Oral history interview with Salvator Moshe

Salvator Moshe, born in 1915 in Salonika (Thessalonike), Greece, discusses his family’s background; his four sisters; his childhood; his extended family; growing up Orthodox; his father, who was a shoemaker; living in France for a brief time after school; his work before the war; antisemitism in Greece in the 1930s; the beginning of the war for Greece; the Italian occupation; fighting in Albania against the Italians; the German occupation of Greece; the establishment of a ghetto in Salonika; the deportations to Auschwitz; the train to Auschwitz and the process of selection, shaving, disinfection, and tattooing; never seeing any of his family again after the selection; being befriended by the head of the bunker and not having to work outside; life in Auschwitz; a Polish zookeeper who saved his life by telling him to go on a transport to Warsaw; clearing debris in the destroyed Warsaw Ghetto; conditions during this 10-month period; a man who saved his life after he got typhoid; being marched for several days to Dachau concentration camp; his work making shoes; being sent to a very primitive Waldlager where he felled trees; refusing to take the role of Kapo; being sent in 1945 on a train towards Tyrol, Austria and being liberated on the way by American troops in Seeshaupt, Germany; finding his brother in law alive in Feldafing, Germany; being involved in the black market in Waldheim; immigrating to the United States in 1949 on the SS Langfried; settling in Milwaukee, WI; receiving help from the HIAS and the Jewish Family Service; working in the leather industry; meeting his wife Thelma Seiden and getting married in 1950; his children; his career; and his thoughts on the Holocaust.