When I was in Palestine, I had found a few people that had arrived there from Thessaloniki.
And when I was on leave, we used to meet. Here we are in an excursion in Natanya. I was the only one doing his military service -all the rest were civilians. I used to hang out a lot with these girls.
After arriving in Turkey and then in Aleppo, they told us that we would go to Gaza. But my uncle Joseph was in Tel Aviv. So, as we passed through Haifa, there were many Jews from Thessaloniki who were working at the docks. And I heard them speaking in Spanish.
I shouted at one of them "come here", in Spanish and he replied, "what, what?" "Just to let you know that I have just come from Greece, from Thessaloniki". "
From Thessaloniki, from Thessaloniki?" I told him, "please, can you find the telephone number of my uncle in Tel Aviv, he is called Joseph Alvo, and inform him that I passed by here and that I am with the Greek Air Force in Gaza".
And he did it. Straight away. Around 3 or 4 days after I arrived there, at the army's camp in Gaza, I see one morning a car coming inside which were my uncle, my cousin Marcel, and a Greek officer from the provost marshal's office of Tel Aviv.
My cousin knew him, and he told him that I was there. So, they took him with them to help me get a permit. And even though I had not yet taken the oath, they granted me permission to go for four days to Tel Aviv to stay with my family, and tell them everything that I had to say.
When I arrived in Palestine, I was the first one to come from Thessaloniki. There were many people originally from Thessaloniki in Tel Aviv. And I told them what had happened there.
But without knowing what happened afterwards. We knew that they had summoned them and taken them to Poland. But what went on in Poland, we still didn't know.
