Tag #120626 - Interview #98621 (Roza Benveniste)

He had the shop with an associate and his name wasn’t showing at all. In Thessaloniki all the Jewish customers would come and the Christians would go to their own well known names of couture. When the shop opened in Athens, no one knew that it was a Jewish shop, and the name was Christian. They would admire the clothes, and they would say to each other, ‘Athens you see…’ So my father wouldn’t say anything until they would buy and afterwards he would tell them, ‘You had the same in Thessaloniki, but you had to come to Athens to buy it.’

Later they occupied the shop too, and my father again opened a shop together with a Christian, this time on a very popular street, the name of which I cannot remember. When things started getting out of hand, he hid the goods under a friend’s name in the State Warehouse.
Sometimes my father would take goods from the State Warehouse, and he would sell them. At some point a nasty old man understood what was happening. This resulted in the Germans finding the goods and the Christian going to prison. The goods were sold to firms that are still well known today. My father was telling me that even after the war he could see in the shop windows things that he had brought himself from France. Thankfully, my father’s friend was let free.