Chaints Salvator Kounio

The author of this book is the brother of Erika Kounio-Amariglio, who wrote the book From Thessaloniki to Auschwitz and Back: Memories of a Survivor from Thessaloniki. Their family -- mother, father, son and daughter -- was the only Greek Jewish family from Thessaloniki to survive the Nazi concentration camps intact.

Very few memoirs have been written by Greek Holocaust survivors and this book is worth reading for that reason alone. Kounio's memoir is not elegantly written, but it is very thorough for its length, particularly in his description of the people he encountered in the various camps he stayed in. He also stayed in Melk, a camp I'd never even heard of before, which was built late in the war.

(I should note that, while the title says it's a diary, only a small part of the book is actually in diary form and I think that diary might have been written largely after the fact.)… (meer)