Almost 50,000 Jews from Salonica (now Thessaloniki) were sent to Nazi death camps during the Second World War. A local doctor who escaped and joined the resistance left behind an account of the tragedy. With anti-Semitism rising again, his family has decided it is the time to publish

Amid shouting and brutality, 2,400 Jews of all ages are herded into closed cattle trucks, jostled and shoved to hurry them along. Why yes, of course, they might miss the train! Sixty or 70 people and their bags are crammed into each truck. The doors are padlocked. The only air comes through small, barred windows. Supplies of water run out halfway through the journey …

In the tumult and confusion, mothers search for their children – two, four, sometimes eight in a family. Counting … counting in tears … The Schupos drive the crowd like cattle. Small children get tossed into trucks. People fall, pick themselves up, collect their belongings, lose their children and cry, ceaselessly they cry. They plead with tears and fume with rage, but to no avail. Everyone must leave, without exception. Ill? Too bad. Can’t walk? A stretcher will serve.
Even the insane from the Jewish asylum are herded aboard, along with disabled soldiers from the Albanian war – legless, armless, feet lost to frostbite – the blind and the paralytic, pregnant women and 80-year-olds from the old people’s home, the children from both orphanages – all are shoved aboard. The methods used are extremely brutal: no mercy is shown. The Transport is finally complete and the doors are padlocked. The train pulls out of Salonica …
A witness report came later that a train of cattle trucks has passed through a station near Belgrade from which came not lowing or bellowing, but the moans of human beings crying: “WATER! WATER! WE’RE SUFFOCATING! OPEN THE DOORS!”