by zorkmidden. This is the featured weekly post from Discarded Lies at Winds of Change.NET. The Terra Nostra series 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. It's also about contemporary Greek attitudes to Jews, Judaism, and Israel. Other posts in the Terra Nostra series on Winds of Change include Reina Gilberta, Liliane Fernandes, Loving God and Hating Jews, The Exodus From Spain, The Occupation and The Deportations.
He won't allow me to tell you his name. We'll use his initials, I. H. Mr. I.H. is a Jewish shop-owner in Salonica, Greece. He is a Bergen-Belsen survivor, one of the lucky ones, he wasn't sent to the death camps.
I spoke with Mr. H. one April evening, in his beautiful apartment overlooking the Gulf of Thermaikos. He speaks seven languages, Greek, Hebrew, Italian, French, Spanish, English, German. He was 19 years old when he was deported to Bergen-Belsen, where he stayed for two and a half years. Before the war he was a scout in the Maccabees, he's very proud of this. He learned German in the camp.
He said Salonica had a lively and dynamic atmosphere which was lost after the decimation of the Jewish community. His father was in the moving business before the war. I.H. helped in the business because he was good with foreign languages, Hebrew among them.
"Abahushi came from Israel, before the war, and chose the best port workers, and took them to Israel. In Haifa, a special Jewish company took them, found them housing and they took charge of the port of Haifa."
There are still Salonica Jews in Haifa, port workers who recognised him on his last trip there. The children of their children still work on the docks there.
I.H. said that anti-semitism had risen in Greece, before the war. The far-right organisation, EEE, characteristically anti-semitic and aided by the general rise of fascism in Europe, regularly attacked and burned Jewish homes and businesses.
He did not like the German language before the war. His father told him to learn German, "necessary for commerce." I.H. thought it had too many syllables, it was "a heavy language," and he didn't learn it. After the camp he speaks German "better than the Germans." He learned it by ear.
"No one can describe what we saw. We woke at five in the morning. The 'good morning' was 'Sweinrei auchten!' - pigs get up! Where will they take us?
"We wait in line, in lines of five. Five hundred people, two barracks, from 250 each. we were wondering, what happened to the first ones? We were kids, 19-20 years old. Five-by-five, they go in and they don't come out. This is it, we thought, the end, it's over. And we hear nothing.
"They brought two young soldiers, Germans, they had dogs, they watched from right and left that we don't get out of the line. Then I hear this young German, whom I did not know, of course, he tells me 'You, come here!' I thought that meant he was going to kill me in front of the others. This man had me carry stones from one sidewalk to the other, where there was a mountain of rocks. Right-left. And I had to carry them from one sidewalk to the other.
"All 500 died except me. Who was this soldier? Why did he want to do this to me, why?
"Let me tell you why. Because he knew that as an example, he had to make me suffer in front of the others. So the others could see that I had to do this. And this minute I'm alive.
"In my shop, I have dried flowers from the camp. A German came into my shop and was asking something in German. If you want to speak English I answer to you, I told him. I know German but I will not speak it. And you know why? Because I was two and a half years in concentration camp. And the German, what, what, what, auf wiedersen, auf wiedersen, he leaves. He got scared now, he thinks this guy is from concentration camp, maybe he'll kill me."
"Were there many Greeks in Bergen-Belsen with you?"
"We were about 250."
"All from Salonica?"
"All from Salonica."
"How many survived?"
"Forty."
(A long silence.)
"That's all."
"It's a miracle that we are alive. You cannot describe it to anyone. It's very difficult to describe what we went through.
"When we were liberated by the Russians, a Russian officer pointed to the Germans who were tied up and gave the prisoners his gun. He told them "kill him." But no one took the gun to kill him. Even after we had suffered so much and hated Germans so much, no one could kill a human being.
"We were from a different level."
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