It was early in the morning of March 25, 1944. Seventeen-year-old Esther (also known as “Stella” in Greek) Cohen was at home with her parents and six siblings when the call went through the town of Ioannina, near the northwestern border of Greece: all the Jews were being arrested by the Nazi authorities, with the help from local Greek police officers.
For years, the Jews in Ioannina had been keenly following the war, but for much of that time they were relatively safe. Fascist Italy, not Germany, controlled the region, and the Italian authorities did not round up the region’s Jews. However, after Italy surrendered to the Allies in September 1943, German troops moved into Greece to take over the country. These German Nazis were very different from their Italian former allies. Suddenly, Greek Jews found themselves in the same grave danger as their co-religionists in the rest of occupied Europe, hunted and killed simply for the “crime” of being Jews.
Ioannina’s Jewish leaders did little, hoping that the new German overlords would somehow spare them.
In the early days of the German occupation, Ioannina’s Jewish leaders did little, hoping that the new German overlords would somehow spare them. At first that seemed like it might be the case; the Germans assured Ioannina’s Jewish community that they would be safe. The Jews of the thriving Greek city of Thessaloniki had been arrested and deported to concentration camps, the Nazis explained, but that would not happen to Ioannina’s Jews who were much more integrated and less overtly Jewish, the Nazis assured them.
Indeed, Jews had lived in Ioannina since the destruction of the Jewish Temple in Jerusalem in the year 70 CE. The community was Romaniote, an ancient Jewish sub-group with their own distinctive customs and language. The Nazis explained that Thessaloniki’s Jews, which traced their history to the years after the Spanish Inquisition in 1492 when many Sephardi (“Spanish”) Jews fled to Greece, spoke the Jewish language Ladino. That rendered them offensive and different, the Nazis explained, whereas Ioannina’s Jews spoke the Jewish language Romaniot (also called Yevanik) and that made them more acceptable. Though this was palpably nonsense, it seems that the town’s Jewish leaders were willing to be reassured.
In March of 1944, the leader of the Ioannina Jewish Community Board, Dr. Moses Koffinas, was arrested by the Nazis. While in custody, he overheard plans to deport Ioannina’s Jews, and he managed to write a letter to another board member, Sabetai Kabelis, warning him of the plans. For reasons that are lost to history, Mr. Kabelis did nothing to act on Dr. Koffinas’ warning – and on March 25, the entire 1,800 Jewish population of Ioannina was rounded up and sent to the Auschwitz-Birkenau death camp. A few Jews did manage to escape to the mountains where they joined partisan fighting units, but nearly all the rest of the town’s Jews were slaughtered.
“All you could hear was ‘Oh my God,’ mourning, crying…” Esther Cohen later recalled that horrific morning. “Old people with white hair running wearing their slippers, babies crying, screaming – and my Mom saying how are we going to leave our house? ‘We’ll be back Mom, don’t worry!’”
The Jews were forced at gunpoint to gather in the town’s Mavili square. “When we reached Mavili with their guns pointed at us, the Germans made us get into trucks to begin the journey,” Esther remembered. Years later, she was hardly able to describe what happened next: “I cannot describe – I can’t – why my God, why? What did we do wrong? There is one God for everyone – why do you hurt us so much?”
The Ioannina Jews finally arrived in Auschwitz, where most were sent to their deaths immediately. “The parents, they put them together inside other cars,” Esther remembered, “men, children – cars full of them left. We didn’t see any of them ever again.”
That was the last time Esther ever saw her parents, as the truck they were forced on pulled away to take them to their deaths. Esther and about fifty other girls were left behind to work as slaves. “Girls, defend your honor!” the adults on the truck called out to their precious daughters as they were taken away.
“One day when our heads were being shaved by one of the prisoners,” Esther explains, “she asked me what had become of my parents. I said that I didn’t know. She pointed to the flames coming out of the crematorium and said, ‘There they are, burning.’”
Esther managed to escape from Auschwitz with the help of a Nazi doctor who’d managed to hide from his colleagues the fact that he had some Jewish ancestry. She was ill and in the prison hospital when orders came through to take all of the infirmary’s patients to the gas chambers. The doctor helped Esther hide, and she survived until January 27, 1945, when Auschwitz was liberated by Soviet forces.
Esther found out that out of her entire family only her sister had survived. They were two of the fifty Jews from all of Ioannina who were still alive.
Esther returned to Ioannina and went to her family’s house. “I knocked on the door and a stranger opened it,” she recalled. “He asked me what I wanted and I told him that it was my house. ‘Do you remember whether there was an oven here?’ he asked me. ‘Why yes, of course,’” Esther replied, “‘we used to bake bread and beautiful pies’... ‘Well get out of here then! You may have got away from the ovens in Germany, but I’ll cook you right here in your own home.’ I was horrified.”
Esther remained in Ioannina and married a fellow Jew named Samuel, who was one of the handful of Jews who’d managed to escape to the mountains and had fought the Nazis. Together, they tried to track down some of Esther’s family’s belongings which had been pillaged by her neighbors.
“I found out that the metropolitan bishop had our two singer sewing machines,” she recalled. “I went and asked for them to be returned to me, but I was told that they had been given to the regional authorities. There, they asked me to produce the serial numbers of the machines before they would look for them… I raised my arm and showed them the indelible number from Auschwitz,” she recalled. “‘This is the only number I remember,’ I told them and left.”
Esther and Samuel had a daughter who couldn’t stand the intense anti-Semitism that continued to mark Ioannina. One day in the 1960s, a high school teacher called her daughter a “damn Jew”. “She never got over the insult,” Esther explained. “As soon as she finished the year she moved to Israel. She never came back.”
Despite these and other horrible experiences of prejudice, Esther never left Greece. “We were scared. We were unloved by everyone,” she said, yet still she stayed in the country.
“The world must know that human must not be inhuman.”
In 2014, German President Joachim Gauck paid an official visit to Greece and requested a meeting with Esther. By then, she was only one of a handful of Jews who were still alive in Ioannina, and at the age of 90, was well known in the country. Esther did agree to meet him, but was unsure what to say. “I feel odd, shaken,” she told journalists before their meeting. “I want to ask him where such hate came from, to burn millions of people alive because it just so happened that they were of a different religion. Should I accept an apology? Nothing can make up for what they did to us. I have no one to see me off when I do die… They left no one; everyone was burned.”
When President Gauck finally did arrive in Ioannina, he visited the town’s synagogue with Esther. Drawing upon the depths of her experience, in that moment Esther did have a key, crucial message to convey to the German President and to the world: “The world must know that human must not be inhuman,” she explained. It was a broken sentence, but conveyed a deep message: we all must hold on to our common humanity, and the horrors of the Holocaust can never be allowed to happen – God forbid – again.
(14) evelyn Boullier, December 7, 2020 1:50 PM
it makes you sick reading this; how in hell can 1 Human do this to another? and it still is going on ; we just don’t know much about it! I can’t believe there is a god; i try to do a good dead every day; and if it is only calling to check on a friend or next door!
(13) Dr. Annette B. Fromm, December 7, 2020 6:12 AM
Thoughtful memorial
I had the distinct pleasure to spend much time with Stella Cohen and her husband as well as sister and brother-in-law when I did research for my doctoral dissertation (We are few: Folklore and Ethnic Identity of the Jewish Community of Ioannina, Greece). They shared many details of their life histories with me over the period of a year. She is a woman who persisted in a life filled with heartbreak. And yet, her life was rich. She was one of a few who preserved the heritage of this significant Jewish community
(12) Joan Eisenberg, December 6, 2020 4:56 PM
Memory is a necessity to prevent and ward off crime in the future!
We must never forget and the crimes of the past and people who committed them and the history behind that must be a constant reminder in fact.
We must remember the good in life and memorialize those who delivered that good so the ideals and values of goodness and what that means can be continued in the present and in the future.
(11) GARY & GRACE ZWEIG, December 4, 2020 4:20 PM
powerful story
thanks for sharing Esther..never though the Greeks were such anti Semites
(10) Anonymous, December 4, 2020 12:22 PM
Please Question Everything They Show You All About Me
im not sure that i believe in g-d anymore i wouldnt have been so forgiving after what i read you all suffered in the holocaust; however i grew up in a loving Jewish home & i believe in family education law and the reason we are given to commandments to love & respect one another. if i was to sum up everything Judaism tries to teach us i would recommend that everyone read a simple poem by Jack Reimer called An Afternoon Prayer. please understand that it is not me who causes the suffering on the surface what i am doing may appear obscene and extreme but i like you were in the holocaust am called a pig, a sinner traif by extremists who use us all in their endless religious wars against one another to win heaven, g-d's favour, holiness, and to discard everything and anything we have all represented as human beings. i am so sorry that i have hurt and offended all of you, but the shame lies in the ones who exposed my most intimate pains, desires and sufferings to shock and terrify you all. i would never want to the jewish people or anyone to suffer at the hands of anyone, ever again, but i am convinced the possession does exist and that the reasons and horrors of the sadism and abuse that both you and i have suffered, are not at all what history believes them to be - and i await the g-d i once loved to deliver the truth about what i consider "impossible errors" in every book, religion and belief system. and i like you do not support or believe in violence & abuse, and i like you have suffered at the hands of those who stolen my very faith and trust in almost everyone outside of family & friends. we are taught to "see no evil - hear no evil - and speak no evil", to forgive and love each other, and to look for beauty, wonder and g-d, in good, in all people & life, and otherwise...and i am punished for doing exactly that - forgiving & defending those we...you have condemned as obscene monsters...i am waiting g-d for you to defend me garysamuelbesner
(9) Howard Amonick, December 3, 2020 6:14 PM
War and Remembrance
I've been watching an old multi-part episode of a serial called, War and Remembrance. It wasn't easy watching the barbarity of gassing the unwanted. What I've been wanting to find is a book that I believe is called, "when bad things happen to good people", or some such title. Are you familiar with it? What is the exact title? Thank you.
Anonymous, December 3, 2020 7:34 PM
Correct
There is a book with exactly the title you mention. The author is Harold S Kushner.
(8) brucha kazman, December 3, 2020 5:10 PM
Both my parents were Holocaust survivors and I can relate to the tragedy
of this story. The sad thing is that hatred of Jews is very much alive today.
(7) Anonymous, December 3, 2020 3:56 PM
Meaningless....
How "wonderful" that the GERMAN President "apologized" -- and this "only" 70 years after the Nazis eliminated the town's Jews... But, what did the GREEK Government do? What did the "holy" Greek Orthodox Church do? Did this "Saintly Church" defrock -- or otherwise punish the "Metropolitan Bishop" who treated Stella so badly? Did the GREEK Government do ANYTHING truly meaningful for the few survivors?
Yes... right now, it is in the interest of the Greeks to ally with Israel [against Turkey)... but let's not fool ourselves....
There is a clear reason why the Talmud states that it is a "halacha" that the non-Jews hate the Jews ... yes, there are some "good non Jews" -- but [in my opinion] they are "good" IN SPITE of institutions such as the Greek Orthodox Church. They are good IN SPITE of the Russian Orthodox Church and they are good IN SPITE of the various evangelical groups whose ultimate purpose is to convert the Jews to the idolatry of the trinity... [Note: if I sound "angry" -- it is because I *am* angry...]
(6) Anonymous, December 3, 2020 3:19 PM
Miraculous
It’s a miracle she survived the internment at Auschwitz and somewhat puzzling she chose to live in Greece!!
(5) H.E.Brown, December 3, 2020 11:51 AM
The Holocaust.
I was 4 going on 5 ( 5 in June ) when this happened. Hard to fathom this was going on when I was living in complete comfort and had loving parents. Just isn't fair. I'm so glad she made it through those black black days. I don't understand, I just don't understand. I've told God this. I just don't understand. NEVER NEVER AGAIN PLEASE.
Anonymous, December 3, 2020 12:49 PM
Read "With Fury Poured Out" by Rabbi Bernard Maza O.B.M.
He discusses how it was predicted in the Torah as part of terms the covenant. In every pact there are terms and consequences of keeping or breaking agreements. At Mt. Sinai we entered into the covenant and the Torah is very exclicit in its description of the terms for the good and for the bad.
Here's one:
"See! I give you today (a choice of) a blessing and a curse. The blessing, when you listen to the commandments of God your Lord, which I command you today. The curse, if you do not listen to the commandments of God your Lord, and you deviate from the path which I command you today, in order to follow other gods which you did not know." (Deut. 11:26-28)
And another:
'And God will get exceedingly angry with that land, to bring upon it all the curses written in this book ... And behold when all these things befall you, the blessing and the curse which I placed before you ...' (Deut. 29:26 and 30:1)
And later in that same Chapter 30:
'See I have placed before you today life and good, and death and evil ... I call upon heaven and earth to witness against you, life and death I have placed in front of you, the blessing and the curse - choose life in order that you and your children can live! (Deut. 30:19)
There are also VERY detailed descriptions of the beautiful blessings and hair raising curses. They came true... Rabbi Maza describes in his book what has happening at the time and in what ways the times reflected the fulfillment of the above. Fascinating book.
(4) Esther D Gershon, December 3, 2020 7:14 AM
this was an important story of history. greece during wwii cannot be overlooked. i pray esther and her family are comforted to an extreme and that many new, good souls are brought down to do mitzvos. with love, esther
(3) Dorit Caruso, December 3, 2020 5:04 AM
Profound story of the ineffable Jewish Spirit
I am profoundly moved by this real life drama and the strength of Spirit to survive it.
This sounds like today's coming events that not many believe will happen, but think falsely is they just coast and live and let live, all will go well. It won't. I pray often every day that HaShem will spare us and bring us closer to Him. Bless this woman in her old age. It's too bad she didn't move to Israel.
(2) Willy Weber, December 3, 2020 3:59 AM
I will never understand why. Everyone who went through this are hero's.
(1) Prof Asher J Matathias, December 2, 2020 5:27 PM
Past time for Greece to apologize to Israel, and the Jewish People entire!
B”H If there’s still any doubt about deep, sustaining, everlasting (?), Greek anti-Semitism, the testimony of another survivor of the Holocaust of Greek-Jewry —- now taken from us to rest with the martyrs of our People who were taken so violently, so early —- must, but will not, put this non-controversy to rest! From this perspective, and however well-meaning, a Greek-American radio station’s encouragement that the Greek government apologize for its rejection of the motion for a Jewish State, 73 years ago, is pittance. Moreover, insult is added to considerable injury when misguided coreligionists are too willing to comply with non-Jewish compatriots who vainly propose that intergovernmental rapprochement between Greece and Israel should suffice to put the bitter past under the proverbial carpet. Modern Hellas, its people, including the Orthodox Church, have miles to traverse in repentance, philotimo, and live before redemption can be granted with respect and humility. With fraternal affection, Asher, Survivor of the Holocaust of Greek-Jewry.