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When I came out of the camp and found our house on Evzonon Street looted, the only thing I found under a staircase were some books, among them a dictionary they had given me as a present in Paris, as a prize, and I took it along. I was pissed off that they had taken our furniture; we had very nice furniture.
I don’t know how, but I decided to go to the Gestapo to complain and ask to get the furniture back. And they gave us some back. They gave me a SIPO [German abbreviation for ‘Sicherheitspolizei’ or ‘security police’]. These SIPO wore badges, they were policemen., We went straight to one warehouse and they gave me some furniture, which I sold to get some money since we were going to leave anyhow. We were left without any money, except for what we had taken along, but this too we had spent.
And one day we got onto the train heading for Athens. It wasn’t a non-stop line; it had a change in Bralos [a place along the railway line in mainland Greece], because the train couldn’t go through at a certain point. They loaded us onto lorries to continue, and then we took the train again somewhere in Atalandi [a small town in mainland Greece], and then we reached Athens. There they took us near Omonia [a central square in Athens], to an empty high school, where there were twenty other families of Italian citizens who had left before us from Thessaloniki. These were real Italians, not like my mother who had married a Greek citizen. And we stayed all together for a while.I didn’t like this concentration, which was dangerous, even though deportations had not begun then in Athens. I simply thought we would be better off if we were separated. So we went and lived in a house on Alexandra’s Avenue, in Gizi [a neighborhood in central Athens]. In a very beautiful house, we rented a small apartment in our name, since there were no deportations yet. In other words we didn’t know if the situation would change. We of course rented the apartment from a Christian.
Six months later, after the surrender of Badoglio [14], they started hunting the Italians. Both the soldiers and the officers. And I remember that next door lived a lady who had a boyfriend, an Italian officer. As soon as these things happened, he threw away his uniform, wore civilian’s clothes and hid in this house. A few days later we saw him with a carriage selling tomatoes.
After we had left the Hirsch camp in Thessaloniki, when we lived on Kalapothaki Street while getting ready to leave Thessaloniki, we were in need of money and sold a shop to my uncle’s former partners. Those were called Dimitrakopoulos-Xenakis. We sold them a shop in the building on Kalapothaki Street. The price we got wasn’t very high of course, but this too helped us. We lived on it for a while in Athens. But after a while since we didn’t have any money once again, we did some work in Athens. We took a bench selling soaps. My brother of course helped me; we sold ‘Sapone di lusso.’ And this is how we managed to survive.
I don’t know how, but I decided to go to the Gestapo to complain and ask to get the furniture back. And they gave us some back. They gave me a SIPO [German abbreviation for ‘Sicherheitspolizei’ or ‘security police’]. These SIPO wore badges, they were policemen., We went straight to one warehouse and they gave me some furniture, which I sold to get some money since we were going to leave anyhow. We were left without any money, except for what we had taken along, but this too we had spent.
And one day we got onto the train heading for Athens. It wasn’t a non-stop line; it had a change in Bralos [a place along the railway line in mainland Greece], because the train couldn’t go through at a certain point. They loaded us onto lorries to continue, and then we took the train again somewhere in Atalandi [a small town in mainland Greece], and then we reached Athens. There they took us near Omonia [a central square in Athens], to an empty high school, where there were twenty other families of Italian citizens who had left before us from Thessaloniki. These were real Italians, not like my mother who had married a Greek citizen. And we stayed all together for a while.I didn’t like this concentration, which was dangerous, even though deportations had not begun then in Athens. I simply thought we would be better off if we were separated. So we went and lived in a house on Alexandra’s Avenue, in Gizi [a neighborhood in central Athens]. In a very beautiful house, we rented a small apartment in our name, since there were no deportations yet. In other words we didn’t know if the situation would change. We of course rented the apartment from a Christian.
Six months later, after the surrender of Badoglio [14], they started hunting the Italians. Both the soldiers and the officers. And I remember that next door lived a lady who had a boyfriend, an Italian officer. As soon as these things happened, he threw away his uniform, wore civilian’s clothes and hid in this house. A few days later we saw him with a carriage selling tomatoes.
After we had left the Hirsch camp in Thessaloniki, when we lived on Kalapothaki Street while getting ready to leave Thessaloniki, we were in need of money and sold a shop to my uncle’s former partners. Those were called Dimitrakopoulos-Xenakis. We sold them a shop in the building on Kalapothaki Street. The price we got wasn’t very high of course, but this too helped us. We lived on it for a while in Athens. But after a while since we didn’t have any money once again, we did some work in Athens. We took a bench selling soaps. My brother of course helped me; we sold ‘Sapone di lusso.’ And this is how we managed to survive.
Period
Interview
Nico Saltiel