Mrs. Roemerfeld - 1982?
Suicides
Did you ever witness any other type of protests?
No, no. The only uh, thing uh, the ones who didn't uh, wanna take it, they just went to the fence, and that was it.
Women whom you were with.
Yes, they went to the fence.
They lost all hope...
Hope.
for living.
Yes. They lost all hope and, and some of them were stronger, some of them didn't realize, they figured maybe life is supposed to be this way, maybe I was one of them. And maybe that's why I survived. Because I didn't realize. Like, you asked me questions about how I took--how I felt about things in the ghetto or, or, in Auschwitz. I, I don't know, I can't describe it to you because I must have been awful ignorant of the fact and I must have thought at the time, well, this is life and life must go on. So if I get the beating, I'll just have to endure and just live with it. But uh, uh, as far as, you know, surviving uh, I don't know myself how I made it. Because I, in no way I was privileged in any camps and in any way like, influenced by anybody to give me a helping hand. I was not. And uh, I remember being in uh, Los Angeles in 1967 and uh, we went out to dinner uh, to a friend of my husband's partner's wife and the first thing uh, you know, in Hungarian she said to her, "Well, she must have been a Kapo because she has that big tattoo. How did--would she survive?" And that hurtled me so much because I was beaten by those Kapos so much and hurt by those Kapos so much and yet I'm being accused because I survived. So.
© Board of Regents University of Michigan-Dearborn