„I was very active and every night we went sawing. The Germans set guards around the railway, keeping watch at it and...set the telephone connection....but we were looking for an opportunity, we had our own activists and in the evening we would collect a big saw and at first we would cut of one telephone or telegraph pole, but we would adjust it and worked again. Then we would cut it twice, there were no guards. We would work, pound, and one time there was a partisan unit, I think in a village of Butkovići or Brščići I can't really tell, these were the villages in Roverija. They went in action to saw a big pole, a light pole to Pula. When we had arrived, suddenly it started, the mines exploded, and we started running back, and the miners were also returning. We then started running in front of them because it was night time and we didn't know, and corn has already grown high. I was running across the cornfield with one of them chasing me. They thought we were the enemies. What should we do? I came into some villagers whose house was burned earlier by the Germans. They were sleeping in the woods. I managed to find them and the others started yelling: „These are not the Germans, those are ours! Don't run! Don't, come here!“ Whle the partisan was chasing me, I've lost my shoe somewhere in the cornfield.. That's how we ran across the cornfield...“
„They were running across. When we stood in front of the column, the late Đovanin said: Paškva I am going to run for it!“ „Where will you run? Where to run? You can't escape! We were already surrounded. In a column and almost fighting with them. He stayed, and up where three drivers. They were going, and one of them had a white scarf tied on four knots, I guess he was driving the truck with this star. They jumped onto a truck, there were guns and everything. Then they destroyed all of it, and the guns. They pulled out all males except him, the driver because he had that scarf on his head so they thought he was forced to drive. Those in front us were shot in the back of the head, they shot at them right in front of us, they fell in front of the truck with bloodstream coming out, they were killed. They fell down and after that, because they were hurryng to Barban, after that they ran over the corpses with the truck taking us to Žminj while some of them stayed there. While they were searching us, i...One who..I don't understand German. We didn't know. I guess youth, I was certain they'll shot us. I was saying goodbye to my life. I said to myself: „I'm young! Flowers will grow, youth will be happy, and I will lay like a pile of bones in that bush. Those were my last thoughts! Even the man who was Italian translator came in the truck, and no one was saying anything. I decided to counter: „Well since you've already killed them, put an end to our own agony!“ He looked at him, I was carrying a blanket. He thought I was armed. I tried to tell him what are they doing, how it's unfair but they took us to Žminj...“
„Suddenly there was a shortcut. Before the war I was in Žminj only once and never afterwards. I was sick of it. There was a shortcut where I was walking and I come into a German soldier and a civilian. He saw me with that blanekd and said something on German, I don't know what. Even today I don't know and I suddenly I was at the other guy's gun point. My mother saw it, because the road was easily seen. „My child they will kill you! They will kill you now!“ He was standing with his gun pointed at me and in a moment I stood still. I don't know if it was courage, we were all a little insane already. Instinctively with no courage, Istarted to laugh at his face to appear insane to him. His gun vas very close to me. He watched me and when he was that I was laughing so hard...yelling and crying. He took his gun and put it back in his pocket. What to do?! I continued to go with my blanket as if nothing happened. That how I was almost shot twice in one day...“
Ruža Sirotić Camlić was born in 1926 in a poor family. She lived in Vinkuran, a village near Pula where she finished four classes of Italian primary school. Her childhood was tough and they lived in poor conditions. She joined the antifascist movement in August 1943. She was admitted in SKOJ and was assigned to go to Proština in order to establish connection with their organisation. She returned home but was forced to live underground to avoid being arrested. She was admitted in Kotar county SKOJ. She patroled the field, organized meetings, she even took part in sabotaging telephone and telegraph lines but also writing and sharing propaganda flyers with strong antifascist content. She is a witness of many crimes that had been comitted on civilians by nazi and fascists troops during the so called Rommel offensive in October 1943. Several times she escaped the execution from fascists. In the summer of 1944 she took part in large set of AFŽ (Antifascist Womens Front) that was held in Pula. In December 1944 she took up a SKOJ course in Gorski kotar. She returned to Istria and was in Pula when Second World War had ended. After the war she held positions of great responsibility in party organization. She finished agricultural school and school of economics in Pula to become an accountant. She married in 1952 for a partisan and antifascist. She has two daughters.
