Voice/Vision Holocaust Survivor Oral History Archive

Regina Cohen - April 18, 1982

Disappearance of SS Guards

How long were you there?

I was there 'til the end--'til April the 18th when I got liberated.

What happened then? Can you...

Three days before liberation, I uh, things got very confused. Our uh, SS uh, uh, disappeared. Uh, there, there was uh, we could look out the window and there was like a standstill. Uh, we're again on an outside of a--outskirt of a city, but you could see the city almost. Like a, a, a quiet. One night they took us into uh, a forest like, because they claimed that they heard that, that the, the factory--the building where we lived and worked was going to be bombed. So they took us in for that one night into a forest. Not too far--it was quite a ways walking distance, but it wasn't too far. And I remember we lay down our heads to the ground and we'd hear that tremendous rumbling--a bombing--heavy machinery and we knew that they--somebody's going to liberate and we were just--be ecstatic. We didn't care. But we slept out there for that one night and then uh, the following night planes were flying over, but so low. And nobody bombed and nobody shot. I remember we had uh, uh, irons over our windows.

Iron? Bars?

You know, the bars. And one of the girls...

This is in the factory.

...in the factory--one of the girls wanted to open the window--they, they locked our windows up--to uh, put something white out...


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