Terra Nostra: Reina Gilberta

Note: This marks the start of a recurring featured weekly post from Discarded Lies at Winds of Change.NET. To kick the party off right, we're running a double feature this Friday: a post from the Terra Nostra series (simulcast at Discarded Lies) and one from the shorter Children Of The Stoplights series, below. Terra Nostra is about the Jewish Holocaust in Greece, righteous gentiles, tales of heroism and simple human will to survive, and the beauty of human souls even in a horrific tableau. Thanks to Joe Katzman for offering us a platform to tell these stories.

Albert and Eda Sciaky got married in the spring of 1939 in Beth-El, the largest synagogue in Salonica, Greece. Their daughter, Reina, was born on the 3rd of April, 1942. By that time Salonica was under German occupation and racial measures were already in effect: Jewish agencies, Jewish newspapers and Jewish shops were closed. The Jewish population was forcibly moved to ghettos, and wearing the yellow star was mandatory. Ten thousand Jewish men were rounded up for forced labour battalions where over a thousand of them died in malaria-infested swamps.

A few months after the birth of his daughter, Albert was able to escape from the city and to join the resistance in the mountains. Eda was left with the baby and no resources. She turned for help to her old classmate, Liliane Fernandes. Liliane and Eda had been friends since they were both students at Saint Joseph, the French lycée in Salonica. The Fernandes family were Jews with Italian citizenship which meant they were exempt from racial measures-for the time being. Liliane had access to transportation, money, and food and was often able to bribe the guards and enter the ghetto. Hundreds of children had died that year from hunger and malnourishment, and there were rumours of upcoming deportations to Poland.

As the German occupation measures became stricter, the Fernandes family decided to leave for Italy, while they still could. Liliane went to see Eda one last time. Realising that once she left Eda would have no one to help her, she asked her to give her the baby. She couldn't take Reina to Italy, she was going to leave her at the convent at St.Joseph's. Eda immediately said no, she would never give her child to the Catholics but Liliane convinced her it was the only way for the baby to survive.

It was Reina's first birthday. After many tears, Eda attached a note to the baby's shirt: "Her name is Reina. May God protect her." She handed the little girl to her best friend. They left, and Eda lost her whole world.

Liliane waited until dark, wrapped Reina in a blanket and made her way to the convent. She entered the small church in the schoolyard, left Reina in front of the statue of Mary, and hid behind the trees. The baby was screaming. Two nuns came out, picked up the baby and carried her inside. Liliane's heart was broken but she knew she had done what was right, the best she could do for her friend.

In the next week, Liliane went to the school several times. She wouldn't go in, she just stood nearby and watched. She would see a nun tenderly carrying Reina, rocking her, walking her around in the schoolyard. On her last visit before leaving for Italy she was noticed and invited to come in. The nun told her that they knew the baby must be Jewish. She said the Mother Superior understood how difficult it must be for a Jewish mother to leave her baby in a Catholic convent. She left for a few minutes and she came back with a sheep's horn cut in half. She gave half to Liliane. "Give it to the child's mother so she can get the baby back someday. If she can't come back, she can give it to anyone she thinks best. We will return the baby to the person that brings this piece."

Liliane broke down and told her the whole story. Sister Joseph promised to go see Eda and reassure her the baby was safe and she could have her back as soon as she was able. She kept her word, and Eda, lifted from the depression that had overcome her after losing Reina, managed to escape from Salonica and make her way to Athens, to her sister's house.

Mère Rosette, the Mother Superior, was worried that if the Germans came to the school she wouldn't be able to protect the baby, she had no papers. She realised she needed help. Everytime a German patrol came near the school, the priest, Father Bucca, would start whistling a song and Sister Joseph would grab Reina and run out the school's back yard to the seafront. She'd get in a boat and row out to sea while singing to the baby to keep her calm.

Mère Rosette turned for help to Lina Citterich, an old student of hers who lived across the school. Lina was married to an Italian and had a 13 year old son, Vittorio. Lina and the Mother Superior-who had named the baby Gilberta-asked Father Bucca for help in getting proper papers for Reina. They baptised her Gilberta and for the next two years, Reina would divide her time between "Mamma-Lina" and the nuns at St. Joseph. She was safe and happy with people who loved and adored her.

In the meantime, Albert and Eda had met again in Athens. Eda, having Spanish citizenship, could still get a visa to leave Greece. Albert didn't have that option so his sister-in-law offered to arrange a fake marriage with a neighbour to allow him to get a identity card as a Christian. That meant he had to divorce Eda, even if on paper only.

On the day Eda went to the Spanish Embassy to get her visa, the Germans arrested all the Jewish people who were there, over fifty of them. Albert, waiting outside, saw her being forced into the the truck. They were taken directly to the train station. Thousands of other Jews were boarding the trains already.

Eda de Boton, wife of Albert Sciaky, or Maria Ananiadou, wife of Cornelius. Minor Reina Sciaky, daughter of Albert and Eda. Possible place of stay: St Joseph's, Salonica

Eda, as soon as she got out of the hospital went to the order's convent in Paris. She told them the story and showed them the half of the horn that she had never parted with, even in the camp. They were very polite and assured her they would get in touch with Mère Rosette.

Lina Citterich heard about Albert's search on the Red Cross program, on the radio. She immediately went to the convent and told Mère Rosette the wonderful news. Mère Rosette listened politely and told her it would not be good for the child to be returned to "parents who are divorced, one of them a camp survivor in an unstable mental state and the other one a refugee in Palestine."

Lina was furious but the Mother Superior would not yield. She talked to Sister Joseph, "it's immoral what you're doing, it's against God's will." Sister Joseph hung her head in shame and did not say anything but secretly she wrote to Eda in Paris, giving her news of Reina. Then one morning she showed up at Lina's door: "Gilberta and I are leaving for Paris tomorrow. I'm taking her to her mother."

Eda and Reina were re-united in Paris. Sister Joseph stayed with them a few days to give Reina an easier transition before she tearfully said good bye to the little girl she had sheltered all this time.

After a few months, mother and daughter met Albert in Palestine but eventually the family returned to Salonica where Reina grew up, got married and had children of her own. Albert died in the spring of 1980 and Eda a few years later. Sister Joseph and Reina remained close but no one knew what had happened to Lina Citterich. The family had moved to Italy and Sister Joseph had lost touch with them.

Dear Sir, I'm the Jewish girl that in 1943, in Salonica, your mother loved, protected and baptised to save from the Germans.
The other night I saw on the greek channel ET1, your documentary...I have a photo, so dear to me, where I'm sitting on your mother's lap, I called her "Mamma Lina," I'm two and a half or three years old, and you're there too, you must have been thirteen or fourteen. I hope we can meet..."

...with your words, your letter, your voice on the telephone, my mother came to life again, my little sister, she loved you so much and you loved her too...She loved you so much she said "no" to my father and me when we wanted to keep you. Little Gilberta, you said your first words in our house. Instinctively you said "mama," to the woman who was holding you in her lap. And she, lovingly, said "no, I'm only mamma-Lina. Your real mother will come back."

Endnotes:

Jews who had Greek citizenship were deported to Auschwitz. The lucky few who had dual citizenships, Greek-Italian or Greek-Spanish like Eda, were deported to Bergen-Belsen. Eda never spoke about the camp.

There was another Jewish girl that the sisters at St. Joseph's sheltered from the Germans. Her name is Marie Louise and her parents had left her at the convent when she was little but they never came back from the camps and no one knows her real name. Today she lives in Israel.

Even though Sister Joseph was one of my teachers, I didn't learn Reina's story until recently. In the same schoolyard where Reina took her first steps, nothing was ever mentioned about other children who had played there before us and who died in Auschwitz, no lessons given in the classrooms about this Holocaust that wiped out half our city's people, no one said a word about girls from Salonica, past students of our school being gassed to death. And Sister Joseph, everyone's favourite nun, kind and not too hard on us and generous with her grades, never once mentioned that she would row a Jewish baby out to sea to hide her when the German patrols came by.

Nina Nahmia wrote about Reina in her book Reina Gilberta: A Child in the Thessaloniki Ghetto