Matilda Matsa Vital

CORFU – AUSCHWITZ – ATHENS

Corfu 1922 – Athens 2015
identification number Α–8433
Matilda Vital’s hand-written and oral testimonies, from the archives of Samuel Vital


Athens, 2014

I was born in Corfu in 1922

I lived with my parents and my sister in the Jewish quarter, on Velissariou street. That’s where the Germans caught us. They caught us all in June 1944 and took us to Haidari in Athens, and from there they put us on a train bound for Auschwitz concentration camp.

 

The day after our arrival, they executed my entire family in the gas chambers. I was little and simply heard of it.

 

[…]

 

Liberation came a year later.

 

[…]

 

See what they did to me? [points at the number on her arm] My whole life I’ve been using a band-aid to conceal it, so it won’t show. I don’t want it to show.

Citation: “Matilda Matsa-Vital”, hand-written and oral testimonies of Matilda Vital, from the archive of Samuel Vital, https://greekjewsholocaustsurvivors.art/en/profile/matilda_vital/