Prologue

Two separate, yet connected, events in January 27, 2020, marked the coming of age of the visibility of child survivors in Greece and their public acknowledgement as victims of the Holocaust. Five child survivors (Rikoula (Ketty) Samuel, Beniamin (Benis) Albalas, Esther (Nina) Florentin, Rachel (Lola) Angel and Isaac Mizan) with their grandchildren recounted their Shoah experiences in the major ceremony of the Holocaust Remembrance Day in Athens. As the central organ-ising axe of the commemoration event was the “responsibility to remember,” the survivors shared with the third generation of Holocaust survivors their experience of the Shoah and transmitted to them through memory the duty to remember. Each grandchild and grandparent narrated alternately the survivor’s experience of hiding or concentration camp. The devotion and passion of the former children to the task of combatting the rising anti-Semitism in Greek society were transferred to the audience and raised tears. Rachel Angel, survivor of Bergen Belsen, carried with her the sidearm sword that her mother removed from the German lieutenant in whose house in Farsleben (Magdeburg, northeast Saxony) the family was put after liberation by the American army. Her mother had told the lieutenant with pride that “the victors take the guns of the defeated.” ¹