Voice/Vision Holocaust Survivor Oral History Archive

Hermina Vlasopolos - April 9, 1984

Parschnitz

Mm-hm.

And we had to go and dig trenches and anti-tank trenches. It was in April. And the, the, the soil was full of water, and...

Sure.

...you had to, to dig and to throw this whole thing up. It was absolutely unrealistic what they wanted from us, and we couldn't do it and they didn't go to any result because they were broken women. I mean, it was almost a year after...

Sure.

...after the concentration camps. And uh, there, there were some prisoners from Czechoslovakia and they helped us, you know, with the digging and uh, we were five weeks there, but it was, it was terrible. It was, I think it was worse than--it was worse than Auschwitz because they, they said all of a sudden they have to make a de-parasitation, you know, because we tended to have lice, not, not head lice, you know, the crawl, the body lice. And they left us a whole day completely naked without any clothes on, because they had to put everything in. And it was cold. And uh, after this they told us at night, well now you go and you get your, you know, we had to pack 'em in a kind of blanket, whatever the ones. And uh, they told us, go and uh, and get your, your, your clothes. And there was no, no light. And all the dead people were there, you know, and you were flapping on, on, on, on, on, you know, on a cadaver here or a cadaver there. You didn't know what it is. Finally they brought some flashlights. It was, you know, so, probably something invented by one of them.

Yeah.

And uh, oh we got our clothes back, the lice were still there and I don't think that they--it was just a day...

Yeah.

...you know, that uh, and it, it was, it was funny that it was a kind of ESP because when--I used to say I cannot stand it anymore. Something changed. You know, and they kept on asking me, can you stand it, you know.


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