Following the Axis invasion of Greece, the Nazis began persecuting the country’s Jews much as they had across the rest of occupied Europe, beginning with small indignities and culminating in mass imprisonment and deportations. Among the many Jews confined to the Thessaloniki ghetto during this period were Sarina Saltiel, Mathilde Barouh, and Neama Cazes—three women bound for Auschwitz who spent the weeks before their deportation writing to their sons. Do Not Forget Me brings together these remarkable pieces of correspondence, shocking accounts of life in the ghetto with an emotional intensity rare even by the standards of Holocaust testimony.
Table of Contents:
List of Illustrations
Foreword to the English Edition
Serge Klarsfeld
Foreword to the Greek Edition
Yannis Boutaris
Introduction Note from the Jewish Museum of Greece
Zanet Battinou
Acknowledgements
Chronology
Maps
Introduction
Leon Saltiel
Translation Note
Leon Saltiel and Jenny Demetriou
Prologue: Instructions to Jews Migrating from Thessaloniki
List of Letters
Letters of Sarina (Sara) Saltiel
Introduction
Eleni Saltiel
Short biography of Maurice Saltiel
Eleni Saltiel
Exercpts from the Autobiography of Maurice Saltiel
Letters of Sarina (Sara) Saltiel
Letters of Mathilde Barouh
Introduction
Leon Saltiel
Letters of Mathilde Barouh
Letters of Neama Cazes
Introduction
Leon Saltiel
Letters of Neama Cazes
Bibliography
About the Author :
Leon Saltiel holds a doctorate in Contemporary Greek History from the University of Macedonia, in Thessaloniki, Greece, and has been a post-doctoral researcher at the Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies in Geneva, Switzerland and the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki. He is a member of the Greek delegation to the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA).
Review :
Praise for the Greek edition:
“Letters of this kind are uniquely valuable testimonies, for the simple reason that they were not intended as testimonies; they were not written with posterity in mind.” • Kathimerini
“The testimonies of the extermination of the Jewish community of Thessaloniki are not mere evidence or potential historical sources. They are in a way a means of communication, phantasmagoric, whose function is based on the recognition of distance—physical or metaphysical.” • Ta Nea
