Hermina Vlasopolos - April 9, 1984
Moving into the Ghetto
Sure.
...whatever. And uh, there were those, I mean, the SS men, you know, the SS officers who were there cutting orders and so on. And uh, I ca...I, I, I left there and I was thinking, "Oh God, there must be some, some revenge you know...
Mm-hm.
...for this." I didn't know, you know, what, what will come after this. And uh, these were, you know, episodes...
Yes.
...little by little which happened before the, the, the gathering of all the Jews, you know, in one part of the town. So they came with trucks and they allowed you to take uh, I don't know, two pillows and uh, and a blanket or a quilt or a, and some food. I think there were, there were sixty pounds, seventy pounds, something like this...
Mm-hm.
...what they, they allowed you. Of course they did not weigh it, you know...
Yeah.
...approximately what you have take. Threw them in the trucks with your belongings, you know, and--so you, you left everything like, you know, getting out of the house and you leave it as it is because from one day to the other it happened. It was again kept such a, such a secret. I mean, we started to hear about the ghettos...
Mm-hm.
...and there will be ghettos. So we started, people started to, to bury their...
Mm-hm.
...you know, jewels or things which were more precious. Uh, I didn't, I didn't have what to, what to bury, but I gave a lot of things away because I intended to get married, you know, and I started--there you started to, to, to do uh, to do so for yourself with buying enough towels and sheets and so on, because there were not like here, you go and you buy so many sheets. It's probably hard when you are start to work. But there it was really an achievement to, to put together, you know, things like you need it. And uh, I never felt that this war will not end, you know, and that we, we'll be finally able to, to get married. And uh, what happened was that all my savings I gave them to my future father-in-law and brother-in-law because they had a, a furniture, not a factory, it was a workshop. People liked very much, you know, the handmade...
Mm-hm.
...carpentry and so on. And uh, I, I gave it to him so as he put it, you know, in--it was again inflation, you know, during the war, to put it in the filling material, you know, and then we'll probably have our furniture made as much as possible out of it. But they took away and they took everything away from them, you know, the workshop with all the, all the, you know, store material that they had. And I remember he brought me a big, big piece of, of cloth in order to, to cover my couch. He said, "We'll have it and you'll have something, you know, you will be able to cover this later on." Of course, everything was lost.
Sure.
So on this morning, I think we'll be done. This policeman came, he was ex--well he was very much in love with this young girl. And uh, he came and he tried to, I mean without doing himself, you know, any harm, tried to, to do whatever he could for us, you know. And uh, this other neighboring man--we, we, we got into the ghettos, it was not by date because, streets, you know, by, by the street, the, the, the street across the street, I mean, people across the street went before me and then I uh, I arrived in the ghetto. I mean, they gathered people in two or three days, no question about it. So it was, the ghetto was, well it was more like the Jewish community, a lot of people did not live like here, you know, so close. I mean, the Jews were not, you know, gathered in one.
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