Heinz Kounio, center, is seen in this 2019 file photo from a Holocaust memorial event. [InTIme News]
One of Thessaloniki’s last Holocaust survivors, Heinz Kounio, has died aged 98, an association representing Greece’s Jewish communities said Friday.
The Central Board of Jewish Communities in Greece, or KIS, described Kounio as an “emblematic figure” who was among the first Greek Jews to write about their experience of World War II Nazi extermination camps.
German occupation forces started the deportation of Thessaloniki’s Jews in May 1943, and out of the 46,091 people forced into cattle rail cars and transported to the Nazi death camps only 1,950 survived.
Born in 1927, Kounio was taken to the Auschwitz camp in German-occupied Poland at the age of 15, with the first group of deported Thessaloniki Jews and was given the number 109565. He and three members of his family escaped immediate execution, which he attributed to their knowledge of German amid a group of mostly poor dockworkers who spoke Ladino.
“If we didn’t speak German and if we hadn’t arrived first, we would not have survived,” he said in a 2017 interview.
Kounio recorded his testimony in the 1981, self-published book “I Lived Through Death,” and dedicated his life to preserving the memory of the Holocaust.
In 2016, he met current German President Frank-Walter Steinmeier, at the time Germany’s foreign minister, during his visit to Thessaloniki.
Thessaloniki Mayor Stelios Angeloudis described Kounio as “part of Thessaloniki’s history … who conveyed to younger generations the horrific truth of the Holocaust.”
“He made it his life’s purpose to keep nothing of this abominable crime secret,” Angeloudis added.
Kounio’s funeral Friday at Thessaloniki’s Jewish cemetery was attended by Greek government representatives and Jewish community leaders.