We are a strict, iron group1
from Salonika to Warsaw via Auschwitz
By Stefania Zezza2
On December 28, 1944, a Greek
Jew, Jacques O., was hidden in a bunker near Grodzinsk Mazowiecki.3
The night falls. After a bright
day, dark twilight and night. This is the time for our walk ... we leave
the dungeon to get some air for a while. Even when it's cold, very cold,
we leave.
At the end of the day, at the
beginning of the night we must stretch our bodies. I am also leaving,
directing my steps towards the path I know [...]. It is cold, dry, this
is the climate of Poland. Suddenly my eyes are blurred. I can see the
beautiful days of my past youth, the rocks, Thessaloniki, the beaches,
the sea, which I liked so much. […] I wake up from the vision […] now I
am experiencing real facts.4
Why was a Jew from Salonika hiding close to Warsaw in December 1944?
From Auschwitz to Warsaw
Three groups of Salonikan Jews were transported from Auschwitz Birkenau to Warsaw in 1943. The first transport took place in late August and, according to Michael Molho,5 five hundred and one Salonikans were selected. Among them were two hundred and thirty-three who had arrived with the last transport from Salonika to Auschwitz on 18 August. Jacques O. was in the first group. In his letter in December 1944, he wrote:
Five hundred Greeks had to leave Birkenau to build a new camp in the Warsaw ghetto. And here in Warsaw, neither hunger, nor cold, nor beating broke us [...]. It lasted eleven months.6
A second group, about two hundred prisoners, left on Yom Kippur, at the end of October, and a third, larger than the previous transports, in November. According to Molho, there were eight hundred and fifty. All the witnesses agree on the fact that they were selected since they couldn't speak Polish, and because, they were going to be exploited as slave laborers, together with Polish workers, to clean up the ruins and the debris in the area of the Warsaw ghetto, recently destroyed by the Nazis during the Ghetto Uprising. In his interview with David Boder, one of the survivors, David Lea, remembered:
I went to Warsaw from Birkenau, 6 Septembre (sic). Yom Kippur. […] Work in ghetto in the house of the Jewish. All of the ghetto is, the ghetto from Warsaw [noise in the background] two hundred meters, so long from the graveyard of Warsaw is Jewish. I not understand the city, why—I not speak Polack.7
Also Salvator Moshe, in a later interview, pointed out the importance of the language in the selection of prisoners to be sent to Warsaw:
The transport was composed only for Greek people. The reason — because we don't speak Polish and the job was in contact with the Polish civilians and they don't want the Polish Jews.8
Of course, the high percentage of Greek prisoners in his transport let Moshe think that they constituted the only national group deported there. As a matter of fact, French, Italian, Belgian, and later Hungarian prisoners were also transported there from Auschwitz. However, as Yitzak Kerem rightly states: “the Salonikan Jews were the largest ethnic Jewish group there.”9
Their destination was the KL Warschau Gęsiówka which Himmler had decided to establish at 45 Ulica Gęsia, inside the area of the former ghetto, where the ghetto prison was situated. General Stroop suggested Himmler exploit Jews coming from other camps as slave laborers. They had to remove the debris which covered the area of the ghetto after the end of the revolt and to collect all the building materials, mainly bricks ant metal, which were to be sent to Germany for the war effort. Actually, in July 1943, Himmler had made the decision to erase any remaining traces of the former ghetto and of the Jewish presence in Warsaw. His plan was to create a park in the area after cleaning the ruins.
About the transports from Auschwitz to Warsaw, Steven Bowman states that three hundred Greek Jews, who had been exploited as forced laborers and arrived in Auschwitz with the last transport from Salonica, were then transported to Warsaw in September. They were housed in two barracks and had to build others for the prisoners who arrived at Warsaw later. According to Bowman, another transport of Greek Jews was sent there two or three months later.10
The harsh living conditions inside the camp are vividly remembered by the survivors. Rudolph Vrba indirectly confirmed in his report that:
Approximately 1000 survivors of the 10,000 Greek Jews were sent with another 500 Jews to build fortifications in Warsaw. A few hundred of these returned several weeks later in a hopeless condition and were immediately gassed.11
Salvator Moshe, in particular, referred to the primitiveness of the camp’s housing:
We arrived in Poland, in Warsaw, we were transferred by train. [...] there was another camp, some barracks. Just real, real primitive. No organized camp, no nothing. Just barracks. Everybody got a billet bag, for pillow, for blanket, for everything. [...].12
David Lea also confirmed that their working conditions and materials were difficult:
Forty hours work at day, German camp, after at night call for three hours. Shoes, no shoes, no stockings, shoes of wood [...] no gloves, Work, one time shoe, one time jacket [...], one jacket […]. Outside cold every day, with the shovel and the pickaxe, one hour work, then finished […]. From, eh, [...[ from cold, no food, no [...] no food, no vitamins, no sleep, too many lice.13
The situation gradually improved according to what Max Mannheimer,14 a Czech Jew who arrived in Warsaw with the second transport wrote in his book A Diary Delayed: “It’s Gesia Street. In the main building there is a prison. Behind it a camp has been built. Wooden barracks with windows. Looks quite good.”15 The Salonikan Jews had been working and building new barracks for about one month at that time. “Five hundred Greek Jews came right before us. They have been here three months. German CC’s [career criminals], too.”16
Eliezer Sotto and his brother Isaac respectively, were also sent to Warsaw with the second and third transports. In Eliezer’s interview17 he remembered that, when he arrived in Auschwitz on April 13, 1943, he was sent to work in Monowitz. His younger brother, Isaac, stayed in Auschwitz I. After six months, Eliezer was sent back to Auschwitz I, where he met his brother again. From there they were transported to Warsaw.
Then, the transport, that day, took off [. . .] they put us in the cargo train to Warsaw. About a week later, another transport come from Auschwitz-[Birkenau], and there was my brother. I meet my younger brother and from then, we was all the time together.18
Inside the ghetto: Gęsiówka
The Germans thought that prisoners would be prevented from escaping because it was impossibe for them to communicate with the Poles. As a matter of fact, the Salonikans managed to have contacts and to trade with the Poles.
Every day a hundred or so Poles would enter the ghetto to work at clearing away the ruins, and they all did business with the slaves of the Warsaw camp. They brought in food and carried off riches. The biggest “merchants” were the Greek Jews, most of whom came from Salonika. They were specially talented at; “organizing,” what they called “klepsi-klepsi,” that is articles from “nonkosher” sources such as thievery.19
Eliezer Sotto remembered that he was in Barrack 2. His brother, Isaac, was in Barrack 5 and worked inside the ghetto where: “as a matter of fact, we walk in the buildings, and we find bodies, and people was hiding [. . .] still was hiding in those buildings with [. . .] the resistance.”20
There were two particular episodes inside the Gęsiówka camp that deeply affected the Salonikans: the typhus epidemic in the winter 1943/44 and the tragic story of Saul Senor, who tried to escape, but was caught and executed by the Nazis. All the survivors remembered these even in their testimonies since these incidents became part of their collective memory. In order to understand the creation of a common and shared memory, it is important to underline that for the first time after the deportation a large number of Salonikan Jews was forced into a few barracks inside a smaller camp. Therefore, their contacts were much easier than in Birkenau.
Due to the linguistic differences between the Sephardi Jews and the greatest part of other inmates, the Salonikans tended to maintain a strong tie among themselves, when the circumstances allowed them to do that. This link between members of the same family and friends or acquaintances which already existed and, when it was possible, was kept alive in Auschwitz Birkenau, expanded in Warsaw and included also others. As Paris Papamichos Chronakis rightly points out:
[...] any sense of community was essentially built on lived experience resting on personal contact and interpersonal communication. As such, it mainly sprang in those places where a sufficient number of Thessalonikan Jews could gather together […]. It was actually not in Auschwitz but in Warsaw that stronger ties among a larger group of “Greek Jews” were forged […]21
In addition to this bond among themselves, the Greeks in Gęsiówka, as in other camps, were recognized by all the other inmates as a group of high intelligence and skills. Arminio Wachsberger, a Jew deported from Rome to Auschwitz, who was transferred to Gęsiówka on November 27, 1943, declared in his memoir: “The Jews from Salonika were the smartest, they always found a way to deceive the Germans.”22
The Salonikans not only shared the same blocks, they also helped each other and “organized” bargains with the Poles, despite their language issues. Even though the living conditions were different from those in Birkenau, many of them died from the typhus epidemic. Michael Molho stated that three quarters of the Greek inmates died as a consequence of the harsh living conditions inside the camp and from the disease. Regarding that, David Lea told David Boder:
David Lea: Lice, too many. Typhoid, every day, 80, 90, 100 people finished.23 In Revier, no food in Revier. Now there comes SS, the [unintelligible] SS, one German say all Jewish finished. With the, what is [...] makes finished.
David Boder: With what? With injection?
David Lea: Yes, so [Seems to show it to him]. […] In the camp of Warsaw, the Revier is block 7 or block 8. Boss of Revier is a German. Bad, all the Jewish finished. [unintelligible] [...] in the Crematorium, all Jewish, finished anyways.24
The typhus epidemic deeply affected the Salonikans who at that time constituted the major group inside the camp. It was remembered in many testimonies. Salvator Moshe recalled the epidemic connecting it to the lack of hygiene:
The disease started to spread in camp. My brother-in-law and I, we fell with the typhoid. [...]. I don't remember how long we stayed in the hospital. People they used to die by drinking water, not clear water.25
Arminio Wachsberger explained how the epidemic was treated:
They took us to a barrack that was the infirmary, actually it was the same as all the others, only we had to be naked. They also didn't give us any medicine, there were no medicines. They called it revier, which means hospital.26
Jacques O., in his letter written in December 1944 while he was hiding in a bunker, also recalled:
In the winter, typhus destroyed our group. The camp’s leadership was indifferent, there was not even the slightest cure for the sick; on the contrary, if an unfortunate patient had gold teeth, he was more likely killed than others.27
Between January and March 1944, approximately seventy-five percent of the prisoners died. Only one thousand men survived; they did not constitute a sufficient workforce to complete the work inside the ghetto. This is the reason why transports with Hungarian Jews began arriving in Warsaw from Auschwitz in June 1944.
Saul Senor: a symbol
Another crucial episode, which shaped the memories about Gęsiówka camp and became a symbol, was the attempted escape and murder of Saul Senor.
Shaul Senor had made aliyah to Kibbutz Beit Oren in the late 1930s, but had returned to Greece to bring his Salonikan bride back to Eretz-Israel. He was stuck in Greece due to the war, where he was drafted to fight as an officer against the invading Italians in Albania, and the ensuing German occupation, according to Peppo (Gerassi). Other informants provided more information about Shaul Senor’s activities […].28
His love story with a Polish girl and his bravery constituted an occasion of cohesion among the Greeks, who, on the one hand, shared the memory of the event as part of their history and , on the other, considered it as a symbol of resistance and strength.
The story of Senor surfaces in numerous accounts of survivors who did not know him personally, making it perhaps the only recollection not directly related to their individual experiences.29
This collective memory proved to be extremely accurate and less mythical than expected when compared with three archival documents recently found in the Jewish Historical Institute in Warsaw.30 The first one is the testimony given by Edwarda O. G., the Polish woman who was in love with Saul Senor. She testified31 about the events related to Saul Senor’s attempted escape and murder in front of the Jewish Historical Commission, at the same time she handed over to the Jewish Historical Commission a lock of hair, some pictures, and a letter she received from, Jacques, a Gęsiówka prisoner, one of Saul’s friends. The letter was written in French and contained the details about what happened to Saul after his arrest, and his murder. The other documents are: an account written by Jakow P., one of the Greek survivors from the camp and translated into Polish by Halina Birenbaum, and the letter, written by Jacques O., in the form of a diary page, while he was hiding in Warsaw in December 1944. These documents are extremely interesting from two points of view. On the one hand they provide information about the Gęsiówka camp, the prisoners’life and habits, and the relations with the surroundings. On the other they contribute to improve our knowledge of Saul Senor’s story, allowing us to understand the dynamics of memory and how it may shape the events, the passing of time and the individual perspective in recollecting them.
Edwarda’s testimony can be divided in two parts: she described both the events she personally experienced and those which Saul’s friend described in his letter to her. The first part is the result of a direct memory of the events. The second one relates to what happened to Saul inside the camp after his failed escape attempt32; it is an example of filtered memory based on the messages she managed to receive from Saul himself and his friends.
Edwarda met Saul since she used to work at the Winter Laundry, in Leszno Street 85, where the prisoners from Gęsiówka took the camp’s laundry to be washed. Saul Senor was in charge of that task. The prisoners were always escorted by SS. Edwarda testified:
I worked alternately; one week by day, another week by night. Because of my knowledge of languages, I can speak German and French, as well as because of the interest aroused in me by some prisoners, I made contact with them, despite a strict ban by the SS, who paid close attention to the prisoners. I was particularly interested in a group of Greek prisoners, because of their outstanding intelligence and education. These prisoners came from Oswiecim, they had lost their families there, then they were sent to Warsaw. I helped them out in many ways, namely, I exchanged for them money, which they had got much; they found it in abandoned bunkers; I bought them food, delivered messages, exchanged letters with them and I communicated with them this way, because of caution, when we were able to exchange a few words with each other.33
Edwarda described Saul as an exceptional man, very capable and skilled, who could speak many languages, such as Greek, Italian, French, English, German, Spanish, Arabic, and Hebrew. He was also learning Polish at that time. Other witnesses also depicted Saul Senor as a handsome man and an outstanding individual. This testimony highlighted the fact that the myth of his personality and role was not created after his death as a way to “celebrate” his courage and to build a symbol, but it was a direct consequence of his true character and story. Arminio Wachsberger became a dear friend of Saul inside the camp:
Among the prisoners the one in charge of the SS Bekleidungskammer, the clothing warehouse for the SS, was a Jew from Salonika who could speak Italian fluently […]. When he saw us, the Italians, arriving to the camp, he began speaking Italian with us. He was my best friend in Warsaw. His name was Isaac Saul Senor.34
Edwarda and Saul developed a special bond; they became more than friends and she made the decision to organize his escape. “I wanted to help him and let him escape. After a long hesitation, he agreed. The escape was perfectly thought out, however, it failed.”35 She stated in her testimony that the plan failed because one of the laundry workers screamed and the SS guard realized that Saul was trying to escape; Saul hit the guard who shot him.
The dynamics of the escape are consistent in their main features within all the testimonies, but some details are shaped by rumors and second hand information. Basically, according to some witnesses whose memories were “romantically” shaped Edwarda was actually a hidden Jewess with false papers, or the daughter of the laundry’s owners. She had prepared civilian clothes for Saul. He was supposed to put them on while he was inside the laundry, and escape with her to the countryside.
Arminio Wachsberger, who spoke to him inside the camp before he was killed, remembered that Saul had planned to offer vodka to the guard in the laundry, to get him drunk. Then he stabbed the guard and the guard screamed. Other guards arrived and took Saul back to the camp. In Wachsberger’account there is no mention about Saul being shot.
Jako P. in his account also remembered the attempted escape:
[...] on the agreed day she brought him a beautiful suit, shirt, tie and hat. The SS man was going there and back after the laundry and was convinced that Saul was working as usual. Meanwhile, Saul threw off camp clothing and wore the new clothes. At the same time she was waiting for him in a taxi in front of the laundry [...]. He crossed the threshold hoping that the German was not nearby. He was wrong, however. The SS man noticed what was happening. He appeared at the door immediately. Saul grabbed his throat, punched him several times, and knocked him to the floor, then he jumped outside, he was about to go to the taxi when the SS man got up and shot him in the legs. He fell […] he was taken to the camp. 36
Edwarda’s testimony from that time is based essentially on messages she managed to get from Saul and other prisoners’ accounts: “[...] the prisoners who worked then brought me greetings from Saul and a letter. Since then, I have received letters from him almost every day.”37
According to all the testimonies, Saul was kept inside the camp hospital for more than one month until he recovered. On June 25, 1944, he was hanged in front of all the camp’s prisoners. What happened in the meanwhile? Why was he not killed immediately? Edwarda stated that the camp commandant was begged and bribed to stop the case and to cover up the issue of Saul’s escape, but a new commandant arrived38 who:
[...] knew nothing and was like Satan. […] As it turned out later, one of the prisoners, a German criminal and an envious person, told the Lagerfuhrer the story of Saul's escape and for this reason Saul was hanged.39
Bribing and corruption were usual in the camp:
[...] an SS-WVHA investigation revealed cases of serious corruption in KL Warschau. It became clear that the SS leaders not only sold the prisoners’ underwear on the black market, but together with the prisoner functionaries, they also plundered the inmates and stole the valuables found beneath the ghetto ruins. Commander Herbet and others were arrested and interned in KL Sachsenhausen. Parallel to these events, KL Warschau lost its independence and became a sub-camp subordinated to KL Lublin (Majdanek) as “Arbeitslager Warschau.” New guards and the new commander, SS-Obersturmführer Friedrich Wilhelm Ruppert, were redeployed from Majdanek. He became the last commander of the camp.40
The letter written by Saul’s friend, Jacques, to Edwarda and other witnesses’accounts provided additional first hand information on his death. He wrote:
On Sunday morning June 25, 1944, I see immediately that somebody is looking for me and I am told that Saul asks me to run to him and the commandant orders me to bring him his clothes. I run and I bring him the same he had before because I had hidden them and I tell him not to be afraid and that maybe he will be freed. It is already 10:00 and I cannot see him coming, I run again to the kommandantur and I see him on the wall with his hands tied. At that time I talk to him for the last time. He talks to me about his sweetheart. Pay attention to what he told me: “Jacques, you know well that you and two other people are the only ones who knows who my girlfriend is. She must not know what is happening to me and she doesn’t have to suffer.” Suddenly, the guard separates us. These were his last words when we talked. It is 12:00. The bell rings the roll call. After the roll call, all the prisoners are gathered in a court and suddenly I see him coming with three guards. I would have liked to talk to him, but the commandant was in front of us. He only looks at me and wants to tell me that my task is to look after his love. The paper with his sentence from Berlin was read and they put a rope around his neck. He gets up on a chair by himself, and he is very brave. The chair is moved and we see him hanged. And at that time my soul is shuddered. After ten minutes he is dead. We take him to the revier. We cried and I promised him I would take revenge against those who are responsible.41
From Jacques’ letter it is clear that the paper with the death sentence arrived from Berlin only after some time. Most likely, the new commandant was the one who denounced the escape attempt.
Saul’s death is remembered also by other witnesses as a dramatic and sad event, as well as an occasion when they felt proud of Saul’s courage. He became a symbol of resistance. Even though Saul had asked his friends to not tell Edwarda about his fate, she had been informed and not only by Jacques. In her testimony there are some details not mentioned in Jacques’ letter. She testified:
Saul was perfectly calm until the last moment; when one of the prisoners who was ordered to put a loop on his neck shuddered. He said, “It is hard, but you fulfill your duty.” He did not allow [them] to cover his eyes and said smiling; Greeks know how to live and die.42
Jakow P. also told Halina Birenbaum about Saul’s end, providing other details:
At first, they let his wounds heal. Later they prepared the gallows for him. They ordered all the prisoners to go to the square for a special roll call. They had to witness the execution. They ordered us to position ourselves close to the gallows so that we could see.
Saul’s brother was among us. He fainted. We didn't move so that the Germans wouldn't detect him. They would have killed him also if they had known. Four high SS officers and several ordinary soldiers arrived at the assembly square. The commander of the camp was among them. Saul was limping, surrounded by that group of bandits. They stood in front of the gallows. They asked him his last request. He was silent. He climbed onto the stool and tied the rope around his neck. He pushed the stool himself, hung in the air. They ordered us to go back to the blocks. We went back to the barracks petrified with horror.43
Jakow P. remembered Saul’s brother and, unlike Edwarda, he pointed out that Saul himself put the rope around his neck. Both the accounts emphasize Saul’s courage in different ways.
Arminio Wachsberger also remembered Saul’s death:
Poor Isaac Saul Senòr was captured, brought back to our camp, and locked up in an isolation cell awaiting trial. I went to see him. We talked to each other through a little window in the door and he said to me: “Don't be afraid Erminio, the commandant will save me for sure,” because he also did business with the commandant. One morning [it was] zählappel, the roll call, as always. After the roll call we see a gallows. Isaac Saul Senòr arrives after a while accompanied by the SS. They make him mount the gallows. What happened? The news of that story had reached Berlin from where the hanging order had come and, at that point, the commandant could do nothing but carry out the order.
His brother was beside me. He too spoke Italian, but we communicated mainly in Ladino. His name was Israel Senor; we always called him by his diminutive, Sdruli. When he saw his brother mounting the gallows, he passed out. When I got married the second time, after the liberation, Sdruli Senor was my witness, so I remember him well.44
Arminio’s account includes some new details: he wrote that Saul was in an isolation cell not in the hospital until the last day as other witnesses stated. Most likely, he was in a room alone inside the barrack where the sick were kept. Anyway, the communication was actually possible between Saul and his friends. Since there was a personal connection between Arminio and Saul, he talks about Sdruli, Saul’s brother, more than the others.
Saul’s story and death became a symbol for the Greeks in Gęsiówka and strenghtened their bond, as Jakow P. recalled:
For a long time we talked about this tragedy, about the beautiful and strong Saul. He was educated, talented, as long as fate favored him even in this terrible camp where they assigned him to a good job. And all for nothing. He died.45
Attempted escapes from concentration camps usually failed, as with the case of Saul Senor and many other prisoners. For the Salonikan Jews, because of the language barrier it was more difficult. According to Arminio Wachsberger, only one Greek prisoner managed to escape from the camp:
I remember the case of a very smart Greek Jew from Thessaloniki. He had paid a Polish peasant, because the Poles did nothing without money in return, to be carried out in the brick crate where he had made a hiding place. Thus, he managed to escape and get in touch with the Polish partisans, including Jews. Then we learned that he joined the resistance and saved himself.46
From Gęsiówka to Dachau
The Salonikans in Gęsiówka not only saw for themselves the effects of the destruction of the Warsaw ghetto, but also experienced the first “death march” at the end of July 1944. While the Red Army was approaching Warsaw, the majority of the prisoners were evacuated to Dachau and its subcamps. At that time, the number of Greek Jews inside the camp, according to Isaac Aruh was one hundred and forty: “Other sources estimate two thousand to three thousand Greeks among these prisoners.”47
According to Steven Bowman, only two hundred and eighty Greek prisoners arrived at their destination alive. For the Greeks, there was neither the opportunity nor the possibility to escape, as Yehiel Daniel recalls:
Where would you escape to? Do you know where to escape to? What escape? Who thought about escaping? You don’t know – Poland, not Poland, not Germany. Maybe you are between Poland and Germany. [...] You don’t know the language, you don’t know a thing. Also, it’s better to be together. [...] Exactly where I would go?48
The prisoners had to walk to Kutno, from where they were evacuated to Dachau by train.
Now, the march from Warsaw, the worst part, was this was in August — hot. It was July, August, I don't remember exactly, but it was really warm. They wouldn't give you water, no water.49
David Lea also remembered the terrible trip:
On a transportation that came from Warsaw, in 1944, when the Russians were approaching Warsaw. The biggest transportation, and the biggest disaster in Jewish history was in Warsaw where they deported us on train for 18 days. On animal trains, locked day and night, guarded by four barbarians of the SS, with their machine guns, no water, no food, and under the sun [. . .]. And more than 8,000 people died. We were 8,726 people and 725 people returned to the Dachau camp. The 8,000 people were killed by starvation, or by the SS, or by the drought.50
Jakow P.’s account focused on the long walk to Kutno, the heat and the thirst which tormented the prisoners.51 They dug holes in the ground to find some water but whoever stopped risked being shot. After the train trip and the arrival to Dachau, he was sent to Mühldorf with many other prisoners from Warsaw.
Jakow P., David Lea, and the others, including Eliezer and Isaac Sotto, were registered in Dachau on August 6, 1944,52 where they were again exploited as slave laborers in the subcamps system. Many were in Mühldorf, others in Landsberg Kaufering, some in Karlsfeld, and a few in the Flossenburg subcamp Litzmeritz. For instance, David Lea stayed in Kaufering until the liberation. Eleiezer and Isaac Sotto were transferred to Litzmeritz on January 7, 1945.
We stayed until 1944 in Warsaw. In 1944, they evacuate the camp because the Allies was pretty close, and they took us to Dachau. We march a whole week, and they put us in the train to go to Dachau. We arrive in Dachau, and we stay for a couple of weeks, and then we transfer to another camp: Number 4. They have different camps, Number 1, Number 4, Number 7. Then from Number 4, I went to Lager [German: camp] 7. I think that was in Landsberg, Germany. Then from Landsberg, Germany, we got transferred to Leitmeritz. That was in Czechoslovakia. We were working in a town over there.53
During the Warsaw Revolt
Other prisoners were left behind to finish their work in the Warschau camp. On August 1, some Polish prisoners who had been in Pawiak54 were taken there, among them Leon Kopelmann55 who remembered:
There were already Germans and Greek Jews brought form Auschwitz there. They were busy gathering all valuable object from the houses in the Ghetto, which was entirely empty right now, since all the Jews were transported to the camps. Greek Jews wore striped clothes made of paper and froze in them, because the weather changed a lot and they didn't have anything other to wear. They had to work every day and the Germans did everything to make their lives even more miserable, for example forced them to carry bricks on their way to work. We tried to help them since our conditions were slightly better and they didn't get anything to eat.56
Three hundred and forty-eight prisoners were left in Gęsiówka; of the forty-one Greeks, only fourteen survived. On August 1, 1944, the uprising led by the Armia Krajowa, the underground military organization of the Polish Government-in-Exile, began. On that same day the partisans:
liberated 50 to 70 Hungarian and Greek Jews who worked in the SS warehouse of the so-called Umschlagplatz – a symbolic site from where more than 250,000 Warsaw Jews had been deported to the gas chambers of Treblinka.57
Thus, Warsaw became the only (former) Konzentrationslager liberated by anti-Nazi resistance fighters. Stanislaw Likiernik wrote a chronicle of that day:
The main building was guarded by a small SS unit. We shot dead several of the men and took the stores very quickly. The two Krauts who tried to escape into the ruins of the ghetto on the other side of the stores area were also killed. Suddenly, inside the stores, a group of about fifty men ran towards us. They wore the striped garb of concentration camp prisoners. They called out to us, but we couldn’t understand a single word. They were Greek Jews from Salonika who had been put to work in the stores. With difficulty, we explained to them what was happening and that they were now free.58
On August 5, 1944, the soldiers of the Home Army (AK battalion “Zoska”) set free three hundred and forty-eight Greek, Hungarian, Romanian, French, Belgian, Dutch, and Polish Jews who were still working inside the camp. Insurgent Polish Radio broadcast on the liberation of Jews by the Home Army (Armia Krajowa) from Gęsiówka reported:
We are on the premises of the concentration camp located in the ghetto. Just two hours ago our forces, in a brave attack seized the camp with 350 prisoners - Jews. Five accurately placed strikes from our captured tank ‘Panther’ opened the door to freedom for Jews from Poland, Hungary, France, Greece, Czechoslovakia and Lithuania […] I walk over to the Greeks. They are from Salonika. They too left willingly for the work assignment. Eighty thousand of them died in Auschwitz. The same story repeats itself about the incredible Gehenna they endured.59
Wojciech Rostafinski, a participant in the 1944 Warsaw Uprising, witnessed the events and wrote about them:
On the fifth day of the Uprising, captain Jan announced a new objective for the company: to take the concentration camp Gesiówka, erected by the Germans in the vast, empty and wide open space of the burned out Warsaw Ghetto. […] The small Gesiówka camp was kept open, however, with a plan to execute the prisoners before the Germans' flight to Germany. Taking Gesiówka would allow the liberation of its 400 prisoners, the obtaining of arms and the elimination of the German fire from the guard towers overlooking the streets and buildings on the fringes of the ruined ghetto. […] Before the 1st shots echoed a most moving scene occurred. Gradually, at first hesitant, then jubilant figures emerged from various buildings. All were Jewish slave laborers, 324 men and 24 women, of whom just 89 were of Polish citizenship. The others were of Greek, Romanian, Dutch and Hungarian nationalities. […] The last Jews in Warsaw were saved.60
When Gęsiówka was freed by the insurgents, many Jews made the decision to fight with them.61
Counselor Szymon Gottesman ‘Józef’ wired Anselm Reiss of the World Jewish Congress London, on behalf of the group of Jews freed from the Gęsia Street [Gęsiówka]62 concentration camp: "We are taking part in the fighting. The Home Army liberated several hundred Hungarian, Czech, Greek and French Jews; they gave them freedom and an opportunity to work and fight for the common cause."63
They fought with courage; many of them had been soldiers in the Greek Army against the Italians during the war. Many witnesses recalled the presence of the Jews of Salonika, both during the battles and in moments of rest. They were extremely helpful in various situations, Stanislaw Likiernik, after being injured, recalled being helped by a doctor from Salonika:
One of the Salonikan Greek Jews whom we liberated in Stawki was a doctor, an old man of at least forty-five or fifty. Zbylut asked him to have a look at my injuries. Their only common language was Latin. It was the oddest consultation. In spite of its loftiness, even in November 1944 my wounds were still giving me trouble.64
Anna Szatkwoska remembered that: “Amongst the young Greek Jews was a tenor from the Opera in Saloniki who sang beautiful Greek and Italian opera songs for us.”65
According to some testimonies, there were also expressions of anti-Semitism among the Poles. According to Steven Bowman:
[...] some fought in the Warsaw revolt of August 1944. There they met for the first time the Jew hatred among their Polish co-fighters. At least they fought, however, and their military training stood in good service astride captured Wehrmacht tanks.66
The Greeks who were freed followed different paths during and after the revolt; some of them died, others managed to survive in hiding inside or outside Warsaw with the help of the partisans or civilians.67 Among them was Jacques O. who faught with Nałęcz batallion. He wrote:
Our liberation. Our joy. The uprising lasted two months. Ten Greek Jews joined the Nalec battalion. Our fight was around the Bank of Poland. Then came the capitulation of the historical center. Escape was through the sewers towards the center. Thousands of dead and [...] blood and despair were everywhere. The capitulation of all Warsaw quickly follows. What will our fate be? We will not go to the Germans, they can only capture us dead. The other fourteen Greek Jews split up into groups and went their separate ways.68
Leon Kopelman went to work in No.1 Surgical Hospital in Milanówek, which was situated in the villa The Pearl, after some weeks of fighting. He remembered his meeting with a Salonikan Jew, Ino Varsano.
Once in the hospital I was asked for help. There was a patient there, a captive, probably French, and since I knew some languages I was asked to talk to him. When I was left alone with him in the room I recognized the alleged Frenchman. He was one of the Greek Jews I knew back from Gęsiówka. His name was Ino Varsano but he introduced himself as Jean Vearsaneux. I asked what was his problem and he told me he was healthy but needed help. I wasn't sure how to handle this situation. Finally, I decided to send him to the countryside, 14 kilometers outside of Milanowek, where the hospital held a home for convalescents, who were almost healthy but needed some more time to rest. I told in the hospital that the ‘Frenchman’ needed that as well. The only means of transport between the hospital and the home was a horse carriage which we used every week to send some food to the countryside. One day we sent the ‘Frenchman’ on the carriage too and he stayed there until the end of the war. From time to time I gave him my regards via carrier, but I never heard back from him.69
At the end of the war Kopelman met his “Greek–French” friend at Praga.70 He learned some Polish and worked as a driver for the Wedel factory.”71
Bernard Konrad Świerczyński,72 a Pole who had already helped the Jews inside the Ghetto also assisted in the building of a bunker where forty Jews hid after the Warsaw Uprising. Among them there were two Greek Jews from the almost four hundred Jews from Greece, France, and Belgium who were liberated by the Polish scouting battalion “ZOSKA” from “Gęsiówka” on August 5, 1944.73 Feliks Cywiński who had been active in the resistance also hid some Greeks liberated from Gęsiówka. During the Warsaw Uprising, after the liberation of Gęsiówka, Cywiński:
[...] established the Jewish Platoon under the command of Samuel Kenigswejn. He provided weapons for the platoon which, at first, was engaged in building barricades. He mentions in his report that he was jokingly called “the Jewish king.” The platoon fought in the Simons' Passage at the junction of the streets Nalewki and Długa and defended Saint John's Cathedral. Those soldiers who survived went through the sewage system to the City Centre and Górny Czerniaków […] After the fall of the uprising, Cywiński went out with civilians, whilst Kenigswejn with his wife, Rybak, Finkielsztein and two Greek Jews hid in the Old Town and survived until the liberation of Warsaw in January 1944 with the food Cywiński gave them.74
Jacques O., waiting for the day of the liberation inside the bunker, wrote:
Suddenly, I effortlessly rub my eyes, get rid of the fog. I wake up from the vision passing by; now I am experiencing real facts. For three months now, we five Greek companions, have lived in the bushes of Mr. Chaidufe (sic). We are a strict, iron group. No physical difficulties will break our endurance. I am returning to the bunker. The wind changes and blows more slowly.75
The presence of Sephardic Jews in Warsaw deserves to be remembered. From Salonika, the capital of Sephardi Judaism these men were forced to work to remove the last vestiges of the Warsaw ghetto, the center of Ashkenazi Judaism. Despite the linguistic and cultural differences and the precarious physical and environmental conditions, and despite the fact that they were prisoners, they fought on the frontline.
Bibliography
Daniel Blatman. 2011. The Death Marches: The Final Phase of Nazi Genocide, Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press.
Steven Bowman. 2009. The Agony of Greek Jews. Palo Alto, CA: Stanford University Press.
Steven Bowman 2014. Greek Responses to the Nazis in the Mountains and in the Camps, in Patrick Henry (ed.) Jewish Resistance against the Nazis. Washington: Cua Press.
Konrad Charmatz. 2003. Nightmares: Memoirs of the years of Horror under Nazi Rule in Europe (1939-45), New York: Syracuse University Press.
Paris Papamichos Chronakis. 13 August 2018. “From the Lone Survivor to the Networked Self. Social Networks Meet the Digital Holocaust Archive,” in Holocaust Research and Archives in the Digital Age, eds. Laura Brazzo, Reto Speck, Quest. Issues in Contemporary Jewish History. Journal of Fondazione CDEC.
Paris Papamichos Chronakis. 2018. “We Lived as Greeks and We Died as Greeks”: Thessalonican Jews in Auschwitz and the Meanings of Nationhood. The Holocaust in Greece. Edited by Giorgos Antoniou and A. Dirk Moses. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press: 157-180.
Yaffa Eliach. 1982. Hasidic Tales of the Holocaust. New York: Oxford University Press.
Gabriel N. Finder. 2009. Warschau Main Camp. In Geoffrey P. Megargee (volume editor): Encyclopedia of Camps and Ghettos, 1933-1945. Early Camps, Youth Camps and Concentration Camps and Subcamps under the SS-Business Administration Main Office (WVHA). United States Holocaust Memorial Museum-Indiana University Press, Bloomington and Indianapolis. Vol I: 1513.
Yitzhak Kerem. “New Finds in Greek Jewish Heroism in the Holocaust,” Sephardic Horizons 2012, Volume 2, Spring Issue 2.
Edward Kossoy. 2004. The Gesiowka Story- A little known page of Jewish History Fighting. Yad Vashem Studies. 32: 320-350.
Stanislaw Likiernik. 2001. By Devil's Luck: A Tale of Resistance in Wartime Warsaw. Edinburgh: Mainstream Publishing Company.
Matsas Michael. 1997. The Illusion of Safety: The Story of the Greek Jews During World War II. New York: Pella Publishing Company.
Max Mannheimer. 2018. A Diary Delayed. München: Oettingen Press.
Michael Molho. 1973. In Memoriam. Thessalonique: Communauté Israélite de Thessalonique
Gabriele Rigano. 2015. L’interprete di Auschwitz. Arminio Wachsberger un testimone d’eccezione della deportazione degli ebrei di Roma. Milano: Guerini.
Alan Rosen. 2010. The Wonder of Their Voices: The 1946 Holocaust Interviews of David Boder. New York: Oxford University Press.
Adam Rutkowski. 1993. “Le camp de concentration pour Juifs à Varsovie (19 juillet 1943–5 août 1944),” Le monde juif 49: 147–148 : 189–216.
Anna Szatkwoska. 2006. Byl dom; wspomnienia. Kraków, Wydawn, Literackie.
Rudolph Tessler. 1999. Letter to My Children: From Romania to America Via Auschwitz. Columbia, OK: University of Missouri Press.
Tomai P., (Hellenic Ministry of Foreign Affairs). 2009. Greeks in Auschwitz-Birkenau, (translation by Alexandra Apostolides). Athens: Papazisis Publishers S.A.
Zoltán Vági and Gábor Kádár. 2019. From the Ghetto Revolt to the Warsaw Uprising – Hungarian Jews in KL Warschau, November 14, 2019.
Rudolf Vrba, Alfred Wetzler. 1944. The Auschwitz Protocol. The Vrba-Wetzler Report (Transcribed from the original O.S.I. report of the US Department of Justice & the War Refugee Board Archives).
N. Wachsman. 2015. KL A history of The Nazi Concentration Camps. London: Little, Brown Book Group.
Joshua D. Zimmerman. 2015. The Polish Underground and the Jews 1939-1945. New York: Cambridge University Press.
Internet Resources
The Witnesses' Uprising Reports The Wartime Memoirs of Leon Kopleman
Stories of Rescue - Bernard Konrad Swierczynski
Warsaw Uprising 1944 August 1 - October 2
Wisconsin Historical Society - Oral History - Salvator Moshe
From the Ghetto Revolt to the Warsaw Uprising – Hungarian Jews in KL Warschau
Clearing the Ruins of the Ghetto
1 Jacques O., Archiwum ZHI Sygnatura 301/2033. The original text was translated into English by the author.
2 Stefania Zezza is a teacher at Liceo classico Virgilio in Rome and a researcher. She collaborates with Roma Tre University from which she graduated with the International Master on Holocaust Studies. She is the president of Etnhos (European Teachers Network on Holocaust Studies) and is actively involved in Holocaust education. Her research interests include the relationship between trauma, memory, testimony, and language, focused in particular on the Salonikan Jews. She already published for Sephardic Horizons, “A man who has no shoes is a fool” (Vol. 6, 2016) and “Taken from a distant country: the girls from Salonika in Ravensbruck" (Vol. 8, 2018).
3Town in central Poland. It is 32 km. southwest of Warsaw.
4 Jacques O., Archiwum ZHI Sygnatura 301/2033. The original text was translated into English by the author.
5 Molho Michael. In Memoriam. Thessalonique: Communauté Israélite de Thessalonique,1973. p. 259.
6 Jacques O., Archiwum ZHI Sygnatura 301/2033.
7 David P. Boder Interviews David Lea, August 12, 1946, Paris, France. On August 4, 5, and 12, 1946, David Boder interviewed seven Holocaust survivors from Salonika in Paris. These interviews represent some of the most important documents that provide direct information on the fate of the Salonikan Jews and reveal much more than other testimonies in terms of historical details, perception of the events, and information on the background. David Boder and his assistants translated the interviews trying to keep “the English transcription ungrammatical [...]” They “took pains to justify such an unconventional step: ‘The manuscript has been read by a number of non-Jewish readers from the English Departments of the Illinois Institute of Technology and of the University of Chicago and the consensus of opinion is that the original recording should not be altered and that my verbatim translations, awkward as they may sound, greatly enhance the effect of the material.’” Rosen A. (2010). The Wonder of Their Voices: The 1946 Holocaust Interviews of David Boder. New York: Oxford University Press: 126.
8 Salvator Moshe: Oral History Transcript.
9 Yitzhak Kerem, “New Finds in Greek Jewish Heroism in the Holocaust,” Sephardic Horizons, 2012 Volume 2, Spring Issue 2.
10 Steven Bowman. 2009. The Agony of Greek Jews. Palo Alto, CA: Stanford University Press, 2009.
11 Rudolf Vrba, Alfred Wetzler. 1944. The Auschwitz Protocol. The Vrba-Wetzler Report. [Transcribed from the original O.S.I report of the US Department of Justice & the War Refugee Board Archives].
12 Salvator Moshe: Oral History Transcript.
13 David P. Boder Interviews David Lea, August 12, 1946, Paris, France.
14 Max Mannheimer was born in the Czech Republic in 1920. He was deported and survived four camps. His book, A Diary Delayed, is about his life and experiences during the war.
15 Max Mannheimer. 2018. A Diary Delayed. München: Oettingen Press: 50
16 Ibid.
17 Cuba Family Archives for Southern Jewish History at the Breman Museum, Atlanta.
18 Interview with Eliezer Sotto, The William Breman Jewish Heritage Museum Esther and Herbert Taylor Jewish Oral History Project of Atlanta Legacy Project.
19 Charmatz K. 2003. Nightmares: Memoirs of the years of Honor under Nazi Rule in Europe (1939-45), New York: Syracuse University Press: 112.
20 Ibid.
21 Paris Papamichos Chronakis , “We Lived as Greeks and We Died as Greeks”: Thessalonican Jews in Auschwitz and the Meanings of Nationhood. The Holocaust in Greece. Edited by Giorgos Antoniou and A. Dirk Moses. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2018: 157-180.
22 Gabriele Rigano, L’interprete di Auschwitz. ArminioWachsberger un testimone d’eccezione della deportazione degli ebrei di Roma. Milano: Guerini, 2015: 2363. The original text was translated into English by the author.
23 By “finished,” he means dead.
24 David P. Boder Interviews David Lea, August 12, 1946, Paris, France.
25 Salvator Moshe: Oral History Transcript.
26 Ibid: 2375.
27 Jacques O., Archiwum ZHI Sygnatura 301/2033. The original text was translated into English by the author.7
28 Yitzhak Kerem, “New Finds in Greek Jewish Heroism in the Holocaust,” Sephardic Horizons, 2012 Volume 2, Spring Issue 2.
29 Paris Papamichos Chronakis , “We Lived as Greeks and We Died as Greeks”: Thessalonican Jews in Auschwitz and the Meanings of Nationhood: 184.
30 Thanks to Doctor Michał Czajka from the Jewish Historical Institute in Warsaw who kindly provided me with these documents.
31 O. G. Edwarda Archiwu, ZiH Sygnatura 310/2782, written down by the Szczecin Branch of the Central Jewish Historical Commission on September 1947.
32 Jakow P..Archiwum ZHI. Sygnatura 301/7019. The original text was translated into English by the author.
33 Ibid.
34 Gabriele Rigano, L’interprete di Auschwitz. ArminioWachsberger un testimone d’eccezione della deportazione degli ebrei di Roma. Milano: Guerini, 2015.p. 2496. The original text was translated into English by the author.
35 O. G. Edwarda Archiwu, ZiH Sygnatura 310/2782. written down by the Szczecin Branch of the Central Jewish Historical Commission, September 1947. The original text was translated into English by the author.
36 Ibid.
37 O. G. Edwarda Archiwu, ZiH Sygnatura 310/2782. The original text was translated into English by the author.
38 The first camp commandant was SS-Obersturmbannführer Wilhelm Göcke, but he was soon redeployed to lead KL Kauen (Kaunas) in Lithuania. The camp’s commandants were then SS-Hauptsturmführer Nikolaus Herbet and SS-Oberstürmführer Friedrich Wilhelm Ruppert, who was in charge from May 1944 until the evacuation in July 1944.
39 O. G. Edwarda Archiwu, ZiH Sygnatura 310/2782. The original text was translated into English by the author.
40 Zoltán Vági and Gábor Kádár. From the Ghetto Revolt to the Warsaw Uprising – Hungarian Jews in KL Warschau, Published: November 14, 2019.
41 Archiwum ZHI. Sygnatura 301/2782. The original text was translated into English by the author.
42 O. G. Edwarda Archiwu, ZiH Sygnatura 310/2782. The original text was translated into English by the author.
43 Archiwum ZHI. Sygnatura 301/7019. Jakow-Zako P. The original text was translated into English by the author.
44 Gabriele Rigano, L’interprete di Auschwitz. ArminioWachsberger un testimone d’eccezione della deportazione degli ebrei di Roma. Milano: Guerini, 2015.p. 2508. The original text was translated into English by the author.
45 Archiwum ZHI. Sygnatura 301/7019. Jakow-Zako P. The original text was translated into English by the author.
46 Gabriele Rigano, L’interprete di Auschwitz. ArminioWachsberger un testimone d’eccezione della deportazione degli ebrei di Roma. Milano: Guerini, 2015.p. 2363. The original text was translated into English by the author. Yitzhak Kerem also mentions the escape of a Greek prisoner.
47 Steven Bowman. 2009. The Agony of the Greek Jews. Palo Alto, CA: Stanford University Press: 276.
48 Daniel Blatman, The Death Marches: The Final Phase of Nazi Genocide, Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2011: 66.
49 Salvator Moshe, op. cit.
51 Eli Cohen also remembered the thirst: “There was the time, not far from Warsaw, when we crossed a bridge over some small river. We wanted to drink water. They wouldn’t let us. But some of the SS men forced them to enter the water until they drowned. We continued on our way. It was a hot day. In the evening we wanted to drink water. They wouldn’t let us. I can state that a miracle happened here. I don’t know how or whose idea it was. In the field to which we had got that night someone dug a 20-centimeter- deep hole with his spoon. Suddenly the hole filled up with water. It’s impossible to describe our joy. Everyone of us began to dig a little hole next to him And it filled up with water. Sure, it was dirty water and tasted of iron and rust. We took our caps, filing them with water; we drank and we washed ourselves a bit. The following morning we continued on our way till we got to a place where there was already transport and they put us inside the railway trucks.” Yad Vashem Archives 0-3/2690. Also David Junger (Interview with Eva Slomovics, November, 28 1979 in Yaffa Eliach, Hasidic tales of the Holocaust, New York Oxford University Press, 1982: 225) see Rudolph Tessler, Letter to My Children: From Romania to America Via Auschwitz, University of Missouri Press, 1999: 77) for this same episode.
52 Copy of 1.1.6.1 /9956424 in conformity with the ITS Archives, Bad Arolsen. Namentliche Aufstellung über Häftlinge, die im Konzentrationlager Dachau inhaftiert waren.
53 Interview with Eliezer Sotto. TheWilliam Breman Jewish Heritage Museum Esther and Herbert Taylor Jreish Oral History Project of Atlanta Legacy Project.
54 Pawiak was the prison for Jews and Poles during the German occupation.
55 Leon Kopelman was born on April 26, 1924, in Warsaw, survived from the Warsaw Ghetto, and was a volunteer soldier of “Zoska” battalion/Home Army union “Radoslaw.”
56 The Witnesses' Uprising Reports. The Wartime Memoirs of Leon Kopleman. The 1944 Uprising and liberation.
57 Zoltán Vági and Gábor Kádár. From the Ghetto Revolt to the Warsaw Uprising – Hungarian Jews in KL Warschau, November 14, 2019. From the Ghetto Revolt to the Warsaw Uprising – Hungarian Jews in KL Warschau.
58 Stanislaw Likiernik. By Devil's Luck: A Tale of Resistance in Wartime Warsaw, Mainstream Publishing Company 2001: 114.
59 Insurgent`s Polish Radio broadcast on the liberation of Jews by the Home Army (Armia Krajowa) from Gesiowka, Poles - Jews 1939-1945 Selection of Documents. Edited by Andrzej Krzysztof Kunert. RYTM: Warszawa, 2001.
60 Wojciech Rostafinski. How the Last Jews in Warsaw Were Saved. Courtesy of Heralds of Truth, Michigan. Warsaw Uprising 1944.
61 See also Yitzhak Kerem, “New Finds in Greek Jewish Heroism in the Holocaust,” Sephardic Horizons, 2012 Volume 2, Spring Issue 2.
62 Gęsia is the other Polish name for Gęsiówka.
63 in Władysław Bartoszewski. 2012. Warsaw Under Occupation: A Timeline (a compilation of texts abridged and selected form the book Warsaw: 1859 Days) in Inferno of Choices: Poles and the Holocaust. ed. by Sebastian Rejak and Elzbieta Frister. Warsaw: Oficyna Wydawnicza RYTM. 2011: 111-2.
64 Stanislaw Likiernik. 2001. By Devil's Luck: A Tale of Resistance in Wartime. Edinburgh, Mainstream Publishing Company: 122.
65 Anna Szatkwoska. 2006. Byl dom; wspomnienia. Kraków, Wydawn, Literackie.: 167), quoted in A. Richie. 2013. Warsaw 1944. London, Collins.
66 Steven Bowman. 2009. The Agony of Greek Jews, Palo Alto Ca: Stanford University Press: 235.
67 See also Yitzhak Kerem, “New Finds in Greek Jewish Heroism in the Holocaust,” Sephardic Horizons, 2012 Volume 2, Spring Issue 2.
68 Jacques O, Archiwum ZHI Sygnatura 301/2033. The original text was translated into English by the author.
69 The Witnesses` Uprising Reports. The Wartime Memoirs of Leon Kopelman.
70 Praga is a district in Warsaw.
71 Ibid.
72 Both Świerczyński and Cywiński were recognized as Righteous Among the Nations by Yad VaShem, the World Holocaust Remembrance Center.
73 The story of Bernard Konrad Świerczyński.
74 Story of Rescue - Cywinski Feliks.
75 Jacques O., Archiwum ZHI Sygnatura 301/2033. The original text was translated into English by the author.
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