Voice/Vision Holocaust Survivor Oral History Archive

Regina Cohen - April 18, 1982

Life at New Camp

What happened in the morning? Did you used to line up with zahlappell there too?

Yes, everywhere.

Did you ever have to kneel in the mud there too?

Not there. In Auschwitz we did--not there. Uh, it was different and it was fast because we weren't there uh, a long time, because we were there through, through the Christmas, through...

When did you first come there? It was in the autumn?

In, in the, in the autumn--in the fall, sometime in the fall. Leaving Auschwitz uh, it was fall, it was late fall as a matter of fact because uh, you know, if my, if my memory serves me well uh, before you knew it it was wintertime. There was snow in Nuremberg there. And uh, and we went to work.

You walked to the factory. You worked for...

It was right within, within its--the complex were all--it was all in its own.

Did you know what the name of the factory was?

No. We all had, there was uh, uh, one building, there was a SS woman, she had designated so many girls come this one particular day for uh, testing, or...

You had testing.

Test.

What kind of testing did you do?

I don't remember. She asked me questions. My age, my schooling, my back...I don't know. I answered two questions. So help me God, I don't remember. She was a nice person, okay. Testing. Uh, something to do with...

Manual dexterity?

...wires, or fine tuning wires that did something for, for--having to do with electrical components or wires or stuff like that.

That's what she did for the testing or is that the work you did in Siemens.

She had me do some...hold something, work with something while she was doing the testing, but I can't remember. Then I did--wasn't there a couple of times, it's funny enough, they started bombing and the lights were shut out so we had to go back to the underground. And then, we worked in shifts. And I had never got to work the--we were halfway through, going to the barrack where the factory is and half the time we never got there. It was--either the bombing started and you had to go underground. They had uh, underground uh, bunkers where we were. Because it started to bomb, lights were out, everything was blackout. We went under. I have--we came back. I never got to work with whatever it was. Couple times I went in there was supplies to put out on tables--it was here, it was there. And then another group would come in and I don't remember what I was doing.

You have no...

No.

...recollection what you were doing in there.

No, no. Then, then they bombed the whole place. Then they took us into the city more central.


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