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From my family, I was the last one to come back to Thessaloniki. I was the last to return because I went to Naousa, where they had told me that my mother lived, in the house of an old school friend of mine, who was now a major in the army and had come from Egypt; Mr. Oikonomou his name was and he was a captain in Naousa. He was not treating the villagers well, because Naousa was a village of partisans and he was a major of the army.
When I got to Thessaloniki, in the neighborhood of Agia Triada, I got a trolley to put my things in, and I was heading for home. It seems that one of the people that I met while arranging things had nailed me and they came from the Security Police to catch me. They took the trolley, and took me to their main offices. They asked, ‘What have you got here?’ ‘I have some blankets, some bullets and some other things.’ They took the blankets, I had five for the whole family, but they also took other things that had fallen out. And this anti-communist in Thessaloniki, the well-known Koufitsa [24], the head of the secret police said, ‘You see, Burla, everything has come back to us.’ I replied, ‘As time will go by and in the years to come, we will regain what has been taken from us. As soon as he heard that, he and a few others fell on me, and beat me up badly.
Anyway, so I got to the house wounded. When my mother saw me, she was shocked. They all had come down from the mountain, they got a house of an old Jewish family that now lived in Switzerland. This house was left empty, we let ourselves in, us and a few other Jews that later moved to Israel. So that was our haunt. And that’s how the whole family got back together and we started all over again.
When I got to Thessaloniki, in the neighborhood of Agia Triada, I got a trolley to put my things in, and I was heading for home. It seems that one of the people that I met while arranging things had nailed me and they came from the Security Police to catch me. They took the trolley, and took me to their main offices. They asked, ‘What have you got here?’ ‘I have some blankets, some bullets and some other things.’ They took the blankets, I had five for the whole family, but they also took other things that had fallen out. And this anti-communist in Thessaloniki, the well-known Koufitsa [24], the head of the secret police said, ‘You see, Burla, everything has come back to us.’ I replied, ‘As time will go by and in the years to come, we will regain what has been taken from us. As soon as he heard that, he and a few others fell on me, and beat me up badly.
Anyway, so I got to the house wounded. When my mother saw me, she was shocked. They all had come down from the mountain, they got a house of an old Jewish family that now lived in Switzerland. This house was left empty, we let ourselves in, us and a few other Jews that later moved to Israel. So that was our haunt. And that’s how the whole family got back together and we started all over again.
Period
Interview
Moshe Burla