Eighty years after the first train from Greece to German and Polish concentration camps was sent, the last Holocaust survivor from the Jewish community of Trikala recalls and says in “K” its horror Holocaust. Touched, she recalls footage from 14 months of captivity, the harsh living conditions in the Auschwitz-Birkenau and Bergen-Belsen camps, and the 22-day death march through the frozen lands of Germany, which led to many deaths. OUR 96-year-old Esther (Nucky) Matafia-Bega, born in July 1927 in the Trikala region, was to witness the hatred of the German troops for the Jewish citizens of Europe. Such as says “K”“I had two older sisters. My mom (Miriam) and dad (Matthias) had two other lost girls, I was last in line. I was still in school when we got caught.”

The persecution of the Mattathia family begins with the invasion of German troops into Greek territory. According to Ms. Bega, “my family and I left (from Trikala) and went to the village, to Korbowo. But later my father got sick and we went down (to Trikala). Our house was bombed and we moved very close to the house of my father’s brother who lived in Volos. There were too many rooms in this house. This was the period when the villages around Muzaki burned to the ground and all the fire victims came and ordered them. Before catching us, they gave the order to all of us to go and report ourselves. When the Germans came to catch us, they didn’t announce us, but, unfortunately, it was these traitors, traitors who betrayed us.”

On March 24, 1944, the imposition of a curfew from 10 p.m. to 8 a.m. aggravated the displacement of the population, and arrests of Jewish citizens. “They came once and didn’t catch us, but they caught us the second time. We couldn’t leave, but dad caught up with me and went into the next room. There was a very nice family with a son, and my dad hid there and they didn’t catch him.”

The Germans take the “final solution” of the Jewish question and round up thousands of citizens in concentration camps. In the Trikala region, the Nazis staged a series of persecutions, arresting 142 members of the Jewish community.

“When we were caught, they had already arrested the entire area, as they were announced. We were dragged to the square, put into cars and brought to Larisa. They gathered people from Larisa, Karditsa, but they did not immediately catch them from Yanina. They took us on a Friday and we left the following Monday. The Red Cross arrived at the station and fed us. Then the Germans put us in wagons, with a window and a box for needs, and after 13 days we arrived at the camp.”

In the camp

If someone tried to escape, he was killed and forced to get up on his way to work.

“The Germans didn’t talk to us at all, they just locked us there (on the trains). When we went down (to Birkenau), they were with some dogs and shouted “Raus, Raus”. Then there was the screening. At the screening, we girls, that is, me and my sisters, said that we would go together. “Go together,” Mom tells us, “and we will reciprocate.” Unfortunately, the youngest and the oldest were put into cars and, as we later learned, were taken to the crematorium. We were told that “you will meet your parents later”, but we did not see them again.

“We entered Auschwitz. First they gave us a number (77092), then they washed us, cut our hair and gave us old clothes. Then we were taken to doss-houses, which had beds and cots, and a few days later we were assigned to different jobs. I was placed in the Biberai commando. There they brought us all the old clothes, we cut them into strips and wove them to clean the weapons.”

The nightmare of the camp and the terrible living conditions were not Ms. Bega’s only problem. A few days after arriving at Auschwitz, the German guards decide to separate the sisters, leaving Naki alone. “At first we were together with my sisters, but then they separated us. It was Camp A and Camp B, there were big gates. When they left me, I sometimes visited them. My second sister had severe pleurisy, severe, with punctures, and she became ill. They took her to the hospital. As I was told by another who was with her in the hospital, my sister died there.

“My other sister and I were together at the camp until the end. At some point, she came out of the kitchen, where they were throwing out potato and radish peels, to find something to eat, and the German hit her on the head with a cotton, stabbed her and took her to the hospital.

“In the morning they woke us up very early and put us in line for counting, it was called “appell”. Then we went to work with music and tap. Barbed wire all around. When someone tried to escape, he was killed and imprisoned on the way to work. They made them stand up with some shovels so that we could see them, to set an example. Nobody could leave.

“One Sunday, I went to a trough of water, which was full for a while, and there was barbed wire around it, and I took the cup that they gave us tea and soup and went to wash it; I slipped and as my feet were in the water I was hooked on the wires. I have scars on my back. A woman came to pull me and also got caught (on the wires). He took the stick from inside and pulled me. They took me almost dead, but I recovered. The Germans called us only “Raus, Raus”.

Living conditions and crematoria

“There was a wall in the corner where we were standing and you could see the chimney. At night, the sky turned red with flames and smelled of meat. At first we did not know, we thought that we would take revenge on our parents, but the Thessalonians who had left earlier became hardened and told us: “Do not expect to see them again. They are finished.” Over time, we understood. We saw the fugars and we knew.

“When we went to the toilet, as soon as we entered, our hands were raised and our bones were visible. Those who were weak were recorded, they took a number, there were no names except numbers, and when the number of people was filled, they were collected and taken to the crematorium. Then we went into the room, tied our clothes into a ball, we had to get a number outside, and we waited in the big room naked until the clothes came out of the oven to be given to us to get dressed, to leave.

Living conditions in the Auschwitz camp did not leave a glimmer of hope. The German detention-extermination model was developed with the aim of psychologically and physically degrading prisoners. As Ms. Bega explains, “They stopped our periods, they injected us with medicine and we didn’t have periods again, and the men were given the medicine again. We couldn’t even keep our religious customs. Who can observe the customs, where is the mind enough for this? We were like animals there.”

Among other things, Ms. Bege had to deal with a language gap. Living with prisoners from all over Europe and having difficulty communicating with fellow inmates proved to be one of the biggest challenges. “The prisoners were from many states and tribes. I had no luck with the Greek women, they were foreigners. The beds were square, turned upside down, and we slept on them for 5-6 people.

From Auschwitz to Bergen-Belsen and the death march

“They didn’t know what to do with us. After Auschwitz, we were picked up and taken to the Bergen-Belsen camp. There we were put on some machines to do different things. We didn’t stay there long. Then we were taken to the city, to a large building, there were many floors, and they separated me and my older sister and probably killed her. Then they took us every morning, and it was a wall, and we were told to throw stones at each other. When it was May, it was very cold, frosty and we were forced to throw stones at each other to do something. Meanwhile, the Germans began to retreat.

“We walked for 22 days”

“The next day we were taken from there, and we walked for 22 days. During the day we walked, and in the evening they left us in some meadow to rest, and in the morning we walked again. Those who were not afraid entered the houses and begged for alms. I remember that on the last day before we were released, I went into the house and saw a German. It seems he was good. Since he had some bread, he cut off a piece and gave us dessert as well. We tried to hide them so that others wouldn’t take them from us. We got back in line and left. If we didn’t go, they would have killed us.

One day it was raining and the Germans were calling us to give us something, but no one came up and we said, “Let’s die right now. We can’t take it anymore.” Meanwhile, we were full of lice. In the camp they let us through the oven, but all these days that we walked, we were full of lice.

As soon as we got to the village, they left half of them. Chaos was created there with the people they left behind. In another village where we went, the rest was left to us. Now what are we supposed to do there?

We found a multi-storey building, probably soldiers lived there. We entered, there were bunks and large stoves. We went around, begging for clothes in the houses, and then, where we lived, pulled out planks from the bunks, put them on the stoves and kindled a fire. Later we went down to the basement and left all the tattered clothes behind.

Liberation