Overview
- Interview Summary
- Solomon Chinocos Cohen, born in Salonica (Thessalonike), Greece, in 1917, describes his family; the fates of his immediate family members; attending Lycee Francais and graduating in 1938; going to Skadar (possibly Shkodër, Albania) in 1938 for two years; joining the army and fighting the Italians from October 1940 to April 1941; being taken in July 1942 as a forced laborer; how the family was taken to a ghetto, Rumlaulji; how they planned to escape either to Athens, Greece or the mountains; how a Greek partisan named Calidopolus, who was a son of a general, helped them get to the mountains; how his family was not politically motivated to join the underground but did so to save themselves; making contact with the National Liberation Front (EAM) partisans in 1943; how the family was led to Mount Paiku; being assigned to a battalion under Captain Mavros as a supply sergeant because he had been a sergeant when he fought the Italians; battles against the Germans, which took place until liberation; life in the partisan unit; his brother’s activities with the partisans and British; his life after the war; and his marriage to a woman who converted to Judaism.
- Interviewee
- Salomon Cohen
- Interviewer
- Peter Ryan
- Date
-
interview:
1996 June 19
- Geography
-
creation:
Thessalonike (Greece)
- Credit Line
- United States Holocaust Memorial Museum Collection, courtesy of the Jeff and Toby Herr Foundation
Physical Details
- Language
- Ladino
- Extent
-
2 videocasettes (Betacam SP) : sound, color ; 1/2 in..
Rights & Restrictions
- Conditions on Access
- There are no known restrictions on access to this material.
- Conditions on Use
- No restrictions on use
Keywords & Subjects
- Topical Term
- Forced labor--Greece. Hiding places--Greece. Holocaust, Jewish (1939-1945)--Greece--Personal narratives. Holocaust survivors--Greece. Jewish ghettos--Greece. Jewish property--Greece--Thessalonike. Jews--Greece--Thessalonike. World War, 1939-1945--Jewish resistance--Greece. World War, 1939-1945--Jews--Rescue--Greece. World War, 1939-1945--Underground movements--Greece. Men--Personal narratives.
- Geographic Name
- Greece--Armed Forces. Paiko Mountain (Greece) Shkodër (Albania) Thessalonike (Greece)
- Personal Name
- Cohen, Solomon, 1917-
Administrative Notes
- Holder of Originals
-
United States Holocaust Memorial Museum
- Legal Status
- Permanent Collection
- Provenance
- This was an oral history project sponsored by the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum during 1996 to interview Holocaust survivors in Saloniki, Greece. It was conducted in cooperation with the Jewish Community of Thessaloniki, Greece.
- Funding Note
- The production of this interview was made possible by Jeff and Toby Herr.
The cataloging of this oral history interview has been supported by a grant from the Conference on Jewish Material Claims Against Germany. - Special Collection
-
The Jeff and Toby Herr Oral History Archive
- Record last modified:
- 2023-11-16 08:31:35
- This page:
- http://collections.ushmm.org/search/catalog/irn513487
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Also in Oral history interviews of the Greece Documentation Project
Oral history interviews of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum's Greece Documentation Project.
Date: 1996
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Albert Nahmias, born in 1915 in Bitola, Yugoslavia (present day Macedonia), discusses moving with his family to Thessaloniki, Greece in 1917 after the bombardments during World War I; the Jewish community in Thessaloniki; opening a branch of his business in Skopje, Yugoslavia (present day Macedonia) and the German arrival in Skopje in April 1941; heading towards Tirana, Albania on March 22, 1942; being imprisoned as a communist in Tirana; being freed after the Italian capitulation and hiding in a local village with friends and relatives; escaping by boat for Italy in December 1943 and being rescued by the British Army; being given British identification cards; being transferred to Bari, Italy; traveling all over Italy to Milan and Rome; discovering his family was living in Athens, Greece; traveling from Bari to Greece in December 1945; the Jewish community in Thessaloniki after the war; his marriage in 1948; establishing a family business in Thessaloniki; his views on how Jews survived and the propaganda in the Jewish community; and the rabbis who collaborated with the Nazis.
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Oral history interview with Lily Molho
Oral History
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Oral history interview with Luisa Salem
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Oral history interview with Rula Frances
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Rula Frances, born in Volos, Greece, discusses her early family life; how Volos was first occupied by the Italians and then the Germans; the German restrictions on Jews; how her brother-in-law was warned by an Italian officer that his name was on a deportation list; moving to Thessaloniki, Greece; going to Athens, Greece; being given Greek identities by the Chief of Police in Volos; her immediate family hiding in various houses in Athens; being taken in by the Chief of Police, Tagaris, for a year and being betrayed by his maid; going to live with her mother; working in the offices of the Red Cross for the remainder of the war while the rest of her family remained in hiding; the survival of her immediate family; and her marriage in 1953.
Oral history interview with Silvia Sevi
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Oral History
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Oral history interview with Talma Shpancer
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