Regina Cohen - April 18, 1982
Knowledge of Holocaust
You did know about it.
Oh yes, we did know about it because there were several--quite a few and I don't know how many. A few Jewish families--and this is interesting, I remembered--were born--either the husband or the wife--were born in Poland.
Mm-hm.
Okay? Yet they have lived in, in this city almost all their lives. They have raised families. Their, their roots were there, but their birthright, their birthplace, was somewhere in Poland. They would uproot all those families including my own Hebrew teacher--I have forgotten his name.
Because that's who told...
Red-headed man. They pulled him out of his house during the night--in pajamas--and he was shipped off. They were all taken in 1942, it was quite early yet.
Mm-hm.
Uh, so when, when we heard these things, panic sits in to everybody and you kinda play a low profile kind of fright of what comes next. I mean, sort of don't even speak about it because if you don't, maybe it won't happen. Um, some of those families smuggled back to Chust. Matter of fact, one family was seven or eight children and the woman was pregnant when they took them--came back and she had another child, because she was expecting it. They made it back. They got smuggled back somehow to Chust, through the borders. And uh, but then they were taken to Auschwitz.
Is that how you found out about what was going on in Poland?
There uh, like I said, when, when they mobilized the men, okay. They took Jewish men and, all men. Uh, my father was taken into Hungarian army and they went off to Poland and they saw these things.
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