Regina Cohen - April 18, 1982
Lying About Age to Survive
Anyways, excuse me, let's get back to where you were--you lined up...
And uh, fate had it where I just took my chances, I've had enough. I, I didn't care at that moment if I live or die because I, I couldn't take that. Uh, and we marched out and they took us to this place again where we get stripped and we get uh, to bathe. And that is the one place they took like what's called a roll call and I think that's where I got the number...
Oh, you don't...
...because I don't remember. And I had told the woman there--was a Gestapo--that I was sixteen, because they did ask age. Because some--there were, might have been a cou... I think it was more than five hundred and fifty, but five hundred and fifty got out. I think there might have been more. And I insisted I was sixteen. And he got me from the line and he told me to go on the other side. And, and I got separated from all the girls. Just a few of us and I thought, "Wait a minute, this was not the place for work, these were going to ga...gas me." I was cunning, it hit me. I thought, "Well..." I crawled under--it was like uh, um, not bar, a, a metal bar dividing us and I crawled under, under the bar and I line up again and I coming from the, the doctor that sorts us out and he looked straight at me and he says--and he recognize me--and he says, "But you're so young." And I says, "But I am strong and I can work," with the most arrogant smile that I could have, you know, determination. And I got let through to the side where the girls were sorted to go to work. We were given a, a dress and a shoe and out we are, and that's where they asked how old everybody is and I said I was sixteen. But you know, after the war I had forgotten it 'til about six or eight years ago. Because I had gone for--I needed a paper and I gave some detail and they found my name, wherever they looked for it. But they said that I was at that--I was two years older. And I thought to myself, "Where, how would they find me? There's got to be another Regina Cohen." There is one.
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