From Thessaloniki to Auschwitz and back

Viac o knihe

Before the Second World War there was a thriving Jewish community of some 50,000 people in Thessaloniki, Greece. In 1943, under Nazi occupation, virtually the entire community was deported to Auschitz extermination camp. That Erika Amariglio and several members of her family survived is due only to a series of coincidences, which started with the fact that they were on the first transport to Auschwitz, and of the 2,800 people on their train, they were the only ones who spoke fluent German.Erika Amariglio's story covers the period before the war in Thessaloniki, the German occupation and the gradual tightening of restrictions, the transportation, the two-and-a-half years that she and members of her family spent in Auschwitz, the long death march back to Germany, their escape to Yugoslavia, and the eventual reunion of the family in Greece. It concludes with the author's return to Auschwitz many years later as a delegate to an international conference on the Holocaust.