Athens, 2015
We were away from Greece for about two and a half years
In 1943, end of July-beginning of August, my father was called to the great Synagogue, Beth Saul, so they could inform them how to make their way to Spain and escape from the German yoke. There they were surrounded by the Germans and taken to Baron Hirsch. Then they came to the house and said “you either come to join your father, “or, if you don’t, we will come, arrest you and deport you with all the other Greek Jews”.
We, my mother and I, gathered what we could at home, two suitcases, we were supposed to travel to Spain, since they had arrested my father, because we did not know what the future would hold. We went to Baron Hirsch and from there, they took our clothes, kept the suitcases, kept all the items, kept everything that was in them, and then they loaded us into the train cars . I think we believed that they would take us somewhere in Poland, or somewhere else, but they took us to Bergen-Belsen in Germany, where as Spanish nationals, we remained there for six months.
After that, my family together with some of the other three hundred and sixty deported from Thessaloniki, five or six families went to the camp Maréchal Lyautey that was just outside of Casablanca, where we prepared tents for the arrival of the remaining Spanish nationals who were in Barcelona, where we had also stayed for a few weeks. From Casablanca a navy vessel arrived, it was indeed a military boat.
All the Spanish nationals that had remained there from the camp Maréchal Lyautey, they took us to Taranto in Italy for three days and after that accompanied by other navy vessels we traveled to the Suez, and from there to an Egyptian village which is now a very big city and then to a camp, Nuseirat, that was about an hour or maybe half an hour from Gaza. There we stayed for a period of six to seven months, until we heard news of the liberation and we arrived in Greece in August 1944. So, our deportation started in August 1943 and we came bank in August 1945, no, I am mistaken, it was not ’44, it was August 1945 when we returned. So we were away from Greece for about two and a half years.