Marija Šimić

And when that composition arrived in Zagreb faster, faster outside, I guess they pushed them while so many rags hung from me that she couldn’t wrap me. And when my mother came out with a backpack on her back, with me, those rags hanging from me, one reporter from that newspaper, “protection” was called that newspaper, I guess was interested by the picture and he took a picture of my mother with me. But there were no names or surnames, only mother and child were written below. On that sheet. The NDH also had this red cross at the time, and all those who arrived at the camp were accommodated in the Red Cross shelter. And they left me and my mom at the train station. I was reportedly normally both wet and hungry and crying. And then she asked, how come everyone who came with that composition was accommodated in the Red Cross shelter, why didn’t they accommodate her, that she couldn’t be there at the station on a bench with a small child. “Someone from outside is interested in you.” Because her schoolmate, they sat together in elementary school. And they were rich, from a rich family, and my mom was from a poor family, they were cultivating the land, raising cattle. And then they changed, my mom brought her hazelnuts, walnuts, dried apples and this Dorica who was sitting with her she brought her candy, cakes, and so it was an exchange of goods. When, they had a sawmill in Prezid, a big house, a big barn, they had their cook, their nurse, then they had hosts who arranged the environment, fed the cattle. And now my mother, through the Red Cross, she found out that my mother came to Zagreb with her child. And then she announced that we should not be accommodated, that she would come pick us up. And so it was, that we came to the house from that Vilhar’s Dorica.