Heinz Kounio, the Last Auschwitz Survivor of Thessaloniki Passes Away

Heinz Kounio dedicated himself to preserving the representation of the 50,000 Thessaloniki Jews who were murdered during the Nazi occupation. Public Domain

Heinz Kounio, the past remaining subsister of the archetypal “death train” from Thessaloniki to Auschwitz, has passed distant astatine the property of 98.

His departure marks the extremity of a surviving section for the Jewish assemblage of Thessaloniki. In March 1943, astatine the property of 15, Kounio was deported to the Auschwitz-Birkenau attraction campy on with his parents and sister. In a uncommon and miraculous twist of fate, the full household survived the horrors of the Holocaust and returned to their hometown successful 1945.

Throughout his life, Kounio dedicated himself to preserving the representation of the 50,000 Thessaloniki Jews who were murdered during the Nazi occupation. He was a tireless advocator for education, often speaking to younger generations and documenting his experiences successful his memoir, A Liter of Soup and 60 Grams of Bread.

The Holocaust successful Thessaloniki remains 1 of the astir businesslike and devastating chapters of the “Final Solution.” By the clip the warfare ended, astir 96% of the city’s Jewish colonisation had been murdered. Only astir 2,000 radical returned to find their homes occupied and their communal beingness shattered.

The passing of survivors similar Heinz Kounio serves arsenic a final, nonstop nexus to this mislaid world, emphasizing the urgency of preserving the representation of a assemblage that was astir wholly erased from the representation of Europe.

Related: ‘Cloudy Sunday’: The Untold Story of Jewish Greeks in Thessaloniki