Voice/Vision Holocaust Survivor Oral History Archive

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Regina Cohen - April 18, 1982

Mm-hm.

But like I said, this one lady wouldn't let me near. She made sure she--they had some uh, an old blanket or something. She stripped some pieces and had 'em tied across their mouth, and she said, "You stay here." On the way back, our whole side, all our barracks were closed off and we were all brought in one side. While we were gone, half of our camp was liquidated, supposedly to the gas chamber.

Mm-hm.

So things were getting from bad to worse. The fall started out, the rains were terrible. Water pouring in through the roofs. No food uh, food supply was--people are coughing, cold, it was just--you begged, you, you say, "Finish me off already, I--kill me, I don't want it no more," you know.

Is that how you felt?

Yes, just--I wanted to go to sleep and, and die. Or I didn't mind if somebody would shoot me in the back. But I didn't want to walk to be cremated. Uh, I always said, "I, I won't walk to be cremated. They'll have to beat me to death or..." which I've seen, I've seen girls being beaten to death. I've seen girls having children right while we're lined, lining up. Um, those are novel things. Uh, when we realized that there's just not going to be any better, because everybody's taken away, one day--it's late in, in, in 1944--late in the fall, it was--it could have been mid-fall, no calendar. But it's bitter cold, it's always cold, it's raining. Got no shoes. Still wearing the same rag that I got. And we know none of us are going to make it. All of a sudden, you hear this chaotic noise outside, this drunken--or was he drunk or was he a madman. And he--it was known that this one particular SS, Gestapo was a drunk--came, opened the gate and comes in and starts knocking on all of the uh, bunks for us to get down. Well, now I'm with a, another group of girls there, it's about five of us, sort of ranging in the same age. Uh, we decide just going to stay together. Another pack of animals, we decide, you know, we'll stay together. But I don't want to stay there anymore. Well, the idea was how do you watch it? If you see one of the Blockältester, the Block...uh, the woman that used to be in charge of the other ones, if she lines up to go, that means it's a good place to go, it's going to be a work camp. All of a sudden we're looking and there is another few and I look out and I see there's a few girls from Chust and there is another couple of women and then I...