Hermina Vlasopolos - April 9, 1984
Being Ill in Camp
Yeah.
...you know. And she, she reported herself, you know, there. And they didn't help her much. We asked her, she said, I cannot stand it anymore, she told us. What will happen, she said, later on they'll catch me anyway. I cannot stand it. And she went with them. And uh, it was, I mean, a student of mine from Oradea, she was with her mother and she was, I think by the time, fourteen. So they let her pass, the mother was still young. And uh, she probably contracted scarlet fever out of the camp...
Mm-hm.
...because she got sick in the camp and they, they just took her away. She was the only child. And uh, they kept her. And I met the mother many, many years after in Oak Park, I mean. And she, she, she grabbed me and she asked me if I'm so and so and uh, she has relatives in Oak Park and I came, I came there and we talked the whole afternoon. She had pictures of me and the child because I was her favorite teacher, she was my favorite student, you know. And we had taken...
Sure.
...pictures and uh, actually I, also after the school, I mean, we, we knew that we don't come back to the school. She, they invited me, they had a farm and uh, and a, and a uh, vineyard and I went out there for ten days, and I spent ten days with them. I really loved this, this, this child like, like she was my own. And uh, the mother tried to have another child. She was never able to, to carry the pregnancy to the end. She had miscarriages and she gave up. I think that it was probably psychologically that she wasn't able to, to have it. It was a fantastic gift, the child. So, you know uh, it's impossible to, to go day by day, you know, and to, to say what happened every day, because every single day they had something else, you know, either planned or whatever, whoever had a whim, you know, for the, for us. When, in the working camps they needed us because we provided a lot of unpaid work.
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