Looking at Kolomba Tzivre, a Greek Jew, it is hard to believe that this lady has not only lived but has actually survived two years in Auschwitz II–Birkenau concentration camp, in Poland.
Born in Didymοteicho, a town in Thrace, northern Greece, in 1926, she was only 12 when she was arrested in May 1943. Her two older sisters, the twins of the family (a boy and a girl) and their parents were also arrested and herded into “Holocaust trains” with hundreds of people, like animals. “It was a train intended to carry horses but men, women and children, we were all packed in there”.
During World War II, Greece was conquered by Nazi Germany and occupied by the Axis powers. 12,898 Greek Jews fought in the Greek army. Some 60,000-70,000 Greek Jews, especially those in the areas occupied by Nazi Germany and Bulgaria, or at least 81% of the country`s Jewish population, were murdered.
In total, between March and August 1943, over 40,000 Jews were deported from Greece to Auschwitz-Birkenau, including over 90% of Thessaloniki`s 50,000 Jews. The railway transports were run by German Nazis and their collaborators to forcibly deport interned Jews and other victims of the Holocaust to the German Nazi concentration and extermination camps