- Details
.jpg)
THE STEP, 5.2.2017, by Marilena Astrapellou, presentation of the book «The singer of Auschwitz Estrogo Nahama, Thessaloniki 1918 - Berlin 2000":
The history of the Jews of Thessaloniki is summed up in the face of the man who became one of the most important Jewish singers of the second half of the 20th century.
Estrogo Nahama (1918-2000) was a very lucky man. An oxymoron, one might say, as he lost his entire family in the concentration camps. But he was one of the few Jews of Thessaloniki who survived the atrocities of Auschwitz, Golesau, Sachsenhausen as well as the death march battalions after the liberation. In addition, he was gifted with a special gift, his unusually beautiful voice thanks to which he secured a few pieces of bread thrown into the mud by the jailers in exchange for his songs. The talent that made him known as the "Auschwitz Singer" and helped him survive. Because he possessed a strong and charismatic personality, after the war he became the lead singer of Berlin's Jewish community and one of the city's most popular artists. He even participated, always as a cantor, in films such as Bob Fossey's "Cabaret", Vittorio de Sica's "Gardens of the Fizzi Contini", or "Malo" by the German director Janine Meeraffel.
Even after death fate seemed generous with him. His story came to the attention of journalist Katerina Oikonomakou and his life became a book entitled "The singer of Auschwitz, Estrogo Nahama, Thessaloniki 1918 - Berlin 2000" which was recently released by Capon publications.
- Details
An unknown story of looting in the Occupation
The subscription site inside story brought to light an as yet unknown and interesting aspect of the history of the Holocaust in Thessaloniki. This is the article by the journalist Sofia Christoforidou (inside story, 27.1.2017) about the "Looting of Jewish property in Thessaloniki", which presents the history of the chandelier that today illuminates the Monastery Synagogue and before the war belonged to the Sarfati Synagogue. You can read the whole article HERE.
Related:
- Kathimerini, 28.1.2017 "Jewish booty in ruins" by Stavros Tzima
- Details
DAILY, 29.1.2017, "The Trauma of the Second Generation of the Holocaust", by Yiannis Papadopoulos:
She was a little girl when she noticed a number engraved on her mother's hand. “What do you want to know now? It's a phone number,” she had been told then to satisfy her childish curiosity. But the years passed, the number did not disappear and the questions multiplied. Why did they experience this? Who betrayed them? How did they survive? At some point, Anna Kampeli's mother broke her silence. She described the trains, the concentration camps and the sorting day at Auschwitz, when she was separated from her family forever.
"He didn't speak easily in the early years, just like others didn't. Maybe because they were trying to protect us," Ms. Kampeli tells "K". Both her parents, Greek Jews from Ioannina and Athens, survived the concentration camps. Every year at this time, on the occasion of International Holocaust Remembrance Day on January 27, the stories of those executed and survivors come to the fore again. But there is another side: that of the descendants of the victims, who have been carrying the heavy burden of memories for decades.
What is it like to grow up in a house with that past? Not have an extended family network? Trying to understand why they targeted his loved ones? Since the 60s, hundreds of scientific studies have been conducted internationally on how the trauma of the Holocaust travels from generation to generation. In Ms. Kampeli's case, her parents' past burdened her childhood shoulders with a heavy sense of responsibility.
- Details
“Do we know? Do we remember? Are we learning?' It was the title of yesterday's event for the commemoration of the Day of Remembrance of the Greek Jewish Martyrs and Heroes of the Holocaust in Athens, which was held at the Cultural Center of the Hellenic World with the full presence of the Jewish community, as well as the representatives of the Greek state. The regional governor Rena Dourou, the ambassador of Israel Irit Ben Amba, the president of the Central Israelite Council of Greece David Saltiel and the president of the Israelite Community of Athens, Minos Mousis, addressed the greeting. The keynote speaker was the president of the World Jewish Congress, Mr. Ronald Lauder, who felt the need to thank the Greek Gentiles with the leadership figures of the Archbishop of Damascus and the mayor and metropolitan of Zakynthos who saved hundreds of souls during World War II. ... READ OUT HERE THE ENTIRE ARTICLE.
The Hellenic Republic, with the representative of the regional governor of Attica, Rena Dourou, and the Israelite Community of Athens with its president, Mino Moussis, are commemorating today in Athens the Day of Remembrance of Jewish Martyrs and Heroes of the Holocaust, in an event with Ronald Lauder, president of the World Jewish Council.
In the triple question posed as the title of today's event by the organizers ("We know; We remember; We are taught;») the answer unfortunately is a triple negative. Despite the fact that our country was the one that saw its Jewish population disappear in greater proportion than most other European countries in the Nazi extermination camps, even today our knowledge of the Shoah is rudimentary, our memory lacking and the relative teaching in its infancy. What's worse is that, according to all public opinion surveys over the last few decades, the percentage of Greek citizens who harbor hostile feelings towards Jews and Judaism remains stable - if not even increasing - far exceeding the Western European average. After all, even the existence of an openly Nazi figure in the Greek Parliament confirms the tolerance of a section of Greek society for anti-Semitic sermons... READ OUT HERE THE ENTIRE ARTICLE.
- Details
of ALEKOU RAPTI, Epirotikos Agon, 28.1.2017
Major Gustav Willy Havranek (Gustav Willy Havranek) was the responsible German officer who gave the guidelines to Ioannina, for the deportation of the members of the Jewish Community of Ioannina, on that tragic day, March 25, 1944.
However, several years later, after the end of the war, in a series of interrogations conducted by the German public prosecutor's office in Bremen in 1968, Hafranek denied everything and declared his innocence.
The interrogation file is contained in German historian Christoph Schminck Gustavus' book "Memories of Occupation II". In the investigative material, the "accused" German officer states: "...Since 1943 I was a major of the Police. I also had this grade in Ioannina. My main task was to act as a link between the Wehrmacht and the Greek Police... I would like to say that my main concern was to maintain radio contact between the Wehrmacht and the Greek Police...
I remember the "Jews operation" in Ioannina. In my opinion it was held in March 1944, because I arrived in Ioannina only in the middle of February of the same year. On the eve of this "settlement of the Jews", senior SS and Police commanders from Athens communicated by radio with us... Then the Hellenic Gendarmerie was notified by me which would be responsible for the implementation of the measures.
I informed the Hellenic Gendarmerie about what exactly they had to do and that the Wehrmacht would have the means of transport, as they had told me by radiogram. Everything was neatly distributed…
The commanders of the units involved, i.e. the Wehrmacht, the Secret Police, the German Gendarmerie and the Greek Police, were themselves responsible for their activities...
More: FROM THE HISTORY OF THE HOLOCAUST OF THE JEWS OF IOANNINES