Nice, 2016
I don’t know if I can tell you, because I’m afraid of telling you the truth…
At home we spoke Ladino; often my mother would speak French with my brother, when they didn’t want us to understand what they were talking about…I went… Both my brothers went to L´Alliance Française and, when I applied, they didn’t want to admit me there, because there were two so where did they… où [“where” in French] they take me? To a Jewish school, because there were no Greek schools available. Greeks with Greeks and Jews with Jews. If my family had money I could have gone chez les Soeurs [to the nuns’ school]. But my family had none, so I went to the Jewish school. For seven years, I spoke Hebrew just as I spoke Greek. And when I finished school there, I didn’t know Greek well enough to be admitted to the… Gymnasium. So, my mother hired a tutor and for three months I had to learn, learn, learn Greek and when I passed the exams I was admitted to the school.
[…]
The first job I was assigned to by the Germans was at a hospital alongside Polish, Polish people and Russes, Russes femmes [“Russian women” in French]. They were sick. So, what did I do there? Excusez-moi, I had to put out les excréments, vous savez ce que c´est les excréments ? Quand les seaux ils étaient plein de poo il fallait que je fasse deux kilomètres pour aller les vider, vous avez compris ? Est-ce que vous avez compris ? Qu’est-ce que c’était come travail ? [Excuse me, I had to take out the feaces, do you know what that means? When the chamber pots were full of poo, I had to walk two kilometres in order to empty them, do you understand what I’m saying? Do you get it? Do you understand what kind of work that was?]
Bon, mais à la fin il y avait, j´avais toit [Anyway, at the end of the day I had a roof over my head], I could cope, it wasn’t too cold. And then those Polish and Russian people took me under their wing, seeing me as a little girl, they wouldn’t call me “Jew”, they used to call me “Gretchinka”, Gretchinka, that’s what they call Grecque en polonais [Greek woman in Polish] and they would give me, they would give me something to eat, some bread and they would often make watery potato soup and give me some water to drink and a potato and… that’s how I was saved. I was working at that hospital for eight months. Then I fell ill. I had typhus and they took me to the clinic for typhus avec, together with others and that was tough, because we had nothing, they didn’t give us anything [medication] for… for that. Whatever little I had, some bread, they would give me through the window and I would give the bread so I could get some water, water, water and what kind of water that was. On the water, there was a film de rouille, vous savez c’est ce que c’est rouille ? [rust, do you know what rust is?]
When you leave a… si vous laissez dans l’eau un morceau de fer ça fait rouiller [if you leave a piece of iron in the water it will get rusty]. Rust as in les clous, vous savez, ça fait jaune, alors cette elle eau n’était pas potable, mais [nails, you know, it gets yellow, so that water was not drinkable], but for me it was… water, water, water, because we ran a very high fièvre [fever]. So, I was downstairs and there three, two more floors above and all night long you could hear people screaming “mum mum mum mum”, toute la nuit [all night long]. Everybody was screaming, they had gone mad because they were running a very high fièvre. And those who were above would pee on your head because they… So I stayed… And the doctor would say “they must not take this girl to the crematorium” and every two days the car would come and would take the sick ones to the gas chambers. And I… they left me alone until I was better, I was better, but I had nothing, not a single pill, and when I left there, I went again to another hospital [to work].
[…]
It was very difficult, very difficult for me, because in the morning, when they died, let me tell you, I don’t know if I can tell you because I’m afraid of telling you the truth; in the morning, around seven, we used to go and find out who died and we would carry them by their legs and by their arms and bring them out. There were many [women] that les rats, les rats. Rats… would eat what was left, so, they couldn’t scream anymore, it was, it was…
Outside, even if an airplane happened to fly overhead, they would think it’s des arbres, what’s the word, trees, because they [the bodies] were stacked one on top of each other, we threw them one on top of each other. It was no longer… it was difficult, very difficult, because you knew that a couple of days later you could end up like that…