Hermina Vlasopolos - April 9, 1984
Working at an Airplane Factory
What was the name of the factory there?
???
And what were you making there? What were they...
Pardon me?
What type of factory was it? What were they making?
It was an ammunition factory. I mean, it was an ammunition factory that made, I mean, we made, I think parts of airplanes...
Oh.
...anyway, parts of, of, of big, big things, ammunitions, you know. And uh, some of them were very, very heavy even, you know. Pieces of steel with, with uh, I don't know how you call this, you know, this drill...
Yes.
...you know, making certain kind of holes in them which had to be, you know, matched to, to other things. And, and our, our life it was like a babble tower, you know. It's a, all kind of, of, of faces. I mean, Oriental, I mean, I don't know, Chinese or Japanese or whatever. I don't know where they got them from. They were French and Italian and Dutch and Polish. And uh, every kind of nationality was, was in this, in this factory. Unbelievable. I mean, it struck you only by entering that you saw so many types...
Yeah.
...you know, of, of faces. So it was the night shift and the uh, the foreman came and uh, again asked us uh, if we can speak German. And I said, "Yes, I can speak German." He says, "Okay." He spoke a very, very strong Berlin accent or something like that. It was very hard for me to understand. And uh, he said, "I want you to come with me and to explain to your colleagues what they have to do, because I see that not many of them understand what I'm saying." And I didn't understand what he was speaking because he was speaking so--you know, I mean they have a lot of dialects and he was really speaking a--so he brought me to, to, to work with a Frenchman--and how do you call this ???. I don't know, something, you know, was, was moving there and it was--if I look in the dictionary, do you want me to?
No, it's okay.
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