No Trace of 50,000 Deported Salonica Jews, British Correspondent Reports

No trace can be found of 50,000 Jews deported by the Nazis from Salonica, it was reported today by the London Times’ Istanbul correspondent.

The correspondent confirms that of fifty-five thousand Jews who resided in Salonica when the Axis forces occupied the city, only five thousand remain, because they hold foreign passports. These Jews are mostly of Turkish and Spanish nationality. All the other Jews were deported to Nazi-occupied Poland and nothing has been heard of them since. All that is known is that they reached Cracow, but are no longer there.

The British journalist who sought to establish the whereabouts of the deported Greek Jews through various channels in neutral Turkey, also interviewed a number of people who witnessed the mass-deportations from Salonica. He reports that these people, all of whom are non-Jews, stated that the men were separated from their wives and children during the deportations. Transports of men and transports of women and children were confined in cattle trains, with eighty adults in each car standing pressed against each other like sardines. None of the victims was permitted to take along more than one loaf of bread for the entire trip. No sanitary facilities were provided.

“After traveling for several days,” the correspondent writes, “many of the deportees died. The remainder reached a place in Yugoslavia where they had to undergo special disinfection prior to being transported to Poland. The heads of all the men and women were shaved.”