The doctor’s dilemma
The facts are stark, if little known. Before World War Two, the Jewish community of Thessaloniki, Greece (Salonica, in its old Ottoman name) numbered over 50,000. Jews were this Mediterranean port city’s most numerous ethnic minority and had shared in many of its past glories. When the war was over, only 5,000, less than 10 percent, of the Salonica Jews survived. Between March 15 and August 10, 1943, the local Greek police, supervised by the SS, arranged the deportation of 45,000 men, women and children in 19 convoys, most of them bound for death at Auschwitz-Birkenau. My grandmother’s family was among them. Talking Until Nightfall is a grim and gripping family saga. It compiles the testimonies of three generations of the Matarasso family.
