Bella Camhi - November 18, 1999
Synagogues in Salonika
Yeah.
It's original. It's not, no make-up. So when uh, I--my grandma used to live there, we have to have the uh, like a small clinic--this is when I come back--everything was ripped. Everything. I mean anything... We had the biggest, the most gorgeous... Shaarey Zedek was copied from Salonika, Greece.
The synagogue you mean.
Yeah. It was a miniature Shaarey Zedek done in Greece. Uh...
How many synagogues were there do you think?
Oh, we got a few. I mean good ones? Three.
Three.
I mean, good ones.
Near you.
No, not near me.
In Salonika all together.
Salonika
Yeah. Uh, because they were just like a movie theaters.
And what happened to them?
All gone, all of them.
When the Germans came?
All of them. They used one for a warehouse. Uh, in '73 and '77 I have all my friends there. Today you're not going to find two thousand people over there. Mostly they died already. And between three generations is not a, a thousand fifty people there.
Do you remember when they tore up the cemetery? Did...
Oh, we were not there.
But did you hear, you must have heard about it.
Not in concentration camp, no.
Well, you were--this is 1942 they did that, so it's before...
Uh, no, we left it intact.
It was intact when you left?
Oh yeah, yeah. We, we didn't know anything about... The only thing we knew when we heard screamings. I was not far from the crematorium you know, like the armory.
In Auschwitz.
And uh. I was in Birkenau.
Birkenau.
I was in the worst camp that was invented.
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