Tag #126505 - Interview #97772 (Enrico Modiano)

We had heard here that the Holocaust was taking place against European Jewry, and that the Jews were being sent to death camps. There was not a lot of news in the papers about that. We were following the events from the radio.

Actually, I had some relatives, who had managed to escape from Europe. They were initially living in the city Plovdiv in Bulgaria. One of my relatives had wanted to escape to Israel by ship. The ship, El Salvador, had arrived in Turkish waters, and stayed at the port for a period of 24 hours. Unfortunately, after that, the Turkish posts forced the ship and its passengers to vacate Turkish waters. The ship got destroyed due to a terrible storm close the Silivri Island, and sank. Most of its passengers, unfortunately, drowned. One of my wife’s relatives, Elvira Yahni [Yahni is her maiden name], however, managed to survive. She apparently was traveling with her boyfriend on the ship. When the ship started sinking, they managed to hold onto a piece of wood, and survived. She later returned to Bulgaria, and immigrated to the land of Israel afterwards with a different ship.