Survivors΄ paths

1. Thessaloniki

16-year-old Erika Kounio-Amariglio was among the first Jews to be deported from Thessaloniki to Auschwitz in March 1943.

A large group of Greek Jews (among them Salvador Saporta, Henry Levi and Obadiah Cohen), who had been deported to Auschwitz, were taken in the summer of 1943 (August-September) to Warsaw, to clean up the city in the aftermath of the ghetto uprising. As the Soviets approached, in October 1944, the Germans emptied the camp and forced the inhabitants into an exhausting death march to the borders with Germany. There they were put onto a train destined for Dachau, where they remained for a few days and from there were taken to a work camp at Mühldorf. In April 1945, while the Soviet and American forces were approaching, in the midst of bombardments, they again embarked on a train, with the Alps as their destination, and probably with their death warrants already signed. On May Day 1945, the Americans liberated the train close to Tutzing. The Americans took the former inmates to a Displaced Persons Camp in Feldafing, close to Munich, where some stayed for a short time and others for years. Via Italy and, once they had been through other camps, some returned to Greece and others emigrated either to America or Palestine.

Another group of Jews of Spanish citizenship was deported from Thessaloniki to the Bergen-Belsen camp on 2 August 1943.

2. Ioannina

The Jews of Ioannina were deported to concentration camps via Larissa.

3. Corfu

The Jews of Corfu were transported by ship to Piraeus and from there to the camp at Haïdari. From Haïdari they were deported to Poland in the summer of 1944.

4. Rhodes

The Jews of the Dodecanese were deported in July 1944, after the Italian capitulation.

5. Volos

The greater part of the Jews of Volos fled to the mountain villages of Pilion.