Hermina Vlasopolos - April 9, 1984
At the Ammunition Factory
Mm-hm.
And I met there a former roommate of mine and she was very generous because she gave me a clove of garlic. And we were able to, to wrap this garlic. You know, on bread I gave it to my other friend. It was the 23rd of August in 1944 and it was then that the Romania broke up with them and turned to the Allies. And it was a kind of confusion in the camp and they said that we are not going to leave. And then when I said, "Now I'm not going back. I, if I die I don't go back in the other camp." Many people committed suicide just touching the wire, which was, you know, you got electrocuted in a second. Some people got electrocuted out of, you know, lack of care, although there was a, a big cable, you know, which did not allow you two foot from the wires, so only...
Mm-hm.
...if, not, not to get in touch. Not that they cared...
Right.
...but I think it was their policy. And uh, it was then that--well, next day they, they uh, gave us a bread and I don't know, fifty grams or something like this of margarine. And we put us in other, in other freight coaches but this, this was already, you know, they were, I mean uh, painted with, with white and uh, there were only forty of us and we had water. And it was the Wehrmacht, it was not the SS who, who, you know, supervised the trains. So they were very nice. At night they opened the, the coaches and they let us go the bathroom in the fields. And not to have to live with this pail, you know, we had there and to have to do it in the, in what we, we travel. It took us about three days and we arrived in a German town. I think now it's uh, in Poland, if I'm not mistaken. It was close to Dresden. And this was called Reichenbach ???, it was, it was completely, very German, like you see it in the, in the movies, you know...
Mm-hm.
...a little German gothica, you know, signs, and with white curtains and uh, and we worked in a--well then, because we spoke German we worked in a, a radio factory. These are the Telefunken ??? it was an ammunition factory. So it was a smaller camp and it was a working camp, so it was not like in Auschwitz, because in Auschwitz every, every second day they came and they made, you know, a big living chain around so nobody could escape and they came and Mengele came and looked at each, each of us, you know, and who was really very run down he just made a sign like this, was uh, weak, you know, you had to go outside and these people went to the, to the gas chamber. And uh, some older women, we had a friend of ours who, who was pregnant who did not want to, she, she just couldn't stand it anymore. She had no--and they came everyday and they said the ones who are sick, the ones who are not. We take them to the hospitals, we treat them. And we believed them...
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