Voice/Vision Holocaust Survivor Oral History Archive

Regina Cohen - April 18, 1982

Reason for Surviving

You think you had a particular will to live that perhaps others didn't have?

No, no. I think we all wanted to live. Uh, a lot of, a lot us, okay, a lot of us are people that pushed to be noticed. I'm a person--I think that must be the make up of the person, or maybe I just became like that--I fall in, into the background. Uh, I'm quieter in nature and I'm very observant. I, I don't jump--I sort of use uh, instinct. You know what animal instinct. And I think kids have that, uh. Something else there was. I had nobody with me and, and I think that that uh, that might have had a lot to do with the way I survived, because I didn't have to rely on nobody else's judgment--my own. Nobody's holding me back or, or uh, uh, deciding for me. Uh, I was just--I could almost tell when something was going to go wrong and I knew what to do with it. It...it's like another sense--it's telepathy. Did you ever hear of that? I, I really believe that a lot, a lot of it I could sense when something was going to go haywire that I, I won't be in that spot. I'll make myself--and it was hard to make yourself disappear or, or not noticed. It was just uh, I was never in--a, a pushy type person. I was just--I wasn't irritating to anybody.


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