On Tuesday 8 March 2022, International Women's Day, the city station dedicated a large part of its program to women sharing their own personal stories with us.
A particularly touching story, from the period of the German Occupation and how an Athenian family hid it in order to escape the Nazi extermination camps, was told on our station by Greek-Jewish Victoria Benuziliou.
"On March 24, 44, they suddenly notified all Jews to report to the Synagogue. I was at home with my mother, I was 2 years old and my sister was five and suddenly a local policeman came and told my mother that she had to follow him, because that was the order of the Germans. My mother then started to prepare mine, hers and my sister's clothes. The policeman asked her if she knew what was going to happen to her and when she said no, he suggested that she leave us and follow him on her own. Leave your kids here. If they are good where you are going, you come and take them… If they are not good, let your children live…” he told her.
“I would very much like to know that constable's name. He was the first to risk my salvation"
As Victoria Benuziliou recounted, her two parents and all her relatives were arrested and sent to Auschwitz, while she found "refuge" in the Economakou family. "They hugged me and treated me like I was their own child. Stavros and Vassiliki Economakou were friends of my parents and when they found out from the neighbor what happened, they came and asked my aunt to take me home. At first we lived in Metz and then in Koukaki, where we moved probably for security reasons, although everyone knew I was Jewish and no one betrayed them."
For more than two years she grew up under the name Niki in their home, until her mother's return from Auschwitz in late 1945. She never saw her father again, while she met her sister in 1972.
SOURCE: ATHINA 9.84, 8.3.2022