Greece Hotels Travel - From Thessaloniki to Auschwitz and Back: Memories of a Survivor from Thessaloniki (The Library of Holocaust Testimonies)
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List Price: $24.95
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Manufacturer: Mitchell Vallentine & Company
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Average Customer Rating:  
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Binding: Paperback
Dewey Decimal Number: 940.5318092
EAN: 9780853033905
ISBN: 0853033900
Label: Mitchell Vallentine & Company
Manufacturer: Mitchell Vallentine & Company
Number Of Items: 1
Number Of Pages: 160
Publication Date: 2000-03
Publisher: Mitchell Vallentine & Company
Studio: Mitchell Vallentine & Company
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Summary: helpful firsthand account
Comment: At the turn of the century Salonica had a thriving and large Jewish communty. When one and half million native Greeks in Turkey were expelled by the Turks, many settled in Salonica, as it was the most commericial city and they had come from commerical cities themselves.
Durign the interwar period a larger portion of Jews in Salonica and Greece in general settled in Palestine, indeed the Zionist movement had deep roots in Salonica immigrated.
One of the interesting bits of history is that while Bulgaria is often seen as freindly to the Jews during the Holocaust, the most comprehensive terror occured in the wide area of northern Greece under Bulgarian occupation. The Bulgarian authorities readily and enthusiastically rounded up and deported Greeek Jews in those areas -- which they expected to annex.
The German SS did manage to destroy the Jewish community in Salonika. Thankfully eleewhere in Greece many Greeks helped people escape. Unfortunately in Salonica we saw the inexplicable collaboration of the Chief Rabbi Koretz with the SS.
Released archives now show a huge number of diplomatic cables indicating Washignton was fully aware of the situation. More damning is offical British policy of refusing to allow Jews to leave Greece.
With that background, Kounio-Amarilio's own experience adds the human dimension to this terrible tragedy and loss.
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Summary: A grim reminder
Comment: Edmund Burke said: "For the triumph of evil it is only necessary that good men do nothing." This book is a grim reminder of that truth. The back cover tells us exactly what we will find. "Before the Second World War there was a thriving Jewish community of some 50,000 people in Thessaloniki, Greece. In 1943, under Nazi occupation, virtually the entire community was deported to Auschwitz extermination camp. That Erika Amariglio and several members of her family survived is due only to a series of coincidences, which started with the fact that they were on the first transport to Auschwitz, and of the 2,800 people on their train they were the only ones who spoke fluent German. Erika Amariglio's story covers the period before the war in Thessaloniki, the German occupation and the gradual tightening of restrictions, the transportation, the two-and-a-half years that she and members of her family spent in Auschwitz, the long death march back to Germany, their escape to Yugoslavia, and the eventual reunion of the family in Greece. It concludes with the author's return to Auschwitz many years later as a delegate to an international conference on the Holocaust. "Creating a better world for our children is not just the nourishing of good but it is also the crushing of evil. It is horrible to be reminded what evil men can do if we just stand aside and pretend not to see. Unfortunately we need to be reminded periodically of this sad truth.
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Summary: A rarely heard story of a vanished community
Comment: In 1912, when the Ottoman city of Thessaloniki was turned over to Greece, Jews outnumbered Greeks, Muslims, Bulgarians and other residents. In 1917, fire destroyed much of the Jewish center of town. But by 1926, when the author was born, the city a growing Greek metropolis. Today, it has 1 million residents, but only 2,000 Jews. In 1939, the population of Jews living in the city of Salonika had dropped from about 90,000 to 56,000. In less than 12 weeks, all but 500 Jews were deported to death camps. By the end of August, 1943, the 500 Jews left owed their lives to the fact that they had kept their Spanish citizenship. Dieter Wisliceny, Eichmann's deputy in Greece, claimed that 60 to 65,000 Greek Jews were brought to Auschwitz. By September of 1944 only 2,500 of these were still alive and many more died before 1945, when they were marched to other camps. By far the largest proportion of those who were transported and who died in the camps were from Thessaloniki (Salonika). Erika Kounio-Amariglio, the daughter of an Austrian-Jewish mother and a Salonikan father, owed her survival in part to her knowledge of German. Her father owned a photography business in the city. Her mother had fought hard to be accepted and seems to have succeeded in overcoming the family's initial distrust of her as a foreigner. Having given up her medical studies at Leipzig University to follow her husband to Salonika, her mother maintained a close connection with her Austrian jewish family and sent her children back to spend part of each summer with her parents in Karlsbad. In 1938, when the Germans occupied Sudetenland, Erika's maternal grandparents moved to Salonika. This is a story of the vanished world of the Sephardic community of Salonika. This is the author's history of the town and the stories of the ghosts of those residents who were killed killed at Auschwitz, and how slowly over time, people gradually reacquire those average human desires after tragedy.
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