Talking Until Nightfall: Remembering Jewish Salonica, 1941-44

by Isaac Matarasso, Pauline Matarasso (Translator)

Overview

'Whoever listens to a witness, becomes a witness.' – Elie Wiesel

When Nazi occupiers arrived in Greece in 1941, it was the beginning of a horror that would reverberate through generations. In the city of Salonica (Thessaloniki), almost 50,000 Jews were sent to Nazi concentration camps during the war, and only 2,000 returned. A Jewish doctor named Isaac Matarasso and his son escaped imprisonment and torture at the hands of the Nazis and joined the resistance. After the city's liberation they returned to rebuild Salonica and, along with the other survivors, to grapple with the near-total destruction of their community.

Isaac was a witness to his Jewish community's devastation, and the tangled aftermath of grief, guilt and grace as survivors returned home. Talking Until Nightfall presents his account of the tragedy and his moving tribute to the living and the dead. His story is woven together with his son Robert's memories of being a frightened teenager spared by a twist of fate, with an afterword by his grandson Francois that looks back on the survivors' stories and his family's place in history. This slim, wrenching account of loss, survival, and the strength of the human spirit will captivate readers and ensure the Jews of Salonica are never forgotten.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781472975881
Publisher:	Bloomsbury USA
Publication date:	08/25/2020
Pages:	272
Sales rank:	402,374
Product dimensions:	5.50(w) x 8.60(h) x 1.10(d)

About the Author

Dr Isaac Matarasso was born in Salonica in 1892, when the city was part of the Ottoman Empire. He studied medicine at the University of Toulouse, and published his thesis in 1917. He practised in Salonica until his arrest in 1943, and organised health services for the Jewish survivors after the German withdrawal. He moved to Athens in 1947, with his wife Andrée and son Robert, where he resumed medical practice until his death in 1958.

Table of Contents

Map of Salonica during the German Occupation 1941-44 10

Foreword: Remembering the Witnesses 13

I An urgent conversation Pauline Matarasso 17

A Note on the Texts 58

II Early years, late reflections Isaac Matarasso 65

The Drawer of the Past 70

III And yet not all died… Isaac Matarasso 75

A Conversation with Our Dead 77

Introduction 80

Phase 1 Partial Toleration 82

Phase 2 Oppression 86

Phase 3 Dislocation and Destruction 92

The Last Eight Jews Killed by the Germans in Salonica 116

The First Account to Reach Salonica 121

The Second Account 132

After the Atrocity 148

All Did Not Die 159

Epilogue 162

IV From the Salonica Ghetto Isaac Matarasso 163

Mordoh Pitchon, Teacher 169

Life in the Ghetto 174

At the SD Headquarters, 42 Velissariou Street 179

Harbi Haïm Habib 183

In Memory of Dr Joseph Amariglio 188

The Liberation 193

V During Your Lifetime and During Your Days Robert Matarasso 199

You Are a Jew 205

The Wireless 207

The Tram 212

Meeting Wisliceny 215

The Break with Andreas 218

Leaving Tsimiski Street 221

Between Fear and Hope 226

The Prayer 234

VI Listening to the Witnesses François Matarasso 237

Notes 257

Editorial Reviews

05/18/2020

This powerful collection of Holocaust writings by Greek-Jewish doctor Matarasso (1892–1958), drawn largely from a memoir originally published in Athens in 1948 and augmented with commentary and autobiographical pieces by his family members, bears witness to the Nazi occupation of Salonica (present-day Thessaloniki) in Greece and the near-extermination of the city’s Jewish population. A generous, community-minded dermatologist, Matarasso left the Jewish ghetto for weeks at a time to work for the Greek resistance. As his daughter-in-law and translator, Pauline, notes in the book’s fine introduction, Matarasso’s observations are “both urgent and subtle, measured and hesitant to condemn.” He vividly describes Jewish collaborators “down at the railroad station on deportation days, the regulatory truncheon in hand” as they “harassed the Jewish flock,” and notes that “even the insane from the Jewish asylum are herded aboard , along with disabled soldiers from the Albanian war—legless, armless, feet lost to frostbite.” He also writes about Jewish culture in Greece, and the struggle to rebuild after the war. The book’s final section includes selections from a memoir written by Matarasso’s son, Robert (1927–1982), who offers his own eloquent perspective on some of the events described by his father. This poignant eyewitness account articulates the human cost of the Holocaust. (Aug.)

Publishers Weekly

The resurrection and enhancement of [this] 1948 manuscript is a triumph … A unique Holocaust memoir.” —Kirkus Reviews

“Powerful … This poignant eyewitness account articulates the human cost of the Holocaust.” —Publishers Weekly

“A poignant, gripping, and beautiful multigenerational look at life before and during the Holocaust, as well as the process of rebuilding after the war.” —Library Journal

“The book is one of the most moving books I've ever read and truly unique … Matarasso is revealed in a series of poignant literary snapshots – some taken by others, some by himself – which give the book a unique, multi-layered perspective. They utterly confound my neat rabbinic categorisations and convey the unbearable anguish of faith and truth.
” —Rabbi Tony Bayfield, former Head of Britain's Movement for Reform Judaism and author of Being Jewish Today

“Powerful ... Dr Matarasso's calm and humane narrative tells a story too little known.” —The Tablet

“Extraordinary ... An account of the destruction of the Jewish population of Salonica, now Thessaloniki, during the
Second World War, related by a man who was at its heart.” —New European

"This is an important book. It is not an academic interpretation or analysis. It is powerful and unique, a first-hand account that also describes the lasting impact of the Greek Holocaust on its few survivors and their heirs." - The Spectator (US)

From the Publisher

06/12/2020

Matarasso was a Jewish physician from Salonica (now Thessloniki, Greece), who fell in love with a Catholic Frenchwoman, Andreé, while completing his education. She joined him after he returned to Salonica; they married and had one son, Robert, whose experiences and memories are also chronicled here. Robert's wife, Pauline Matarasso, translated Robert's writing from Greek, and Robert and Pauline's son, François, added his own research and editing to bring the story to life. During World War II, Salonica was overtaken by the Nazis, and while the family was spared the concentration camps, they experienced imprisonment, torture, and deprivation. Yet all three—father, mother, and son—survived, and from that survival arose Isaac's need to record what he'd seen, heard, and done during the war. While he published a small volume of his recollections in Greek and French during his lifetime, adding Robert's memories of the same time period brings something new and unique to this translation. VERDICT A poignant, gripping, and beautiful multigenerational look at life before and during the Holocaust, as well as the process of rebuilding after the war.—Crystal Goldman, Univ. of California, San Diego Lib.

Library Journal

2020-04-13
Three generations of a Jewish family centered in Salonica reveal their perspectives on the World War II German occupation, which decimated the religious enclave.

The primary elements of this unusually constructed text, “the first account of the Shoah available in Greek,” appeared in book form in 1948 in Athens, with the title translated into English as And Yet Not All Died. The author was Isaac Matarasso (1892-1958), a doctor who survived the German death camps through a variety of maneuvers, some of which he initiated, others of which can only be described as serendipity or blessed coincidences. As did so many others, Matarasso experienced horrific physical and psychological violence. According to his daughter-in-law, Pauline Matarasso (b. 1929)—the translator of the present volume, which includes contributions from other members of the family as well as additional “more personal pieces” that Isaac wrote—he suffered in ways he almost certainly never fully revealed. Isaac divides his detailed, searing account into three chronological phases: the “partial toleration” of the Germans, aided by turncoat Greeks; the absolute oppression, marked by forced labor and deprivation; and the deportation to the concentration camps: “The Jews were herded like cattle into a concentration camp, where the full range of Nazi brutalities was brought to bear, ending with the deportation of about 46,000 Jews out of the city’s population of 50,000, crammed into cattle trucks.” Isaac's son Robert (1927-1982) experienced some of the nightmare as a teenager, and his memories are included here in the form of passages from an uncompleted memoir he worked on decades after the invasion. Robert covers many of the same events as his father, but unlike Isaac, he wrote in a more intimate first-person voice. Some readers may be distracted by the fragmented nature of the narrative, but the resurrection and enhancement of the 1948 manuscript is a triumph.

A unique Holocaust memoir.

Kirkus Reviews

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