And when my mother arrived in…in Mauthausen she had such a shock, because- as opposed to when she’d arrived in Auschwitz, not knowing what that was. This time she knew. Because she had heard about this appalling place very early on in the war. And she said that the shock of seeing the name, she always thought probably provoked the onset of her labour. And she started to give birth to me on that coal wagon. She had to climb off the coal wagon unaided. She had to climb on to a cart, because the prisoners who were not strong enough to walk up the hill to the camp, they had to get on to a cart and it was pulled up by others. She had people lying all over her. People with typhus and typhoid fever. And she proceeded to give birth to me. And there was another Nazi officer who saw that she was in the throes of child labour. And he said to her, “Du kannst weiter schreien.” Which as you know, means, “You can carry on screaming”, cause presumably she had been. And she always said that she was screaming not only because she was giving birth, but because she thought this was her very last minute on this earth. She thought she was about to die. …But we both survived the experience. I was born. I didn’t move. I didn’t breathe. Incredibly the Germans allowed a doctor to come to my mother. A doctor who was also a prisoner. And after a few days my mother actually found out that this doctor was the Head of the Department of Obstetrics and Gynaecology at the University of Belgrade. So he didn’t have any medication, he didn’t have any equipment, but he had the knowledge; he knew what to do. And so he cut the umbilical cord, and he slapped me to make me cry, to make me breathe.
