Rose Green - May 21, 2008
Receiving News About the War
Do you remember--was this SS men or was it Wehrmacht? Which...
I don't know. You know what? I don't even know their ranks well because uh, there were some soldiers--I'm sure they were just some kind of soldiers who wasn't work for the front, so they treat--put 'em in, in those camps.
Did you get any, any news about what was happening or...
On the outside.
Yeah.
There was one Italian guy--there were Italians also there and, and uh, Russians in, in the camp, in the--where I was in the first working camp when I was working on the, you know, on those heads.
Italian prisoners?
Yeah, yeah. They were against Mussolini and they talked about Hitler. There was one guy, he was a mechanic. He was a very, very nice guy. And he was supposed to show me what to do, because we didn't know what to do. So, he was a master mechanic and he showed me what to do. And there was a round thing on the head and he showed me--he robbed the Germans, he robbed the Russians, he robbed--he couldn't speak well Eng...uh, German. He spoke a little German, very, very, very, very bad, and I didn't speak Italian. So we understood each other somehow. So he showed me that here is the Germans, here is the Italians, here is this and that. And uh, the German woman who was sitting there--he was supposed--she was supposed to watch me he shouldn't do anything bad, you know. So she came there and uh, she says, "What are you talking about? What are you talking about?" And he said to her--he doesn't speak English--he said, ??? said, "I don't understand what he wants me to do," you know. So, so she did it and sat down. And he was explain because they made for themselves a radio, those mechanics. The Italian mechanics...
He was getting news.
...made--he got some news. He made a little radio for themselves. And there was--they could go out in the dark. They got a little paid and they could go out in the town and, you know, and uh, I don't know. Once in awhile they could go out in the town, buy something for themselves. But uh, so he thought that I'm a Dummkopf, that I have--that he had to explain it to me twice, three times he had to explain it to me.
So you knew that the Germans were losing.
Oh yes. We, oh, we knew, you know. That's what kept us...
Kept you going.
Yeah, kept us going. Yeah.
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