On the occasion of the International Day in Memory of the Victims of the Holocaust, which is annually commemorated on Jan. 27, several excerpts of testimonies of Greek Jews who survived the Auschwitz death camp were reposted this week. The material was first published in a special “To Vima” feature, dated Jan. 23, 2005.

The choice of Jan. 27 for the annual commemoration was chosen because it is the day that Auschwitz was liberated by the Red Army in 1945.

Monday marks the 80th anniversary of the liberation of the hellish concentration camp and its satellite units near Krakow, in then Nazi-occupied southern Poland.

Below are two testimonies of Greek Jews rounded up during the triple Axis occupation (Germany, Italy and Bulgaria) who survived the Holocaust to return to Greece.

Heinz Cunio

“Friday March 12, 1943, Thessaloniki (northern Greece). In the morning a group of militiamen came to the house. They ordered us to pack our things and go to Baron de Hirsch camp. On Sunday we left for Auschwitz.

“I was fifteen and a half. We took a blanket with us, a spoon, a fork. They put 60 people in each wagon. Mobile prisons, no, there was no room, hunger, unbearable heat and worse. Our wagon had to be turned into a toilet. This bitter and painful journey lasted for six days.

“March 23, 1943, 11 p.m. We arrived at Auschwitz. This

“This camp has only one exit: the high black chimney from which thick smoke comes out. ‘All of you you will all go through there…’ was the ‘welcome’ of the SS officer.

“The selection was done according to our age, physical ability and health. Most people believed, and not without reason, that they would never see their loved ones again. Such was the impression that the separation gave. The sense of reality was gone at once as if a bomb had exploded next to us. I became number 109,565.

“Agony was the hallmark of our life there. Every day they picked the weakest for the crematorium … I went through seven selections. In Auschwitz, discipline was harsh. We spoke as little as possible, we calculated the consequences of our every action, we had eyes only for what concerned us and became blind to everyone else.”

TO VIMA, 23.1.2005, TO VIMA | TA NEA Historical Archive

“At Auschwitz only twice did a revolt take place, the second time by Greeks and Russians. Before they died, they blew up crematoria II and III in Birkenau. As a Greek, I felt very proud.

“In mid-January 1945, selections were held transport to the interior of Germany. Gross-Rosen, Mauthausen, Melk (concentration camps). In April, 1,411 of us were transported by train to Ebensee. On May 6, 1944, we were liberated there by the Americans.

“The Greeks made a flag out of some dirty sheets and the blue clothes worn by the electricians, and we sang the national anthem. We spent the evening wondering if we were really free, or if the Germans would come back. We returned to Thessaloniki at the first opportunity.”

Berry Nahmias

“My family lived in Kastoria. When news of the deportation of the Jews began to come from Thessaloniki, my father begged me to go with my brother to the mountains. We didn’t go. We were transported by trucks to Thessaloniki and from there (by train) to Auschwitz.

“We marched to the railway station without strength, like human rags, automatically, with dogs barking at us. Up to 80 people in each wagon were crammed inside. Twelve cars were loaded quickly. Claustrophobia, suffocation, hunger, thirst. In Vienna, the doors would not open, we begged for water from the mothers in a nearby park, but they apathetically didn’t even give us a glance.

“One grey winter day we arrived at Auschwitz. Shabbily dressed people, in striped overalls, looked at us strangely, as if we had come from some familiar but distant planet. There are the chimneys. My God, what a foul smell of burning.

TO VIMA, 23.1.2005, TO VIMA | TA NEA Historical Archive

“I became number 76859, put on my camp clothes, a dress with fresh blood stains and two shoes, one a man’s and one woman’s. The food, a disgusting black porridge. I felt a shock. My friend Dora gave me her bread.

“If you want to be saved, look for a great source of power within you,” she said. When I heard about the crematoria, my mind went crazy, and so did the others. ‘Where are we?’ we asked. ‘In Birkenau. Here we produce stone.’ Auschwitz it is death. We were made to carry heavy stones a mile away.

“In our barracks they brought women from Block 10, from (notorious war criminal Dr. Josef) Mengele, without ovaries, who were in terrible pain, they got them pregnant for experiments… I didn’t know what it was until I was faced with piles of suitcases full of clothes, mountains of glass, sheets, tins… The belongings of the people burning next door.

“In the piles I found an embroidered bedspread, a dowry from my cousin Rebecca. In January 1945 we start the death march. Prague, Ravensbrück, Retzow. On May 1 we woke up to find the camp doors open and the Germans nowhere to be seen; a crowd was walking along the highway. My cousin and I entered among them and did not look back for fear of finding ourselves in hell again.”

Eva Carasso
‘They made me dig my own grave’

“I was born in Hungary. I arrived in Auschwitz in 1944, knowing nothing about the place, and became number 8670031. I started searching for my sister right away, running around the blocks at night, taking a thousand precautions. I didn’t immediately recognize her with her head shaved; she was a mess.

“I’d give her my food, because she was too skinny and they might have selected her. At night, 28 of us girls slept on a board like sardines. Whenever one of us wanted to change sides, we’d all turn together. They took us somewhere else.

“We carried tree trunks to the river. One day, an officer asked me to clean his office and gave me a red handkerchief to hide my shaven head. That’s how my second husband, Joseph Pepo Carasso, from Thessaloniki, noticed me. We never did understand how we fell in love.

“One day I got sick, he got worried and sent me a note. ‘Why didn’t you come? I miss you… I love you…’. Unfortunately, the Germans intercepted it, Pepo got 25 lashes and I was made to dig my own grave. My sister, who worked as a cleaner in the commandant’s house, fell to her knees and begged him to kill her first. Strangely, though I couldn’t call him human, he was moved.

“One day we set off for the Tyrol. For six days, we walked through the mountains without food and water. With me carrying my sister on my back. They were going to kill us as soon as we got to the woods outside the city. Suddenly, we heard trumpets and songs behind us, the Germans dropped their weapons and ran.

Auschwitz

“Poorly dressed people in striped uniforms looked at us, puzzled, like we’d arrived from some familiar but distant planet.” TO VIMA, 23.1.2005, TO VIMA | TA NEA Historical Archive

“We saw the Americans. I can’t describe how we felt. We kissed the earth they walked on. They gave us canned food and chocolates, but after the months of starvation, the rich food ended up killing a lot of people. In the Tyrol, they gave us a house. My husband found me there, there was a priest and we got married right away. We came to Thessaloniki and live happy lives here with our children and grandchildren.

“I hear some people say that these are fairy tales and I want to tell them: ‘I’ve come straight from there.’ And explain to them what it’s like to be 20 years old without parents, grandparents, uncles, cousins. When times were hard, I just looked up to heaven. My children’s questions were the worst thing of all? “Mum, don’t we have grandparents? Are we all alone?”.

The playwright Iakovos Kambanellis
‘The air smelled of burned meat…’

“I was a prisoner in the Mauthausen concentration camp from the summer of 1943 until the end of the war. We were received by the SS by name. We went put into groups of five. The air smelled of burned meat…

“The gravel on the road was mixed with ashes and pieces of bones. Between the first building and the wall, 265 corpses were laid out on the concrete, the day’s dead.

“In hut number 10, Joseph Balina gave me some advice: ‘In here, you need a crust of madness round your mind to make it’. I was put on sand loading duty. There were piles of cinders on the road… Cinders were better for paving roads than fine gravel. It doesn’t get slippery. Whatever we do, man’s always the best material. Close to irreplaceable.

“The SS in the camps were careerists—they’d compete to see who could be the worst. They preferred Jews or Russians. The Russian prisoners of war were always singing. Their songs were the churches of Mauthausen—we took courage from them.

“In April ’44 they brought Antonis from Ambelokipi from Dachau, where they were holding Zachariadis, the Greek Communist leader, too. Then they brought in Italian officers who had denounced Mussolini and an English officer, who was very cool until he found a piece of meat that looked human in his soup.

“Mauthausen was liberated on 5 May 1945. Shortly before noon, a huge American tank knocked down the gate and drove into the enclosure. We screamed, ripped our clothes, shook like demons, clambering over one another to get close to the tank. Time made something more sensible of our joy and to work we went.

“I was on an International Committee. We organized groups to return to their homelands. Many asked to go directly to Palestine. Back then, after the unprecedented tragedy, we believed the Jews were entitled to a homeland.

“How could we imagine that this would give rise to a new tragedy, that of the Palestinians. We must not forget what happened in the concentration camps. Because Hitler was not only the creation of his countrymen. The English, the French and many others were responsible, too. Today, there are many who admire America. I’m not comparing America to Nazi Germany, but I am saying its leader (a reference to George W. Bush) is creating perils for all mankind.”