Adele Sandel - [n.d.]
Germans and Russians Approach Dobšina
All of a sudden, they came that Russ...the Germans are invading and you could even hear the guns. They were just moving themselves, like at night you heard when it was quiet like the, the tanks and the, the g...guns were shooting and people said they are so close like they were naming cities--I cannot tell you, those cities because you wouldn't know anyway. They are in Banska Bystrica. They are in--like they would tell you they are in the Pontiac, they are in Windsor, they are in, you know, wherever you, you--if, if, if you are in Detroit you know what, what--in which city. So, we were, we were just waiting they should come closer and the Russian army should come. They were fighting for every little village, for every little town. It took for a bigger town to fight about three, four days. It took for a village to fight for them--the Russians with the Germans--for a little village it took for them to fight for uh, uh, a day and a half a day, you know. So, all of a sudden, somebody came and said that the Germans are about twenty kilometers from there where we are and we had to leave the city because if the Germans coming, you know what happens with the Jews. They wouldn't be. They don't murder that just like murder but they would do like the, the Syrians are doing without Jewish voice, you know. They like punished them and they...
Torture.
...tortured them and uh, uh, you know, so we just left everything behind and we were just running. There were about fifteen families and we started--it was October. Oct...about the twentieth of October where we, we just took a one or something really in uh, in uh, um, knap...how do you call those what you wear on your, on your...
A knapsack.
Knapsack. We put in pajamas and one clothes of--one change of underclothing and something to eat and, and, we, we were running. But, the big shots from the city were afraid, too, you know, that when the Germans will come they will just like torture them, too, and they will just uh, do something to them. So, almost everybody came who counted in that city. We were about 200 to 300 people in the woods. We ru...we started to run around nine o'clock in the morning and we ran about three hours and around noontime we all sat in the, in the darkest woods. It was raining like cats and dogs and we were sitting there. And those guns were just like in, in, in, in the garden--in your garden behind the house. They were so near. We just didn't know what to do. When evening came, around three, you know, three o'clock in the fall it started to be very early uh, night so those Gentile people saw it was raining and they started to gather and talk and they said to themselves, "What are we going to do here? They will find us here, too. We have to go down. They won't kill the whole city." So, they picked themselves up and they just went down nicely down back to the city.
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