Volos, 2014
“Who would like to sing?”
One evening, they had us get up at 5 o’clock, 4:30, the sieben zwanzig [seven twenty in German] block. They had us go out in groups of five. They immediately brought us food, lunch and… and breakfast. Soup, plain bread. We finished eating and they had us take to the road. Meanwhile, by now it was dawn, and they took us to the crematoria. There, at the crematoria, we saw about seven to eight Germans. Music instruments were left lying on the ground. We were standing in line, five per row, but this, thesmall van that was supposed to bring Zyklon, the gas, it wasn’t there. It wasn’t there. The Germans wanted to have some fun, so they asked, “who would like to sing?”. A guy who sang stepped forward, a singer, he would really sing; everybody there was from Corfu. Meanwhile, we realized among ourselves that we had been brought there to walk the plank. The Germans were standing across from us. Meanwhile, we were saying “goodbye” to one another, a macabre thing. Suddenly, we see from a distance a German on a bicycle with a piece of paper in his hand. Meanwhile, the gas had still not arrived. So, what was going on? The German came, gave the piece of paper to the man in charge and he cursed… he cursed…