Regina Cohen - April 18, 1982
Reason for Surviving II
The only time I was really approached was when I told you when we were, we were taken to Nuremberg from Auschwitz, when, when this—whether it was Dr. Mengele or another doctor, because they're al...always doctors, you know. As a—they said they needed a doctor for a nude body to take a look what they made, made it look like—it was skin and bone. I, I don't think I weighed more than forty-seven pounds when I was liberated. Uh, when he said, "But you're so young," and I said with as much uh, uh, what do you call it? Determination—assured sort of smiled and I said "But I'm very strong and I can work." And uh, but I had been going under the age of sixteen for all the years without remembering 'til about oh, a few years back and, and it floored me. And that's what it was. It was to uh, because I wanted to be in Nuremberg, I said I was older because fourteen year olds were just—wasn't given a chance. There were no gas chambers there—but the fear that they could always ship you from here. And they did. Some camps liquidated their people and sent them back to—or they had, they had Buchenwald, they had other places—Mauthausen, they had, these were little places. Anyhow, that's how I made it and I'm going to be fifty-two. Uh, no I'm actually glad, almost glad that you interviewed me because uh, uh, there's a kinship—I don't know if you understand what I'm saying—if you know the background of your folks. You realize some of—you recognize some of my background, okay, you, you're aware of what I'm saying even if I don't explain myself. But as far as my kids, my son knows very little. The only thing I remember my son used to be ashamed when we lived in Livonia and in the area where I lived there was just by Inkster Road there by Six Mile—there was very few Jewish people. Where your parents lived there was a lot more.
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