TRANSCRIPT
Nina Angelo is listening to her father speaking about his Holocaust experience during World War 2. It’s one of the rare recordings in English. More detailed interviews were also recorded in French, as 77-year-old Nina discovered decades later.
“In the Holocaust Museum in Washington, there were seven hours of interviews. It was like the gift that I needed to put my family story together. So, I contacted them and they sent it to me.”
“It was snowing. There was this young girl totally naked walking in the snow. She died there. I saw it with my eyes. It was the winter of ‘45.”
“The horrors that he'd seen and experienced, I would've never imagined, and that is what drew me in to try and understand this man who was my father.”
“I knew he was in Auschwitz because I knew the numbers that he had. I knew that he'd lost most of the family.”
Even so, Nina says uncovering details of his concentration camp experience was a painful process.
“I just could not believe the things that I was hearing. It was a big, big shock to me. It was only I had to sort of disassociate myself from the pain of it, from the horror of it.”
“I was the only Greek in the Kanada Kommando. There were more men from Vienna, German Jews, French and others. We in Kanada were the healthiest as we ate and our nutrition was good.”
By bartering valuables for extra food, Mr Yacoel was able to save himself and others. Food was also offered to young women.
“We made a bunker in a barrack. In that barrack, we had some mattresses and blankets. We made a secret place where we couldn't be seen. We took some girls there because we could get some potatoes and a bit of food from the kitchen.”
“They could entice the women in with food for a bit of loving, a bit of holding, a bit of kissing, just anything. And that's when he saw my mom, who was 16 years younger than him, and he made a pass at her, offered her food, and she just knocked him back.”
Nina Angelo has spent years learning more about the suffering of Greek Jews at the hands of the Nazis.
The Thessaloniki community was descended from Jews expelled from Spain in the 15th century. They participated actively in Greek society, until most lost their lives in the camps.
The Greek Ambassador to Australia Stavros Venizelos explains:
“Before the war, the community numbered around 60,000 people. In 1943, the occupying Nazis in Thessaloniki started rounding up the Jews and sending them mainly to Auschwitz-Birkenau where 94 per cent of them approximately perished with only 2000 surviving. But it was not only from Thessaloniki that Jews were deported to the camps, it was also from islands like Rhodes, Kos, Leros and other parts of Greece.”
After surviving Auschwitz and as war drew to a close in 1945, Nina’s father was among survivors force-marched across Germany as the allies advanced.
“The day I left, Auschwitz we didn't know what was happening and where we were going. A few days after we left, the Russians came into Auschwitz. It may have been January as there was snow. We were walked away by foot.”
They arrived eventually at Mauthausen concentration camp in Austria, where Mr Yacoel was among 40-thousand liberated in 1945.
“It was terrible. We were so sick. Some days I felt I was going crazy. It was the hunger of hungers. There was so much illness.”
“The Americans came in and saw all these people, the bodies and the ones who were nearly bodies, and they just bought them food. And the people were so hungry, they just got into the food and they just ate and ate and they were told, don't eat too much. And they died because their body just couldn't take the food that they were putting in there. I find that so sad to have gone through all that they'd gone through, and to actually die from eating too much.”
Nina’s mother and father met again by chance, in a Red Cross Canteen in Paris. They later married in London. Nina was born in Greece and in 1949 the family migrated to Australia. Nina’s arrival in Sydney even made front-page news.
“I was sitting on the suitcases at Sydney Airport while they were going through immigration, etc. And a photographer was walking by and I was sitting there holding my two little Greek dolls. And they took a photo. And the next thing, I was in the front page of the paper.”
Nina’s father died of an aneurism in 1993, and she has worked tirelessly to ensure his story is not forgotten.
“My father influenced me, my mum, to speak up for what is right and to treat people with respect and to honour them. The truth has come out, and I will speak up against that forever.”
The story of the near-extermination of Thessaloniki’s Sephardic Jews, will be the focus of the long-awaited Holocaust Memorial Museum and Education Centre, says Ambassador Venizelos.
“It is very crucial to tell these stories for several reasons. First, to honour the victims, those who perished in the worst massive crimes of the 20th century. Also, give voice to the innocent, the survivors, their families So for these reasons, the museum is very important to commemorate these tragic and brutal events of the 20th century. It is a project funded by the Greek government, by Germany by the German Government as well, and the Greek Jewish community of Thessaloniki and other private organisations.”
Nina is among many keen to share family stories. Despite ill health, she also hopes to attend the official opening.
“The first time that they're doing something on such a scale to honour all these people. And they were my family. And so, I really wish and hope that I can be there for the opening of this so that I could give my dad's story over. It's important to me because I want to honour my relatives or my ancestors that were taken in such a horrid way!”
