Voice/Vision Holocaust Survivor Oral History Archive

Regina Cohen - April 18, 1982

Description of Ghetto

What year was this?

In 1944, May.

Oh, in other words this was...

We were taken out of our home right after Passover and put into the ghetto, which was made off um, I'd say a whole street. I don't know how high you count that by blocks. How many blocks that is. A whole city street. Uh, funny enough it was right across a big Roman Catholic church. Uh...

Do you remember the name of the street, by any chance?

Uh, one side of the street was ???

You do remember.

And the other side I don't remember. I know that street was leading to what's going to with the main, um...

Square?

No, no, no. There was a square there. This, this was a school it--was going to the main um, railroad station.

Oh.

Okay. Uh, the house, first house on the ghetto was um, the girls live in New York now. They had a um, um, a bar.

In the ghetto.

Well no, tha...that's where the previous lived so that house, that one house was converted into a ghetto and all the homes thereafter. Huge homes uh, one person owned uh, some kind of a factory, that was his home there. So all of the homes in that whole--through that whole street. And I don't know because we were never really permitted to go too far. We were all closed in through gates. Fenced off, our windows were all um, chalked and painted. So we can't see out, nobody can see in. Um, and we stayed in that ghetto a total--I would say--you know what, if we were taken sometimes middle of April--if it's a total of a month, between three and four weeks. And from there we were taken to Au...to the railroad station.

Who designated the homes, these specific places? You, were you given an entire home?

No, we were given a...

You were a large family, you needed a lot of room.

...we got a room.


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