Hermina Vlasopolos - April 9, 1984
Attempt to Escape the Camp
[interruption in interview]
??? "Well," he said, "they, they don't do that." And they didn't have, they didn't show up. ??? situation ??? until they came. Because they couldn't, they couldn't bear this, you know. And I told him because we don't count. And uh, we tried to tell the guy that not it's possible because I know that ??? when I was working, every single night threw a piece for what we have done in the river. You know, it was a river in the back of the factory and we couldn't assemble whatever they wanted to assemble, you know. They used to, to, to go crazy, the Germans. But it was already, you know, in April already, you know, in April. They really were beaten and coming back, so things were not--I mean, they were more in disarray than we were. This uh, this foreman who was, who I don't know, he was working only, you know, with a, with a whip. And he wrote two feet tall, slogans on the, on the wall of the, of the factory "Better dead than a slave" because they knew, probably they knew that the Russians are coming closer. And they used to tell us all the news, you know, during the--they used to come at night and we used to come at night. And one nice day they uh, they changed--they ac...actually Nicolai, the ??? Nicolai bent one night like this over the, over the machine and he told me, "You know what, I don't know what they are going to do to you when the, the, the, the war will be over in a short time. I would advise you to run, to, to, to try to escape." I said, "To escape? How?" You know. My hair had, had grown already, but we still had, you know, a dress with that cross behind your back. "I'll bring you some, some clothes," you know. So there were some of them who were married and the wives were there, I mean, the ones we were close to volunteer. In order to show it to the Red Cross, you know. And uh, I have a friend he said who, who works on a farm, he's also prisoner like me, "I will talk to him on Sunday because I meet him." They were allowed to, to communicate. "And you'll go there and he will hide you in one of the barns or something until the end. The, the war will be over and then you'll be able to escape." Well, tonight, you know, we spoke about this and he said that he's going to bring me some, a plan, you know, to--I was scared, I was scared to death, you know, to do it. And I told him, "I don't know if I dare to do it." He said, "You have to do it. You will do it during the night and you'll go out here in, in the camp. I, one of us will keep the supervisor, you know, busy and so on." And uh, I'm not as an adventurous type...
Yeah.
...you know, and uh, anyway, the next day--they were in the day shift and we were in the night shift and I was never able to talk with them. The only thing was, you know, just a few--so what they said was, "You find something there," you know, I don't know, a few carrots or whatever they were able to provide for us, or a piece of, of soap or so on. And uh, it didn't take a long time though because uh, very soon we didn't have any work to do. We had to clean the machines and put hooks in them. We understood that it went toward the end. But uh, in the camp it was no change, you know. We were sure that they are going to kill us. They're going to, to blow up or something.
© Board of Regents University of Michigan-Dearborn