eat from where we stay. I left behind my goose feather blanket and my pillows, right at the entrance to that hut. My father-in-law teared down the hut we slept in: “Look, I’ll keep this one so that whoever will follow can sleep inside” and my husband would say: “nobody will follow, because these are all of us left” 4800 huts were there, but there were more. Some belonged to the ones from Valcea and some to the ones from Gorj and my father-in-law would say: “Do not come to me, you the ones from Craiova, and they did not come as they heard him. We were only our kind: Ionițonii, Brătionii, Ițaleii, our people, our Roma, our kindship. This is how we handled it, he had a helping hand for each other and we ate what we had and when we had no food we were crying. And sometimes we were fighting.

LMC: Have you been sick with typhus?

Lulludi: I was sick. I spent three months in the hospital in Bălcești and I had nothing to eat and could not do a thing, there they cut my long hair braids, they cut my hair.

LMC: And how did you get typhus?

Lulludi: I got it on the train in that carriage. I got sick, my husband, Gaga, Onilă and the Ceandiri folks, they were all with me, so many children and so many women we got to stay for three months in a hospital in Bălcești. I returned cloth less to my home; I was disgusted and horrified. I had no underskirts, I had nothing and when I arrived home, I fell ill, we could not walk, we could not do a thing. We lay there until we healed. And look, Gaga is alive, and I am alive, Tomilă died, Ceandiri died, Stoian too. Those people died, only the stronger ones survived. That is what happened. Let all people who hear this be lucky. May all that we lived through never repeat, not even to our enemy, because there was enough suffering, enough bitterness, enough upsetting and enough deaths.

LMC: And as you said, these people, the Germans, started to pay compensation to the people who were there and give them money.

Lulludi: The pension, to give them a pension. For the bitterness and the trouble, we suffered.

LMC: Can this money repay you?

Lulludi: They should pay us, as we are needy.

LMC: Not. I wanted to ask you with this money, can you pay for the trouble and bitterness you went through?

Lulludi: Not. They can’t pay us because they do not know us, they don’t know where we are, some dead, others alive. Not known.

LMC: I want to tell you that they can never pay for your onslaught and suffering.

Lulludi: We don’t know how to do those papers.

LMC: But the trouble and how much you suffered there.

Lulludi: We don’t know.

LMC: The trouble and the suffering that we endured can never be repaid. This for we make this footage, so that is will be known and that it will never repeat. So that Roma people won’t be harmed or killed again. This should never happen again. Roma are people, made in the image and likeness of God and we are supposed to work and stay near to God.  

Lulludi: We returned, have mercy with our suffering. That was not the suffering for our grandfathers’ grandfathers, it was ours.

LMC: And you will never suffer again.

Lulludi: No one should repeat this suffering, may God keep them safe and guard them! We, the elder ones were troubled enough,  let our children be spared from that. May our children be blessed with luck, as well as our daughters-in-law, all our relatives, our in-laws, may all be lucky and be helped by God!

LMC: I want you to tell us more about what was happening there in Bug.

Lulludi: My father took a bunch of twigs for me. On a bunch of wickers, he gave me away.

LMC: How were weddings held there in Bug?

Lulludi: They would steal them by force. They forcibly took women: „Look, this one too wants me to marry him. He needs me to bring him food too: „He had nothing to eat for himself, never mind giving food to another.

LMC: Was Uncle Gheordi a grown-up?

Lulludi: He was older. I used to go with him to the village, we would run, run and bring wood and food from the fields.

LMC: Where did you bring wood from?

Lulludi: From the forest. From the forest, we brought piles on our backs.

LMC: Was the forest far from you?

Lulludi. Far away. The forest was far from us.

LMC: Did you have shoes on your feet?

Lulludi: I was walking. Barefoot, we had wounds on our feet, we tied them, and they fell down and we remained barefoot in the snow. The skirt would fall off us and we would fold it together it would still fall off, the ice, the cold, the snow…

Foresters would find us; when they found us they hit us once or twice with a stick, they beat us.

LMC: Were they Russians?

Lulludi: Russians, those who guarded the forests.

LMC: What can you tell us about the Germans?

Lulludi: You could see the Germans over there and we were on this side and the Bug was passing right through our midst.

LMC: Weren’t they coming over to you?

Lulludi: Ilie and Poidă crossed the Bug at the mill and went to the Germans. But as they got there, the Germans beat them up and chased  them back on our side.  That is because Poida who went there was a little older and while they were there, they took a bucket of potatoes, but when the Germans caught them, they beat them to death, so they returned full of blood poor souls, with ripped shirts, naked and barefoot. Us, they found searching for wood. We used to go to get wood and stayed all day long until the evening. One was supposed to gather, to carry on ones back, to return, when did we have time for all this? When were we supposed to cook, when to eat? So, the night came. The old hag Veta was arguing with Brati the elder. “Wait, just let us rest a little, man.” So Brati went to Mita’s uncle, Zuza’s father.  And when we left there, Zuza died behind my wagon, so they took her and threw her in a ditch, the old hag, … Mita’s Zuza:. .
LMC: And didn’t they bury her?

Lulludi: No. They grabbed her and threw her in the ditch. Up in our wagon were the children, they were inside and stood all piled up and there were a lot of sick women. … They took her out of there, my father-in-law just took her and left her over there. Who knows how she ended, because she was already dead. We went ahead, Mita died too on the wagon’s wheels, and we threw this one too out in the snow, that was up to the neck. We had no way to dig a grave, we had no other option. Any wagon that came would roll over the ones laying the ground because those were already dead. And we all were going ahead. We arrived in that village at night, the large village of Krivoi. Everyone was struggling to get a small room to sleep in that night. …  and people were entering, and pressed round each other, one on top of the other, piled up, and needy… But at the end came the gendarmes and beat us to death and killed us and broke our heads and hit the women. They took our women and plundered them. They took my mother-in-law and got her out of the kolkhoz. They beat Bakri up, and this one, how was she called … God bless her luck, Biza. They took my mother, got her out of the kolkhoz and beat her soul out of her. I went to get the old woman out of the snow, and I got two beats on my behind, so I ran home.  „Here, this I got because of  you, why did you go there. ”I did not go willingly, daughter-in-law, the gendarmes dragged me.” This is what they used to do. We would walk all around and run everywhere, day and night, in summer as in winter, in order to get something to eat. We stayed there for three years. In summer, it was easier, but in winter we were freezing to death because we had no place to get wood from, we had no place to get food from.  In summer we used to steal from the fields: tomatoes, potatoes, we would bring potatoes, corn , water, but in winter there was nothing to take.  

LMC: What were the Germans doing to you?

Lulludi: Whenever they caught us, they would kill us, but we were walking again. Some died, some other we survived and continued our walk. Old people died; young people died too, wherever they were caught. Barko was shot with pistols, they shot him in his belly because he stole two sacks of corn. You do not know him . Pungași’s.

LMC: Where did he get the corn from?

Lulludi: From the wagon.

LMC: Did he steal?

Lulludi: He stole from the wagon because the children had nothing to eat. 

They stole to live. Some escaped, others died. Some of them were let to run away, others were shot or imprisoned.

LMC: Where did the lăieții stay?

Lulludi: The lăieși would not stay with us there in the huts. Only our kind, our Roma were there.

LMC: And the Moldova Roma?

Lulludi: They stayed with us. The Moldovans were doing well. From them I used to buy a skirt, a rag that they had. At our women you couldn’t find… You used to give a sleeve like this from your shirt for a bucket of potatoes, that’s how my mother-in-law sold them. You gave an apron; you took a bucket of potatoes. You went there for your portion to get the food. If there were 10 people in a hut, 10 kg of flour you took. Who were 2 people, 2 kg.

It was barely enough for a polenta. There were 10 people in our house, we took 10 kg of flour.

LMC: How many times a month did he give you flour??

Lulludi: Twice. Twice a month and 1kg of oil and 1kg of sugar. But who would take sugar? I had nothing to do with it. We ate rice, potatoes, and onions wherever we could find, we went and stole them. We went to that big one in Krivoi and he came out before us with the rifle, he didn’t know, but we showed him the documents for the train. And when he saw the papers at my father-in-law’s house, he left us alone.

LMC: What was written in that document?

Lulludi: What was written on that document? All he knew was, he was not allowed to let us come to Romania. And he didn’t know that decree, he didn’t, but the decree was with my father-in-law. When someone came, he picked him up just like this.

LMC: Where did he get it from?

Lulludi: The gendarme gave it to us and gave it to everyone when he picked us up from there from the huts. And that’s how we did.

LMC: Did the Romanian gendarmes care about you?

Lulludi: They beat us all the way, may poverty eat them up! They would beat us down.

LMC: And the Russians?

Lulludi: The Russians still had pity on us. These people beat us up badly. Ileu poured water on us, that’s how much he beat us.

LMC: And the Germans, when you met them, what did they do to you?

Lulludi: No, no, they didn’t hurt us. They laughed, they gave you cigarettes, they gave you bread. These ones[*Romanians] were bad, when they caught you, they would hit you over the ear. I also said I would go with Poida beyond the Bug, and he didn’t let me, he was afraid, that if that man catches us, he makes us bed.  And he didn’t take me with him. I stayed on this side of the water, and he went there.

We came back and we made gold coins, we got carts, and we made clothes, and we had many children here when we came. I didn’t have any children there, I had them after we came back here. Let’s have luck and may God help you, may he bless you with health and luck!