Voice/Vision Holocaust Survivor Oral History Archive

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Helen Lang - February 23, 1982

I'll ask her.

Ask her, maybe she will remember that these people--we went to dinner. I don't know how many days we lived around there on the ocean or what. They main thing we were, you know, not with the, the SS. We arrived, they put us, I don't know, someplace out of town someplace, you know, in a barracks there. We had our room, they had our room. They were lots of them, Wehrmachts. They, they somehow--we told them we're Hungarians, you know. Somehow they never, never tried to get close with us. It's amazing isn't it? I said to--there was my sister and another girl, Irene, I said, "You know what, let me go into town and see if there is any Jews." Is there any Jews left over here in Denmark? And for them I told them, "I'm going in town to get some eggs or cheeses," you know, something for them because whatever they got, you know, on uh, they didn't have enough food. So I told them, I, I, I'm going to go. They give me money, you know, German money. I didn't have any money. And I tried, and I went into a store. I spoke only German and they hated me. German. No, they don't want to sell anything. And here I was afraid to tell 'em I am Jewish. So in some stores--I went into another store. I got some eggs, I got some cheeses. I brought 'em some, I gave it them. We ate it too, you know. Next day I said, "Let me try again. Maybe I'll see on the street a Jew, maybe I'll recognize a Jew." I couldn't, and here I was afraid of--I says--I said to Irene and to my sister, "Well, we pulled it off so long, why take chances to go to 'em--somebody tell them that I am Jewish. They might shoot us." So I didn't. And I should have. That was my mistake because after I heard that the Denmarks--how good they were to Jews. But we didn't know it. I figured maybe if I see a shul. I couldn't see a shul. Here I didn't--and, and it was a long walk to go there, you know, I had to walk. I was afraid to go to a side street because I wouldn't find my way back. And here these Danish people they wouldn't give me no instruction how to go back because they hated--and I speak--I, I spoke uh, speaking only German. I couldn't speak any other language they should understand me. So I was just going down the main street and looking around for a Jew or a shul and I couldn't find it. So we stayed there with them for four weeks. But as I say, I tried always to go and, you know, maybe, maybe, maybe--I never succeeded.