From Isaac Aaron Matarasso

Stages of Nazis Occupation

1. Partial tolerance. From April 1941 to July 1942, there was "a period of insults, partiality, confiscation of furniture and eviction of some families from their apartments.

2. Persecutions. From July 1942 to February 1943, the Germans unleashed a program "of destruction of the Jews of Salonika start(ing) with forced labor." Demeaning treatment was imposed, such as beatings, torture, lack of medical care, and desecration and destruction of a historical cemetery.

3. Dislocation and destruction. From February 1943 until August 1944, Jewish ghettoes were enforced, community archives burned, and Jews were transported by railroad to concentration camps.

The doctor also shares the stories of some of those Jews who survived and came back to Salonika to tell what had happened in the camps to a shocked and disbelieving audience that had survived in Greece during the war.

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