Voice/Vision Holocaust Survivor Oral History Archive

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Bella Camhi - November 18, 1999

But when the... But, let's get back to the Germans again. You weren't, you weren't frightened of...

You know uh, over there, I don't know uh, it was like God gave me so much power. No, I was not afraid. As long as they're not going to do what I had in my mind, what my mother told me, I was raped.

Rape, you mean.

Right. I was raped. I mean, they're going kill me, let me kil...you know, we, we knew we were going to get killed. I didn't, I didn't believe that all this in the paper that anything is true on that.

You mean the stories about they're going to send you to a...

Right.

good place to live.

And not to worry about.

Did anybody you know run off and join Tito or join the partisans?

Oh no.

No?

You mean the Italian, uh...

Well, there was a Greek resistance. Yugoslavian resistance.

Well, I don't know where you coming from. You know, my dad was the biggest Communist.

Okay, so the...

So he wanted so bad you know, I was the older one, you know. And you couldn't fight--Greek people you can't fight with them. Like I told you, if they say they win, they win, you know. You're better off, you safe. Because then they're going to win, you let 'em win. But uh, I, I don't like a role, they're just like here, they always were running with a piece of paper and uh, you know. They're doing...

Yeah.

especial the, the tobacco workers, like auto...

Union.

companies here, you know.

Yeah. So your father was a Communist, so he must have had some non-Jewish friends.

My father had the bottle as a friend.

Okay, okay. Um, did you know Mr. Katan?

Sure. Sure.

His brother joined the partisans. Went into the mountains and fought the Germans.

Oh a lot of people did. My husband did too.

Well yeah, that's what I want to know. Did you know--so who did you know that...

He, he was lucky that he didn't lose his--he was in uh, Albania. Uh, Albania is all mountains, you know. In the winter, they're very rough. And he was a, I have the picture that he was uh, uh, in the airfor...

He was?

Yeah. I got the picture.