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There is no doubt that after the war Salonica was empty of Jews. I remember that a short time before they were deported Jews entrusted us with the gold sterling savings and their jewelry to hide. These people didn’t know where they were going, they didn’t know they were destined to be turned into soap. [Editor’s note: During World War II it was widely believed that soap was being produced on an industrial scale from the bodies of Jewish concentration camp victims. Soap from human fat was never produced industrially. The Yad Vashem Memorial has also officially stated that the Nazis did not make soap from Jewish corpses, saying that such rumors were used by the Nazis to frighten camp inmates. Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soap_made_from_human_corpses] We always called on them to check, but they trusted us even though we insisted. They came to the shop to sell us useless things, empty bottles or jars, but we bought them just to support them.
We had invented a technique to hide gold sterling inside the soaps we made and which we stored in some wooden boxes where Germans kept cheese. In each soap one could fit three to four sterling coins, which we put inside just before the soap got cold, wrapped in some delicate piece of cloth. We also manufactured laundry soaps and bath soaps. We manufactured many such things. We wrapped the soaps in nice paper and sealed them.
We even put gold coins in toothpaste. We opened them at the wide end to take out the toothpaste so the gold coins would fit in, and then we closed them again to fit in the box. It is certain that some of them fell in the hands of the Germans. Imagine their surprise. Later the Germans – when an uncle of ours betrayed us – destroyed our machinery for manufacturing soap. I won’t say his name, God should forgive him, because both him and his son are dead.
We had invented a technique to hide gold sterling inside the soaps we made and which we stored in some wooden boxes where Germans kept cheese. In each soap one could fit three to four sterling coins, which we put inside just before the soap got cold, wrapped in some delicate piece of cloth. We also manufactured laundry soaps and bath soaps. We manufactured many such things. We wrapped the soaps in nice paper and sealed them.
We even put gold coins in toothpaste. We opened them at the wide end to take out the toothpaste so the gold coins would fit in, and then we closed them again to fit in the box. It is certain that some of them fell in the hands of the Germans. Imagine their surprise. Later the Germans – when an uncle of ours betrayed us – destroyed our machinery for manufacturing soap. I won’t say his name, God should forgive him, because both him and his son are dead.
Period
Interview
Eugenia Abravenel