Things began to change right the first night. The first night
there were blackouts all over town. They would have a curfew.
After dark, nobody's supposed to leave the house. The first
memorable night is, was, when I...when some of our neighbors
tried to...a young man tried to cross the street and he didn't
realize just crossing the street, uh, would...would break, breach
the curfew and a German soldier said, "Halt," and he kept on
running. And he got machine-gunned all the way across, and he fell
right in front of our house. So the Germans started yelling, all
the men "'Raus" [Get out], all the men out to help carry the body
in and made me carry the body with four other persons. And
because, the way he was machine-gunned, he was completely like
cut in half. When I got home I was completely covered with blood,
and I remember when I got into the house, my mother looked at me
completely covered.There was something...such an awful thing to see
first time. I was just absolutely covered with blood, and I
always remember my mother's, uh, expression and my mother's fear
and my mother's cry out when she saw me completely covered with
blood and that was the first night, the first expression what
was...We didn't know what's coming and it was a horrible thing,
that first night.