The identities and fate of Greek-Jewish children from Thessaloniki who perished in Nazi concentration camps during World War II are revealed for the first time in a new book written by retired lawyer Stella Salem.

Salem spent more than three years researching the city’s civil register files to find the names of the children which she then cross-checked with other files. She discovered that out of the more than 12,500 children born between 1926 and 1943 in Thessaloniki, fewer than 500 survived.

The first part of Salem’s research concerning preschoolers (those born between 1937 and 1943) formed the material for the first volume of her book “The lost children of Thessaloniki-Vol. A: The children that didn’t wear the star”. A second volume will focus on the school-age children. Concerning the preschoolers, data showed that only 100 made it alive while more than 4,500 were murdered.

“These children had been forgotten. It is the first time that their names are made public. It was very important for me to find their details and identify them,” Salem told the Athens-Macedonian News Agency. “The children, as soon as they arrived in Auschwitz, they didn’t even get a number. They didn’t even have a name. These children went straight into the ovens along with their mothers,” she added.

Out of the total number of children that survived by leaving from Thessaloniki before the deportations started, half went to Athens where they were safe while the city was under Italian occupation. In 1944, when Germans took over, the children tried again to escape, either with the help of the Resistance, or by crossing the Aegean to reach Cesme in Turkey and then reaching Palestine. Some of the children remained hidden in Thessaloniki.

Salem says she dedicates her book to the memory of the 12,000 Jewish children of Thessaloniki whose life ended brutally in Nazi camps.

Source: Athens-Macedonian News Agency