Voice/Vision Holocaust Survivor Oral History Archive

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Regina Cohen - April 18, 1982

You know, very, there are times that I, I look back and it's human nature you want to push away the bad things uh, and you wa...and you remember a few of the good things. And then we laugh about the things that we used to enjoy, even the funniest things, but yet at the same time some very cruel things were happening around us. And, you know, we find what will, what will ease our pain a little bit and we just don't want to remember. If you wouldn't have asked about the Jewish star, I would have probably not even thought to care to remember because it was, it was just a common thing, a common practice. Everybody wore it. But then uh, by the time the Jewish star was given, we weren't allowed on the street--only just so many hours. Shopping was done weirdest hours, almost an hour and a half lunch hour. Curfew was very early. So you weren't allowed anywhere on the street. Um, the star, the Jewish star was just the, the uh, the other slap in the face. Because even with the star, they just, they forbid--a Jewish person did not go to the theater long before the star. The star just made it that much more legal. If you wore a star you just, you don't go to a theater, you don't go to a show, you don't go to a concert, you don't go to no gatherings of any kind. You don't uh, you don't do anything. You don't go to...