Regina Cohen - April 18, 1982
Arrival of the American Army
Mm-hm.
And I line up there and all of a sudden another plane comes over. And at that point as I look the tank comes up and the American the arm--and they jump out of that one tank with the bayonets and they kick in the bakery door. And they must have realized who we are because we all came out with dirty rags--with dirty this. You know when, you know when the pain was most severe?
When?
When you realized you're liberated.
Why do you think?
Because then you have to recognize the truth of what really happened. You know, all along through that whole year you could think, "Well maybe they're in another camp, maybe they're somewhere else. Maybe they survived. Maybe we're the only one that are suffering. How do we know the other ones are?" And uh, in the meantime you are so hungry, you're so sick, you're so tired of it all that the reality, the impact--it's--it just didn't penetrate. It--you didn't have enough time to digest it. All of a sudden, when food was given to you plentiful--and then I wasn't too hungry for it. And we stayed there a few days I believe and they took us to a uh, uh, I think it was a nearby resort place, a little, uh, like a hotel place with little buildings around it. Uh, and we spent a Passover holiday there--1945. And...
The Americans took you.
The American army liberated me. And uh, I think there came a reporter--wanted to know if there's any relatives either in America or in England or in Israel. Well, I never knew my uncle in Israel--my father's younger brother--his address. I just gave a city of uh, I think I said Haifa. I gave his name and my father's name--both the Yiddish and the anglicized pronunciation.
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