Rose Wagner - August 14, 2002
Liberation by Russians
May the 8th.
May 8th, yeah, 1945.
By the Americans? Russians.
Russians.
Uh-huh, hm. Russians. Let me step back for a second. Either in the ghetto or in Auschwitz, was there any either talk of or experience that you remember of some sort of sexual assaults by prisoners or...
In, in the, when the Russians came.
Not before.
That's what I, that's what I remember. When the Russians came it was, we had to hide. If they saw a woman, they grabbed her, they had sex with her and then they dropped her in the street, it was unreal. They were not nice. Those Russian came you know, with that eyes. I don't know, how do you call these.
Mongols.
With Mongols with the, the big heavy women. So we--they gave us food and we opened a, a couple cans and we got sick. The food was terrible. But we had, we had to hide from them because one night they came in and they grabbed a young woman there. So we stayed in, after the war, I mean when we, when we were liberated we stayed--oh yeah, then the Germans, they locked us up. We couldn't go out. I keep, I keep taking...
Before the liberation.
No, no, no, when we were liberated already.
Yeah.
We were in the factory, we were in the factory. Not in the factory, in the building where we, where we slept.
Yeah.
So they locked us up and we couldn't go out. So we stayed there for a couple days until the French people, they came with all kind of things, heavy things and they, they, they opened the doors. We couldn't get out.
So the Germans had left.
The Germans left already.
And then when did the Russians show up?
The Russians show up right the next day.
But they didn't let you out?
We couldn't, they were locked.
So the Russians didn't open the doors.
They, no they couldn't open the doors, they were big, heavy locks.
Okay, so the French came...
They were metal doors, metal doors. It was not like a big, it was a big building but everything was very heavy, heavy doors, those metal ones.
Mm-hm.
So, uh...
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