Voice/Vision Holocaust Survivor Oral History Archive

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Hermina Vlasopolos - April 9, 1984

[interruption in interview]

... they logged it and they said put it on file, you know. And uh, he refused. And the officer told him, "You're crazy, do you know what it means to, to refuse an order, I mean, on the front?" He said, "Yes, I know, you can shoot me. But I prefer you shoot me than I shoot myself. You know, because if I do it I cannot live with myself." And the man was nice, he told him, "Oh go." Well this, you know, this man he saved his life because after the war, he was, he was in, in Hungary, you know, war criminal because he was against the Russians, you know, on the front. And he brought this friend of mine from, from Romania to Hungary to be a witness that he did not put this, you know, building on fire and what had happened and this saved his life. So, sometimes, uh...

Yeah.

...so I met this friend of mine and he had become, I don't know--was put in charge actually with the movie uh, with all of Hungarian movies. He was from Transylvania, he was a, a Hungarian Jew. With all the movies uh, Hungarian movies, which were pawned, you know, in Romania, left by the Hungarians when they left, and I told him I don't know how to do because I don't feel like entering a classroom. I just don't feel that I can enter a classroom now. And he told me, "Well if you know Hungarian"--because I, I learned Hungarian in between, you know. I said, "I learned Hungarian." He said, "I'll give you two, two screenplays and translate, and translate them into Romanian." And I was so eager to translate them that I started in the streetcar, you know. And gave me his card right there. And I sent him that translation and then I went and I saw him and I gave him the two plays and he said, well this is your career from now on. And he helped me a lot because there were about sixty Hungarian films without a screenplay, without anything. So I had to listen to them and write, you know, the uh, the dialogue down and then translate it and then work it out. So I went, I got into the movie industry and I, this became really my career. After this I became a translator, you know. I worked a lot in the...