Athens, 2015
Years later, we went and found the grave and the village
Then they took us to this village. It was a strange village near Magdeburg, called HilIersleben. It was a place with three large buildings where the Germans were conducting research…and there were no shops. There, each house had a backyard with a vegetable patch and in the basement they kept food etc. There were no shops, the village was completely artificial and made up. We went and visited it again.
There, as I mentioned, my sister Rosa had typhoid fever, my mother typhus, my grandmother had a broken leg as did my grandfather. The Americans gave us sugar cubes, and because my grandfather was a diabetic, he immediately got gangrene and died. And I, at twelve years of age, eh… I buried him. Years later, we went and found the grave and the village.
First to Belgium, Namur, then to Paris, to the south, Marseille, Bari, our journey home was a real odyssey. Athens, Athens and then I went to Thessaloniki. Look what luck is…when we escaped from Thessaloniki on the tradota, a collaborator gave away that we were Jewish and the Germans entered and asked for our documents and we replied “il comandante, il comandante”, nothing. If they had asked us “what is your name” we would not have known, because we had never seen the identity cards. So, it’s strange how luck works.