Voice/Vision Holocaust Survivor Oral History Archive

Helen Lang - February 23, 1982

Talk of Resistance

In any other camps you were in, was there any talk of escape or resistance?

No.

People smuggled out.

Maybe these Polish people were doing it, but we didn't know about it. We were women, we were such innocent, stupid people. We--whatever they said we did.

What about uh, religious...

Nothing.

...service? Nothing.

Nothing.

Rosh Hashanah, Yom Kippur?

Nothing.

Nothing.

Nothing, nothing. You know, that, that Macha, she said once--boy, she was a bastard--she, she says, well--she was a big Hitler--"Our father, our father." She kept on saying it. She say, "But he did one thing wrong. One thing he shouldn't have done it--this way we'd all--we would have winned the war that the day he accumulated all these people. What for?" She says, "What for? What did they do?"

She didn't like that he had taken everybody prisoner?

Yes. About the Jews. That this. She said, "Why did he do that? What for?" You couldn't figure her out. One day she was for Hitler--she was burning, you know, "That Hitler am our father--what he's doing for the Fatherland." And then she said it to me, she said, "That's what he did wrong. Awful, awful." I said, "What did I do? Tell me." Can you imagine me doing something? Did I do anything wrong in my life? What?" She said, "That's it." She says, "He should have never done it." She said, "This way he would have won the war."

She left before you did? Macha? She just...

You see then, after all from Stutthof, all the people were evacuating. Then we were going,...

Right.

...we emptied the place. See--we were emptying the place.


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