Those Who Survived: The Resistance, Deportation, and Return of the Jews from Salonika in the 1940s

Before World War II, there were more than 50,000 Jews in Salonika. More than 46,000 of them were deported to the Nazi death camps, and around 96% of them perished there. Those Who Survived tells the story of some of the few survivors. Their stories are the exception; death was the rule. Using a vast wealth of personal testimonies and archival documents, this book narrates previously unknown stories, reconsidering events from a microhistorical perspective. It traces the trajectories of three groups of people who shared a common experience of persecution. The first part concentrates on a group of about twenty young Jews from Salonika who joined the partisans and fought against the Germans. It explores their decisions, their everyday lives and the battles in the mountains, and life after the liberation. The second part exposes the previously unknown story of a group of 100–200 Jews from Salonika who survived the Nazi concentration and death camps, subsequently becoming DPs in the Feldafing camp, Germany. The book discusses various aspects of their everyday lives in this extraterritorial experience: searching for family members, food, the black market, sociability, love and marriage, Zionism and illegal immigration to Mandatory Palestine, waiting for visas and departure for the U.S. The third and final parttraces the fate of one family that was deported to Bergen-Belsen. Using letters, diaries,and testimonies, the narrative sheds light on their lives in the first months of occupation, in Bergen-Belsen, after liberation, upon the return to Salonika, and in the aftermath of the war. In this innovative study, now available for the first time in English, Rika Benveniste confront sofficial and private archives and testimonies with collective memory and historiography. The fascinating and moving personal stories narrated in the book, together with the author’s reflections, will interest historians and the general public alike.