Seven Miracles - The Story of a Survivor from Veria, Greece

This is the story of the miraculous survival of the Holocaust in Greece, of our entire family of six, including my two-year old brother, hiding, on the run, and even after being arrested three times, including incarceration in the transit camp for planned transfer to Auschwitz, we still survived.

I was born In Salonika before the war. My father, Mordochai Daniel was the youngest of eight children of Aaron Daniel and Esmeralda Sarfati Daniel. My mother, born in Salonika, was the second daughter of Isaac Modiano and Sarah Frances Modiano. We lived in Salonika for a few years and then moved to Veria, my father’s hometown, about 45 miles west of Salonica. The community in Veria, dating back about 2,000 years, led a traditional Jewish life.

We moved to one of three apartments around a courtyard where my grandparents Aaron and Esmeralda and my uncle Joseph’s family lived. Veria had a small Ladino speaking Jewish community, which at its peak reached about 850 members. Jews lived for the most part in a gated quarter called the Mahle. We had a Synagogue, a school, and a cemetery. We led a traditional observant Jewish life, celebrating all holidays to the fullest. I entered the Jewish School and I had many friends and playmates. I spoke Ladino exclusively at home, at school, and at play.

Greece was attacked by fascist Italy in October 1940. After it failed to conquer the country, Germany, with the help of the Bulgarians, came to Italy’s assistance by invading Greece in 1941. The country was occupied and divided into three occupation zones, German in the North, Bulgarian in the North East and Italian in the South and the islands. Soon after, the Germans initiated the implementation of the “Final Solution” with the eager help of the Bulgarians but without cooperation from the Italians. By the end of the war, 87% of the Jewish community of Greece, nearly 80,000 people, had been deported and murdered in the camps of Northern Europe.

The Germans started in Salonika by forcing thousands of Jewish men into hard labor, expropriating the cemetery with nearly half a million graves going back centuries. All Jewish properties and businesses were transferred to gentile managers and all Jews were concentrated in three ghettos. Deportations to Auschwitz started in early 1943, with two to three trains a week, each carrying 2,000 to 3,000 people in cattle cars. Jews from other smaller communities were brought to the transit camp in Salonika for deportation.

After the deportations from Salonika started, a few members of the Veria community, including my two uncles, started moving their families to nearby mountain villages. We did not follow them because we heard that Jews of Italian citizenship were exempted. My mother, of the Modiano

family in Salonika, had been registered as an Italian citizen at birth. The remaining community in Veria continued their traditional life hoping that the Germans might not bother with a few hundred Jews in a small town. Some were anticipating a new life, after deportation to Krakow in Poland. Only one senile old woman was crying: “mos van  a matar a todos,” they are going

 to kill us all. We were hoping that we could invoke my mother’s Italian citizenship at birth.

It was the last day of Passover, Tuesday, April 27, 1943. My father and I went to the Synagogue for services. My older brother Aaron (Anri) did not feel like coming, as if he had some premonition. My uncle Joseph, who had already moved his large family, (his wife and ten children) to a mountain village, came to the Synagogue, too. Suddenly, during the services, three town policemen accompanied by a civilian, a Jew named Edgar Kounio as I found out later, came and blocked the main entrance of the Synagogue. Everyone in the Synagogue froze, but the policemen motioned us to continue with the service. My father, my uncle Joseph and I sneaked through a side door on the north wall leading to the women’s section and outdoors through the separate entrance/exit of that section. We were the only three people from that service who eventually survived (Miracle 1).

Uncle Joseph went home, packed quickly, and left for the mountain village to join his family. My father and I returned to our apartment and after a quick family conference, decided that my father, Anrim and I would leave immediately, fetching my family after reaching the village of Palastitsia. When we reached the river Aliakmon, we were warned by a local who recognized my father to avoid the barge guarded by German guards (Miracle 2).

We started our return home, but, being very tired and hungry, we took a short rest.  We came home and found my mother in a panic, telling us that we missed the police who had just stopped to see if any Jews were still around in the courtyard apartments (Miracle 3).

We remained hidden in our basement apartment for a couple of weeks, until we were betrayed by our new courtyard neighbors, living rent-free in one of our apartments, who told the police we’d returned. We were led to the German command for interrogation, and miraculously avoided the anticipated summary execution after my mother invoked her Italian citizenship at birth. This was not sufficient for exemption, since she had married a Greek citizen. We were transported to the Baron Hirsch transit camp in Salonika, forced to wait for the next convoy to Auschwitz.

There were a few other families there in the same situation as ours. We requested formal protection from the Italian Consul in Salonika, and the Consul consulted the Italian Ambassador in Athens, who in turn sent his inquiry to Rome. After due deliberation, the Deputy Foreign Minister in Rome, Giuseppe Bastianini, sent his response: the families with a mother or wife born an Italian citizen, could not be regarded as Italian. However, the matter needed further discussion. In the meantime, he advised that all such families, with the exception of husbands, be released. Once out, my mother and the other women in the same situation lobbied tirelessly for the release of their husbands before the next convoy to Auschwitz. The convoy took place, however, but the Italian Consul sent his Military Attache to the camp to ensure that the husbands of the released women were kept safe in the camp and not deported. The convoy took place, and a short time afterwards the men were released. My father came out of the camp holding a certificate of Italian citizenship. On the margin it said: Provisorio / Temporary (Miracle 4).

Soon afterwards, the Italians transported all Italian and “temporary” Italian citizens to Athens, which was then under Italian administration. All Jews of any nationality were then free in Athens, until Italy signed an armistice agreement with the allies. The Germans then took over all previously Italian administered territories of Greece, and began applying all their antisemitic laws, regardless of citizenship. The Germans issued announcements in the newspapers for all Jews to present themselves and register. Failure to do so would be punished by execution.

We fled to my Aunt Lucy’s family and made plans to go into hiding. My father also happened to run into an acquaintance from Veria, a gentile who offered to help. Once he realized that my father had sufficient means, he obtained baptismal certificates for the entire family with Christian names. He located and rented two villas on the outskirts of Athens, near the mountain of Ymettos, which in pre-war times used to serve as a summer resort for wealthy Athenians. Once we moved to Karea, he started visiting with supplies for our upkeep, since my father was more

than covering the expenses from his treasure of gold coins.

As the tide of the war was turning against the Germans, they decided to have a roundup of all remaining Jewish communities in the formerly Italian occupation zone in mainland Greece. On Sunday, March 26, 1944, we were awakened before dawn by four Greek speaking armed men who were very abusive and threatened to arrest us. After a long agonizing pleading, they generously accepted my father’s bribe of 150 gold coins (about $75,000 today) and left us (Miracle 5).

As soon as they left, we contacted Tio Moshon (my mother’s and Aunt Lucy’s uncle), who gave us the name of Barba Christos, who lived next to his closed one room taverna in a suburb of Athens. We and uncle Joseph’s family packed whatever we could carry and walked for over four hours to Barba Christo’s taverna. Since we left in such a hurry, we did not have enough clothing or other supplies to carry on. My father and uncle Joseph started going to abandoned houses in Karea to fetch a few items for our daily needs. On one of these trips, as they approached the homes, the maintenance man of a neighboring villa jumped in front and warned them not to go any closer, as the Gestapo men were inside and waiting for them (Miracle 6). They left and never went back.  

We looked for new accommodations and found an unfinished brick house in Nea Smyrni, a suburb occupied by former refugees from Smyrna, Turkey. Only two small connecting rooms below ground level were finished. There was no running water and only an outhouse in the yard. We got water from our neighbor’s well, and did our best to integrate into the neighborhood. We kids, under our Christian names, made good friends and played with the neighborhood kids.

As the war was coming to an end, the Greek Resistance was growing. To fight this resistance, the Germans organized a Greek collaborationist police, who would blockade a given neighborhood and take all grown men to German command for further interrogation. One such day, they came to Nea Smyrni and started picking men for further investigation. One of the officers came to our basement rooms and decided that my father and uncle looked suspicious. My father panicked and confessed to the officer that we had nothing to do with the Greek Resistance, we were Jewish and trying to hide. At the same time, he reached into his pocket and gave him a gold coin. The officer said that he was accepting it and would leave us alone for the sake of the kids. A few minutes later he came back saying that his commander was asking him too many questions. My father gave him one more golden coin which he accepted “only for the sake of the kids.” 

It was August and as usual the weather in Athens was clear and sunny everyday. However, one day something totally unusual for Athens in the summer happened; a rainstorm. The rain was so heavy that the streets turned into rivers. Suddenly, the water started flooding into our basement rooms and filled them to chest-high level. My mother started swimming and crying: The Germans have been persecuting us all this time and now; even God is against us? My father’s response was “גם זה לטוב” - This may also be for the Good!

We left the basement rooms soaking wet after trying to salvage what we could carry. We knocked on many doors, until Mrss Dimitra answered and welcomed us in. She gave us some dry clothes and offered to give us shelter. My father thanked her and promised to pay her. She responded “pay me what you can when you can.” My father added one more thing: “We are Jewish.” She laughed in response, “the whole neighborhood knows that. We were refugees ourselves and we recognized the look of a hunted animal.” We settled down as well as we could and tried to think about what would come next. One day there was a knock on Mrs. Dimitra’s door. It was the collaborationist police who had come looking for us and found a flooded basement. They asked Mrs. Dimitra “where are those people?” She responded “I don’t know, they were flooded and left.” She saved our lives (Miracle 7).