Voice/Vision Holocaust Survivor Oral History Archive

Hermina Vlasopolos - April 9, 1984

Befriending a French POW

It was a big machine, which was cleaning big cylinders of steel. And you had the steel wool...

Mm-hm.

...you know, and this was for, I mean, you know, flying...

Yeah.

...from, from this and it had about, I don't know how many degrees, you know, of Fahrenheit or Celsius, but then, you know, if you touch, it burns...

Burns.

...you. And we didn't have any protection. So I--my face was completely--I really thought I would be full of scars. And he was bent like this one night and a piece fell into his, you know, t-shirt and he was jumping like, like, like, like crazy and they tell him and me ???. A...again, what was uh, she started two men to explain to me in broken German what I have to do, and I told him, you know, speak French because I, I speak French. Well, he was extremely, extremely pleased and happy and in a half an hour the whole factory of those French people who were there knew that a Romanian who speaks French. And they were ex--very, very nice and this was very, very warm, a very warm reception from their part. They came and they told me not to worry and that the Krieg, the Krieg--the war will be, will be to end and uh, it, it won't take long and uh, they'll help me and uh, so it was a, a very uh, encouraging, you know.


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