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On 7.5.2017 it was published in the newspaper DEMOCRACY article by Antonis Triantaphyllos regarding the visit of students and teachers from Greece to the Auschwitz camp where one and a half million people lost their lives.
READ OUT HERE THE ARTICLE
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The students from schools in Athens who distinguished themselves in the competition "The Child Victim of the Holocaust" were awarded on 3.5.2017 by the Minister of Education, Research & Religious Affairs, Kostas Gavroglou, in the presence of G.G. of Religion, Giorgos Kalantzis. The students who were awarded in the competition - conducted by G.G. of Religions in collaboration with the Jewish Museum of Greece - reported, as the minister asked them, their experiences from their visit to the Auschwitz Museum.
Immediately afterwards, K. Gavroglou, addressing the students and teachers, emphasized among other things: "First, at the basis of all this is a decision that we must make as citizens and I am sure that the great majority of you have made it. Are we all the same or aren't we? And the fat and the thin, and the black and the white, those who are cut in a different way and I say this because racism is a terrible poison. So here at its base was that some were the good guys in the world and some were the bastards. This differentiation continues to exist even today and unfortunately also in our country. This is one of the things that we should have as our basic principle.
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The manuscript was read on April 22, 2017 in a ceremony held at the Monastriots synagogue, as part of a memorial service held by the Israelite Community of Thessaloniki.
"The dramas that my eyes have seen are indescribable," the Thessaloniki Jew, Marcel Natzari, says in his shocking testimony from the Birgenau camp in Auschwitz. Sensing that his own end is approaching, in the autumn of 1944, just before the evacuation and dismantling of the camp, he writes a manuscript addressed to his friends and relatives, places it in a bag and the bag in a leather bag. He buries the bag in the ground half a meter deep, in the grounds of crematorium 3, in the hope that someone will find it and mail it to his family. “On April 11th we arrived at Auschwitz and the Birgenau camp. We spent a month in quarantine and from there they sent us strong, to a crematorium. It is a large building with a wide chimney with 15 ovens. Underneath a garden are two large subterranean chambers, vast.
"One is used to undress and the other is the death chamber, where people enter naked and after about 3.000 people are filled, it is closed and they are gassed. After 6-7 minutes of torture they give up the spirit. Our job is first to welcome them. Most did not know the reason. They were told that they were going to take a bath. They were going unknowingly to their deaths. I told them that I don't understand the language they speak." "The Germans had put pipes in there to make them think they were preparing for the bath. With a whip in hand, the Germans forced them to squeeze in to fit as many as possible." "The gas canisters were brought in by the German Red Cross car, two SS. They are gassers who were gassed through some openings. After half an hour they opened the doors and we carried the corpses of these innocent women and children and from there we put them in the ovens where they burned them without the help of fuel material because of the fat we have". "The Germans forced us to pound the ash, pass it through a thick sieve and then take it in a car and throw it into the river and thus every trace disappears."
More: THE READING OF THE NAZZAR MANUSCRIPT CAUSED A STREAK OF EXCITEMENT
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Deutsche Welle, 25.3.2017: March 25, 1944. The Jews of Ioannina begin their journey to Auschwitz. 46.000 Jews of Thessaloniki had a similar fate. But what was the fate of the German commanders who were responsible for the extermination?
In the early hours of March 25, 1944, German soldiers and Greek gendarmes forcibly removed the Jewish residents of Ioannina from their homes and forced them to gather in Mavili Square and the city's Military Hospital. Within a few hours the six Jewish quarters of Ioannina had been evacuated. On the same day 1.725 women, men and children were transported by trucks to Larissa and from there followed the road to Auschwitz.
In Thessaloniki, as early as July 1942, male Jews were forced to gather under the hot sun in Eleftheria Square to be registered by the German authorities. A few days later 7.000 of the city's Jews were sent to forced labor. This was followed by the confinement of the Jewish population in ghettos and their displacement to the Nazi death camps from March to August 1943. Within a few weeks, the vast majority of the Sephardic Jews of Thessaloniki had been exterminated.
The mechanism set up by the Nazis for the capture and extermination of Jews in Greece and throughout Europe was complex. Various factors contributed to the implementation of the so-called "Final Solution of the Jewish Question". There were many participants: from the high-ranking German administration to ordinary soldiers, and from local collaborators of the Nazis to anonymous citizens, who because of their passive attitude facilitated the work of the conquerors.
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by YIANNI PAPADOPOULOU
She remembers him somewhat sullen and aloof, but always neatly dressed, in a white shirt and bow tie, appearing regularly at their home in post-occupation Athens. As a child, then, Marios Soussis was unaware of the role of this visitor. Years later he would learn that he was an excellent lawyer – their only hope of reclaiming the family fortune looted by acquaintances and neighbors after his father's imprisonment in the death camps.
"After the Occupation, my mother and I rarely discussed these matters. It was a past that we wanted to forget," says Mr. Soussis. “But keep these documents. Intuition? Who knows; Like documents of an era".
In front of him is an envelope bulging with yellowed pages that you fear will melt at the touch. They were discovered some time ago in a cupboard by his wife and they were saved before they were thrown in the trash. It is the case file of the abusers.
In these court documents, with dates starting a few weeks after the withdrawal of German troops from Athens in 1944, the adventure of the Soussi family is described. A more careful reading, however, also reveals how a part of society treated the Greek Jews at that time. It was a turbulent time, in which everyone showed their true character.