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When September came and the village children had to start school, they built some sheds on a hill and took us there. The place was surrounded by barbed wire and there were guards. We were made to work: we made the sheds and some other buildings. We lived there until the end of November when the orders started coming and we were released in groups. It seems that the policy was changing, because at the end of 1943 the Allies had major success in the war: the Russians were in Romania, and the Americans in Italy. [Editor’s note: The Soviets entered Romania only in April 1944 and occupied Bucharest on 31st August the same year.] There were rumors of a second front in France: the Kursk battle [31] had ended. We went back to Dupnitsa and took our sister with us. We did whatever work we got: digging, manual labor, etc. Sometimes we were given some work to do, but weren’t paid after we had done it. My brother was still in the labor groups at various places in Bulgaria: they built roads. We slept at some distant relatives’ of my mother’s in Dupnitsa. We were there until 9th September 1944.
Location
Bulgaria
Interview
Leon Seliktar