Voice/Vision Holocaust Survivor Oral History Archive

Regina Cohen - April 18, 1982

Stealing in Camp

Was she...

Only one incident I saw there. She, she did it--she shot a, a girl in the thigh for uh, uh, trying to steal a potato.

What did she do to the thigh--she what?

Shot.

Shot with a gun.

With a gun. We all went out during the night uh, after our camps, at barracks, were all bombed. We were bombarded by the British, the Americans, both sides. We had no more barracks left. Our--the foods, the potatoes and beets and carrots and whatever they had uh, there is a way to preserve for the winter--were all done in a, like in a, in the ground, where uh, if you dig a big uh, ditch and you bury it with straw, you can uh, keep your food, your potatoes, vegetables from freezing in the wintertime. This is good psycho...good knowledge. And then uh, you'd put more straw over it. And uh, there's like a space between it and there's uh, soil on top of that and that is to keep it from freezing. Well, at night we were all hungry and we'd go and raid it. Well, some of us made it back, but this one girl got this, this, this uh, uh, the head Gestapo woman came out and saw, started shooting. I don't know whether--she didn't aim for that girl, she was shooting because--for anybody. And this one girl caught it in the thigh. Well, they fixed her up with a, with a, a--what do you call it? Sling with, with two boards.

Mm-hm.

And uh, I think the bullet just went right through. And uh, she survived.


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