Estelle Laughlin

“My cousin Moniek was a partisan. And he came once when we were already… we lived at that time in the ground floor, and we had a bunker below us, and the way we enter the bunker was - we had a powder room. And the whole floor of the powder room lifted up. And so that you couldn’t see any trapdoor. (I forgot what I was telling you)...”

“You see, everything is relative. If you ask me what did you eat, I don’t remember and it doesn’t matter because there were other things in that point that bothered me much more. But certainly, there wasn’t enough food. We had some food in the bunkers. The bunkers were very very well equipped. We had a batteryrun lights, we had a battery-run... I think...I don’t recall all the details, but there was provision made for water, I don’t even remember how, and I don’t remember how real— it was probably like building a bunker so that the— for the atom bomb, to protect yourself from the atom bomb. Probably a lot of the preparation was more hope than in reality. It would suitable for survival.”

“[...] At that point, the people started to disappear. At that point, people started to think of, ok, the most thing that was in the fore– in your mind was, where do you hide. So people hide under beds, between blankets, between even mattresses. And of course you had to do it so smoothly, that you wouldn’t be found, in drawers, in cardboards, in the most unusual places. And of course, after a while they became common knowledge. So it also became a random thing. If the Germans poked their bayonet in your bed, if you were found – if you were hiding there you were found. We, it was a four-story building, so everyone in the row, in this one row, one on top of another, we out a wardrobe- Anne Frank style

(laughing) - we put a wardrobe in front of the door, and all of us in this building, we only stayed in one place. And that was in my friend’s Janka’s room. It was her room, but all the rooms were disguised by the closets. And there we sat, and all we could hear from behind the doors is when you could hear the screamings and the lapping, and the kicking and the shooting, and the screams, and then the most, most petrifying thing was when they walked through each apartment, and you could hear their boots, or their leaning against the closet, the wardrobe, or moving– looking inside the wardrobe. That, that was just… you know… that was just so, so petrifying because you were just a hair away from, from your hunters, from your assailants. Then eventually you would hear that wailing and the noise it recede. And of course, you always think, oh they are trapping us, is it safe to come out? - and then, then the real wailing came out because people were afraid to cry. And when you heard this, this shrinking cries, these, these most heart-rendering screams, these outcries, then we knew that it was safe to step out. And then you slowly– we would move the wardrobe slowly, be careful, be careful, and then we would come out and we’d stare into the windows for any sign of light, and usually emptiness stared right back at us.”