Comments on: Greece’s old Jewish city: Salonika

By: The Jews of Salonika at the death camps • Just Conservative Views

The Jews of Salonika at the death camps • Just Conservative Views — Sun, 14 Oct 2018 13:53:43 +0000

[…] those interested in learning more, I recommend this post by Neo. She focuses on the Jewish history of Salonika, as the city was known during the centuries when […]

By: The Jews of Salonika at the death camps | TrumpsMinutemen

The Jews of Salonika at the death camps | TrumpsMinutemen — Sat, 13 Oct 2018 22:03:42 +0000

[…] those interested in learning more, I recommend this post by Neo. She focuses on the Jewish history of Salonika, as the city was known during the centuries when […]

By: The Jews of Salonika at the death camps - NoPaperNews

The Jews of Salonika at the death camps - NoPaperNews — Sat, 13 Oct 2018 21:26:16 +0000

[…] those interested in learning more, I recommend this post by Neo. She focuses on the Jewish history of Salonika, as the city was known during the centuries when […]

By: Owen

Owen — Sat, 13 Oct 2018 21:12:59 +0000

Paul Mirengoff’s comment sparked this comment by Neo, and I am grateful for both. There is so much history and each day it grows more distant. My own connection to these horrors is yet more remote but I offer it anyway, not so much as evidence of the suffering of the Jews of Salonika, or anyone from Greece, as the suffering of any human being caught in this cruel and pointless machine.

My father-in-law led an infantry platoon across Europe in 1944-5 and this is an approximation of what he, at 96, finally felt able to tell us.

Refeeding Syndrome

Over Christmas
We had been bled
Hard at the Bulge
And then for months
We fought Eastward
Through dragons’ teeth
Laced with tracers
That took many
O my brothers

Late in April
Reaching Munich
Tough as gristle
Nothing of war
Could still shock
And this shocked us

The guards in flight
Left uniforms
Dropped their weapons
Unlocked the gates
As if to free
The men we found
Who were too weak
To leave their bunks
Or stand to meet
Their rescuers

What I recall
Like a sickness
Was how they died
From what we gave

Some on the meat
From ration cans
Simply choking
But with others
Poisoned by food
Too rich for them
It took a week

Their blood damaged
By such rich stuff
Hearts unsteady
Beyond our help
And our learning

Later their cases
Were written up
“Refeeding syndrome”
Being a thing
We could watch for
And try to treat
By keeping back
And doling out
What instinct said
We should provide

Seventy years
I kept this down
Like half-chewed food
And even now
I can’t say much
More than these words
But O those men
O how we fought
In ignorance

By: The Jews of Salonika at the death camps – Just Conservative Views

The Jews of Salonika at the death camps – Just Conservative Views — Sat, 13 Oct 2018 21:01:12 +0000

[…] those interested in learning more, I recommend this post by Neo. She focuses on the Jewish history of Salonika, as the city was known during the centuries when […]

By: LYNN HARGROVE

LYNN HARGROVE — Fri, 12 Oct 2018 02:25:26 +0000

Thanks Oldflyer. From Props to Jets.

By: Oldflyer

Oldflyer — Thu, 11 Oct 2018 22:51:59 +0000

Lynn, since you asked, I started my career in the venerable AD-6 Skyraider (it was later corrupted by the universal designation system–no doubt another McNamara brainstorm–into the A-1H, and the much loved nickname–Able Dog–degenerated into Spad for reasons I never understood.) Our primary mission in the late 1950s was nuclear attack. If worse became worst, we were going to cruise across enemy territory at 50ft and 162 knots and in the highly unlikely event that we ever reached the target, loft a bomb with a maneuver aptly named the “idiot loop”. The fact that we accepted that scenario as more–or less–reasonable, and trained for the “idiot loop” constantly, tells you all you need to know about our intellectual capacity. Fortunately for all, worse never became worst.

I finished in A-4s; and at the age 50 started my airline career in Boeing 727s. I am four times retired. Once from the USN, twice from airlines via bankruptcy, and finally from British Aerospace. Now you know more than you ever cared to know.

By: LYNN HARGROVE

LYNN HARGROVE — Thu, 11 Oct 2018 21:40:34 +0000

Oldflyer, I was aboard the USS FD Roosevelt (CVA-42) late 69 early 70. I remember the visit we made to Salonika. Interesting place. Of course being enlisted we saw liberty a bit different. I remember getting a Coke that was bottled there. I found that fascinating. There was a USO there too, if I remember right. We could make a call home. Now of course sailors have the internet.

This post was very interesting. I too wish we would have known more about the history of the city. I was just out of college with a BA in History. I would have loved the info in this post.

The observations of the Jews in the concentration camp, how they acted, reminds me of stories of the Greek soldiers during the Korean War. If a higher level solider died/killed, the next in line took over. Strong unit cohesion. Even in the POW camps.

What did you fly?

By: Oldflyer

Oldflyer — Thu, 11 Oct 2018 20:25:09 +0000

The U.S. Sixth Fleet used to visit Salonika, or Thessaloniki. I don’t know if they still do. Unfortunately, we knew little of the history, and found little to amuse us there. Looking back, it is a shame that more efforts were not made to acquaint crews with the history of the locales we visited. Aircraft carriers had Chaplains, and they set up tours for the ships in port, and no doubt sponsored other cultural opportunities. But, they reached relatively few.

There is one vignette from Salonika that I retain some fifty years later. My wife had come over for a short visit, and we were in a small shop to buy a doll in traditional Macedonian dress for our daughters. The woman shopkeeper spoke no English, and we spoke no
Greek. In some European cultures we would have been written off, but this woman persevered with good humor, as did we. The sale was eventually consummated amid gales of laughter all around over our cross cultural struggles.

My room mate on that deployment was second generation Greek. When we visited Istanbul, he managed to be elsewhere. He feared that he would be recognized as Greek, and his name would certainly give him away. Actually, he went with his own wife and son to the Greek mountain village from which his father emigrated. As an American Naval Aviator, he was treated as a hero; but, his wife was treated like the women of the village, and she did not enjoy that at all.