Regina Cohen - April 18, 1982
Dreams for Further Education
Did you plan on uh, furthering your education?
Of course.
What were you planning on doing?
Well, my hope was that one day I wanted to be a pediatrician.
Oh.
And uh, it, it just, it just hit me, I want uh, I liked being helpful to children. Whether that came because coming from a family that was large uh, hopes, desires--it was just a thing. I think I would have liked to have worked with children, whether in a teaching or whether in a professional area somewhere, where, um...
Do you think there was the possibility for you to be able to go, I'm talking about pre-1939...
Absolutely.
...for a Jew...
Yes.
...and as a Jewish woman.
Um, like everything else, things change, times change. If uh, persecution would have not been the main factors against Jews, I am hope...hoping uh, girls did go to universities. Whether they would have, they could have gone over uh, they travel to uh, other cities, other countries for further study. If--that's a big if--conditions would have been different. As, for a woman in Europe, I think she could have if, if your goals are set at a certain--for a certain area, you work towards it. I might have not been a doctor, might have been something else. But the hope of continuing, definitely. It, it wasn't just, you know, go through so many grades and stop and what then. I uh, I never thought that the time will come I'll stop going to school. This is just mentally. Sometimes I think uh, "What did I think at the time? Did I want to do what did I want to do?" And I always--never thought that you just go to some many years to school and then you get married. And that didn't enter my mind. You just go and then you continue.
So, in other words, you did have hopes and...
Desire.
there was a possibility of...
Of course, the possibility as far as going to school, yes. But conditions weren't such...
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