This picture was taken in 1938 in Thessalonica. The woman in the picture is my father’s sister Ester, next to her is her husband, Sabethai Pardo.
Sabethai Pardo was her distant uncle and lived in Monastir. He moved to Thessalonica where he had a grocery store, and they got married.
Before the war they lived close to us, in the center of Thessalonica.
Ester was the only of my father’s sister, who, along with her family, would come and celebrate Pesach with us, and my mother’s sister Laura and her husband David Haguel.
When we were liberated we found out that my grandmothers and my parents’ sisters were all dead.
The only one of our family that was rescued was Ester, her husband Sabethai Pardo and their daughter Nina, only because her son, Alberto, was a civil guard.
During the war the community had organized a few young people with the promise that they would be treated better, if they became civil guards.
My little cousin, who was twenty, joined them, and he helped bringing a group of people to the trains. A person from that group escaped.
When the Germans counted them and realized someone was missing they took him instead: he was sent to Lamia, to forced labor.
He tried to escape and was shot in cold blood. His parents went out looking for him; they left the ghetto and were saved.
