Hermina Vlasopolos - April 9, 1984
Ghetto Posters Go Up
Mm-hm.
Now, you know, people had relatives sometimes, you know, either in Germany or in Czechoslovakia or in places where these things already happened, and they already knew what was going on. But we didn't know.
Mm-hm.
I mean, we knew that, how, how bad it is and we knew that the, the Nazis came, you know, it was very bad. But we didn't know about the concentration camps, we didn't know what they were and what they meant. You know, there were rumors. People heard, you know, like I said, whispers. One said something...
Mm-hm.
...and the other one said something, you know. But if you are young, and you want to be optimistic you cannot--I even told them, we cannot believe everything it is said because we are going to go crazy. And uh, we'll uh, and uh, we had to, to wear the, the yellow star starting from March.
Mm-hm.
And uh, as I said, again, some people were really hostile and some people were pretty nice because I came into the streetcar, you know, wearing my, my yellow star and it was a colonel in the Hungarian army and very ostensibly he stood up and offered me his, his seat...
Mm-hm.
...in the streetcar. So in order to show, again, that he's sorry for what is going on. On the other hand there was a man who, we lived on the same street and he kept on greeting me every morning. But it was a kind of greeting where he wants, you know, to, to, to start. And one day he spoke to me, I don't even know what he told me and I told him, "Don't bother, I am Jewish." And he gave me a very stupid answer. "Oh," he said, "it's impossible with such a nose." You know. And I said, "All right it's just a few days and you are going to find out." And, of course, in a few days I was given the...
Mm-hm.
...yellow star and he didn't greet me anymore. And he didn't offer anymore his friendship or whatever he intended. So, see there'd be two aspects. Uh, April I think the 4th or the 5th--maybe I started not to remember so well anymore the date--uh, I think I mentioned, I mean, posters were...
Mm-hm.
...posted all over that the Jews will have to go into the ghetto. And it started, you know, I mean, you didn't have time--I mean, they started before this, they kind of made some arrests on the street...
Mm-hm.
...you know, at random. They stopped people on the street, you had to show them your identification paper and they loaded you in a...
Mm-hm.
...truck and took you a...away and nobody knew whatever happened. I was at the time engaged to a lawyer but he was on the Russian front, also taken with these uh, work, working uh, battalions...
Mm-hm.
...you know, the Jews would have to do the work for the, for the army, not in the regular army.
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