I30 We lost everything

Narrator: Dosolina Furlan Reporters: Nurten Tukel, Marianna Vasto

My name is Dosolina Furlan and I live in Vedelago. I was born in 1926 and now I am 78.
I remember the time of my adolescence with terror when the war was so close. The German army was retreating, cruel and fierce with anyone, their gaze full of suspicion and fear. The spring of 1945 was so hard for me.

I was an 18 year old young girl. I lived in Vedelago in a house in the country with my parents. The mood of the family was not tranquil, we were always sad. My brothers were at the war front. One of them had left his wife and a five year old child at home. I used to look after this little nephew who was always with me. I did the housework and I helped my father working in the fields. We were poor during the war and sometimes we suffered from hunger because all our harvest was robbed.

In the spring of 1945 there was a shooting near my house. My parents ran away frightened as soon as they heard the shots and I could not find them. I went to a neighbour asking what was going on and she told me that there was a fight going on between Germans and Americans who were helped by a group of Italian partisans. She invited me to take shelter inside her house because some villagers had already been injured. In that house I saw a soldier lying on the floor who had been seriously wounded by the Americans. After a while I saw that there were seven young dead soldiers around the house. Because of the colour of their uniform I realized that they were Germans. There was so much blood around them that I felt terrified. I escaped.

Not far from there I found my parents, we took shelter in a stable, which was empty. Our only concern was to find a safe place. We lived there for eight days without going out.
After a few days a group of partisans asked us to be hosted in the stable, we shared the bread and some of the food we had brought from the house.

When we went back home after a week we saw that our house had been destroyed; someone had stolen all our food, salami, the cattle and even the hen and her eggs. We had nothing more left than the tears to cry. We were upset from fear and desperation and we kept on wondering, “When will all this sorrow finish?”