The story of Gizela - Afik Shiraz. Abinun Shmuel

Vishegrad Jews gave aliases to the various ethnic groups, thus that we could talk about without understanding us. Thus, the English were called "needles," I don't know why, while Muslims were called "green". A commonplace statement for us about Muslims was that they were "like a wheat field in the wind”- moving once in one direction and once in the opposite direction. It is precisely during this period of bloodshed and mutual suspicions, notable especially a case where a Muslim friend, a classmate, rescued my life. And an act that was so: One day I was officially notified in writing to attend the school basement to clean it. I was a thirteen or fourteen and I had no idea what it was about, so when I got the message, I headed out to school as I needed. I managed to get to a meeting between the two streams, very close to the bridge, when that friend probably saw me from the school window and ran to me and asked me while he was still panting, "Where?" "I received a letter get here”, I told him, and he took the letter from my hands, tore it up into pieces, tossed them to the stream and told me, "You didn't get anything. Now go home and three days don't go out". I met Dad's cousin, Manto (Menachem) Papo near the pharmacy. "Where are you going?" I asked, and he told me he had received a letter to attend school. I told him, "You haven't received an invitation. Now come home, and in three to four days don't go away”. He accepted my advice and survived, but later he died in Bergen-Belsen. It was only later that we learned what really happened that day and how much I was close to being murdered: I found out that the Croats, the Ustasha, had massacred in Serbs in the basement of the school and killed about fifty men. Of those, only the priest left alive while the unlucky ones, who were called to clean up after the massacre, they were also murdered. Two brothers had won this bloody feast, that cooperated heartily with the Catholic Ustasha, who were brothers of the same guy who saved me. That's how they grew out of one family two murderous brothers and a third brother, thanks to whom I survived. By this time, the Ustasha had already begun to assemble Jews in various camps throughout Yugoslavia, and many of them were sent to the Jakovo camp, which was notoriously cruel. Dr. Regina Attias, from Sarajevo, also stayed in the camp, and served there as a physician. With resourcefulness and courage Dr. Attias was able to save a few children by enrolling them as a mortal from typhus and smuggled them to Jewish families in Osjek, among them are two cousins of mine who remained orphans from their mother and grandmother, who died of typhus in the camp. The cousin's father, though, remained in life in Sarajevo, however, he had no way of collecting them. My father sent to Osjek a Muslim woman with a passport with two of her children, and when she got there she left her children in Osjek and return with our cousins to Vishegrad. That's how Bato Kalderon (later Menachem Doron) and his sister Dinah joined our family. They were as a brother and sister to us and went through the entire war with us for its difficulties and her destinies. Initially Dinah lived with us while Bato (Jamming of the word Brat means brother) was sent to my uncle Leon, Salomon's father.

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