Hermina Vlasopolos - April 9, 1984
Liberation I
How--when were you liberated then?
We were liberated the 9th of May.
How did that happen?
And uh, I have it, I have it also, I think.
That's okay, you can just tell me.
No, I will just uh, look through it. And so the plan to escape, you know, was never carried out...
Right.
...because I expected the night shift changed to day shift. Not for us, of course, not for the Jewish prisoner. "So around ten o'clock uh, we stopped working--around ten o'clock we were called outside to be counted and after that we were an hour late. We had two we never knew. A thousand women on the road at night. It was pitch dark. Suddenly they made us stop in front of the foreign prisoners' camp. The SS supervising women with us inside two bathroom. They were the first to undress. Our clothes were taken away to be washed and dried at three hundred degree Celsius in order to kill the lice they said. Everything that was happening now was so odd, so very strange that we thought for sure they were going to kill us. After all, wasn't it the usual procedure in the Nazi camp? Showers which pour out killing gas and then the ovens? This was so--it was to be expected, especially since we realized that things were going really badly for the Germans. But there were no showers, only storm bathtubs and steam. We were wondering if the Nazis had by now invented a poisonous steam. We were left in that steam bath for about three or four hours in order to clean dirt accumulated in our pores for a whole year. Little steams of dirt were flowing down the skeleton-like bodies, young women's bodies. So beautiful to look at once, we were now a bunch of bones covered with wrinkled skin. There were no trace of female breasts or female hips or thighs. Nothing but working moving skeletons. We washed and washed over and over again but couldn't wash away the dark metal dust which had penetrated our skins and made those who had been working for a longer time in that plant look like birds of prey. All that metal dust had gathered there where the skin was most tender around the eyes and nose. In those emaciated faces, the noses looked bigger and the eyes were bigger in the sockets. Our hair was growing at random and we had lost any resemblance to selves we had been a year ago. This time they had told us the truth. We were given back our clean clothes. It was almost morning and in the grayish light of the ending night, bluish light of the ending night we were taken back to the camp. Again a passenger came, was crossing the landscape. And this was before, a passenger was always crossing the landscape at the same time, when we used to come.
Mm-hm.
I was always wondering will I ever, ever ride in a passenger...
Yeah.
...train.
Yeah.
The fact that I was clean, really clean after almost, almost a year of filth raised my hopes that I might ride in such a train again. We came back and much to our disgust, we had to lie down on the same dirty lice-infested bare mattresses--two in a bunk because nobody went to work that day. We were much too excited and too puzzled by what had just happened to be able to fall asleep. Finally the excited voices gradually faded away and one could hear only the regular breathing of young women who were sleeping, slipping away slowly into the world of dreams, the best thing we ever had there. But not for long. Only, after only two hours we were awakened, driven outside to be counted again and to get our coffee. It was the same dark, bitter hot drink we used to get in the morning as breakfast, but it was hot and most of, most of the time that was enough. There was nothing for us to do because work came from the factory, but all work had stopped for remodeling. Of course nobody believed that the plant should run constantly for twenty-four hours, seven days a week had been stopped suddenly for remodeling. The Germans were running around with worried faces, still in control, still taking care of matters with organized cruelty. But they were not laughing so--as loudly and disdainfully as before. They gathered in groups and were whispering to each other all the time. We didn't know exactly what was going on, but not going to work we were deprived of our only source of information, our friends and foreign prisoners. We sensed though that some dramatic changes must have taken place in the last few days and we are wondering if in their defeat the Nazis in the camp are going to take revenge and kill us. We didn't count then on our, on their cowardice. This was a very, very coward.
Mm-hm.
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