Rina Revah, 84, was almost four years old when she was sent to the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp in northern Germany with her parents in 1943. She spent the next two years of her childhood there and witnessed events that will stay with her forever. .
“I’ve never had a toy, I’ve never had a doll,” Revah said from her home in Thessaloniki, where a thriving Jewish community had existed for centuries before World War II.
“The first memories I have of toys are from the post-war period, it was with a girl I became friends with and we used to play in mud puddles. We made cookies and clay cakes.”
Revah is one of the last survivors of the 50,000 Jews who lived in pre-war Thessaloniki, honored each year in ceremonies around March 15, when in 1943 the first train left the city for the concentration camps.
A march to the Holocaust memorial in the northern Greek city was held on Sunday and flowers were laid on the train platforms at the station.
In the concentration camp, her mother would leave her in the bed they shared, but Revah would venture outside.
“One day, outside the camp, I saw a huge deep wagon with wooden sides pulled by horses. Two workers were throwing naked bodies of workers into the wagon,” he said.
“At one point the wagon was overflowing with bodies and an officer in high black boots got in and started trampling the bodies to make room for more. I don’t know what a four-year-old thought of such a scene, but I remember I started crying,” she said.
Of those deported, only 1,950 made it back to Thessaloniki alive, according to the community website, including Revah’s parents, a set of grandparents and an uncle. Many of her other relatives have been lost. Today, the city’s Jewish community numbers about 1,200.
“After the war we never talked about the concentration camp at home, not at all,” Revah said. “It shouldn’t be forgotten. I think we owe it to the people who have died.”
Source: Terra
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