Escaping the Nazis in Greece
Witness History
BBC
4.5 • 1.6K Ratings
🗓️ 24 July 2023
⏱️ 9 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
The Greek city of Thessaloniki, or Salonica, was once known as the Jerusalem of the Balkans.
It was previously home to a large and thriving Sephardi Jewish population whose ancestors had been expelled from Spain in 1492.
However, the Nazi occupation of Greece from 1941 to 1944 almost completely wiped out that culture and community.
More than 90% of the approximately 50,000 Jews living in Salonica in 1943 were deported to Auschwitz and killed.
Yeti Mitrani was a young teenager at the time.
She speaks to Maria Margaronis about her family's escape and her childhood.
(Photo: Yeti as a child. Credit: Doris Mitrani)
Transcript
Click on a timestamp to play from that location
| 0:00.0 | Hello, welcome to the witness history podcast from the BBC World Service with me, Maria Margarones. |
| 0:11.4 | I'm taking you back to 1943, when Greece was under occupation by the Axis powers. Yet |
| 0:17.5 | in Metrani is 14 years old. One day, about 830 pneumonia, the door gets open without |
| 0:26.5 | ceremony without knocking without nothing. And a friend of my mother's called Evgenia |
| 0:31.5 | Frangista, barges in. He doesn't say good morning, she says, she's a fiat. You are going to leave, |
| 0:40.3 | huh? Grandpa is sick, they're going to shoot us if they catch us. I don't care. You are just going |
| 0:47.6 | to leave. No matter what. And she barges out. So people look at each other. Okay. |
| 0:58.3 | Solonica was once known as the Jerusalem of the Balkans, home to a large and thriving Jewish |
| 1:03.5 | population. But by the end of the Second World War, 95% of Solonica's Jews had been deported |
| 1:10.1 | and murdered in Auschwitz. We're not really in terrific shape. My grandfather had pleuricy, |
| 1:16.9 | we're wearing the yellow star and we're sewing rucksacks to go to Poland with, to go to Poland. |
| 1:24.8 | That's what the German said, you're going to move to Poland for the time of the war and then after |
| 1:29.2 | the end of the war, we'll repatriate you. That's what they said. Except for my grandfather |
| 1:34.5 | who kept saying no, these backpacks are going to Israel. Yeti was born in Solonica in 1928. |
| 1:44.6 | She remembers an italic childhood. My first memory is opening the window of my bedroom in the |
| 1:51.2 | morning and smelling the citrus fruit that the Kaikia were bringing to Solonica from the |
| 2:00.6 | I'm playing islands and you open the window in the winter and you smell it. And also I remember my |
| 2:07.2 | father pointing to Mount Olympus, which was on the right and saying to Simon of Fonse, who |
| 2:16.4 | habite led you? Your father spoke to you in French? Only. So there was Mount Olympus with all the |
| 2:22.8 | gods and I said to him, what happened to them? I said they've gone. Yeti's father was the |
| 2:28.0 | principle of the alliance Israeli to universal, part of a network of French Jewish schools. |
| 2:33.2 | My grandfather, my maternal grandfather was an orthodox Jew. Friday night there was a big table. All his |
... |
Please login to see the full transcript.
Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from BBC, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.
Generated transcripts are the property of BBC and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.
Copyright © Tapesearch 2026.