2023-05-08 13:20:22
“He succeeded then, I don’t know how.” tells Emma“to come into contact with German and Yugoslav resistance fighters.” The latter will provide papers to Ema, her sister Annie and their mother, pregnant, so that they can join him in Germany. “We left with our little backpack on our shoulders. We first took a train to reach the Danube. There, we slept outside, on the ground. My mother was several months pregnant, it was cold. The resistance fighters had chosen this place, the most dangerous, because the Germans watched it less. We had to wait for the right moment. In the early morning, they woke us up. We quickly got into the boat. They gave us a can each, to scoop out the water. We couldn’t see the other bank, the river was so wide. It went well. It was my little sister who recognized my father first, he was waiting for us on the the other shore.“
Exhausted, Ema’s mother will give birth to her third child a few hours later, in a small room where the family was trying to rest after the crossing. “We couldn’t see mom, but we heard her. She was screaming and screaming. And the next day, we had to leave. She suffered so much“, adds Ema. This trip will have serious consequences: poorly cared for and never fully recovered, Ema’s mother will die a few years later, at 31 years old.
After the war, Ema, her father and her sisters came to settle in Belgium, in Zolder. The father was hired to work in the mines, Ema was sent to the Liège region to learn French.
Ema died last year, just after sharing her story with us.
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