The wagons that left Thessaloniki for Auschwitz are being repaired

The 93-year-old, today, Savvas Cohen, former director of the OSE, during his recent visit to the Railway Museum of Thessaloniki, in the area of ​​Eleftherios Kordelios, was informed by those in charge of the site about the existence of two boxcars, of those used for the transportation of Jewish citizens to the extermination camps of the Third Reich.

A Jew himself, he “bowed” to the burden of historical memory and decided to take on the costs of their repair, with the aim of keeping alive the memory of those who were heinously lost during the Second World War.

“Last June we went on a trip to Thessaloniki with the Athens Railway Friends Association, of which I am a member. And among other things we visited the Railway Museum. There, I learned the story of the two wagons, with which the Germans transported the Jews from the old railway station of Thessaloniki to Auschwitz, and I was moved. I thought a small contribution to the Holocaust would be to donate money to repair them. To honor, thus, the six million Jews around the world who have passed away“, said Mr. Cohen speaking to the Athenian/Macedonian News Agency.

The carriages are currently in the Railway Museum in Kordelio and are being repaired, according to what the president of the Thessaloniki Friends of the Railway Association, Konstantinos Pataras, told APE-MBE. To give them a new “life” the same materials were used, except for the wood, which was completely replaced, while the work is done under the supervision of former OSE foremen.

“The wagons were abandoned on the OSE network. They are very old German constructions from 1890, which were used after the war as workshops. That is, they were carrying tools to repair a line“, Mr. Pataras explained.

He also noted that the wagons the Germans sent to the crematoria never returned.

“The Germans in Europe had a unified railway network and these wagons are the same type of wagons that used to collect people for the concentration camps“, he added.

The rescue of these two carriages was done through old photographs and data collected by the first president of the Friends of the Thessaloniki Railway Association, Efthymis Kontopoulos.

“The wagons were in poor condition and Mr. Cohen decided to finance their repair. They are a part of the historical mosaic of the history of Thessaloniki. The history of the city, with the presence of Jewish citizens is intertwined with the history of the railway and the wagons that transported them to the crematoriaconcludes Mr. Pataras.

For this movement, to save the historic wagons, the 93-year-old Mr. Cohen will be honored tomorrow, Saturday, at 7:30 pm, by the president of the OSE, Giannos Grammatidis, in an event organized by the Friends of the Thessaloniki Railway Association, with titled “Nostalgia”, at the Museum of Thessaloniki. The event will also be accompanied by a concert presented by the Mixed Adult Choir “Filomila”.

Mr. Cohen was born in Thessaloniki in 1931, studied civil engineering and worked in the Greek railways.

He left the city with his family at the age of 9, shortly before the Germans invaded the country, as his older sister was going to study medicine at university.

The move to Athens took place at the beginning of October 1940 and a few days later the war sirens sounded.

During the Occupation, he himself, being a child, narrowly escaped being captured by the Germans and being taken to a concentration camp, to which his uncle, aunt and cousin were sent.

-The photos of the wagons were given to APE-MPE by the president of the Thessaloniki Friends of the Railway Association, Konstantinos Pataras-