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We were left in the house. On the one hand we were fine, because we were living in an apartment, but on the other hand we were scared too. We would walk with socks because we didn't want the people living below us to know how many of us were living up there. Obviously the lady of the house would go out shopping for the family and obviously it was quite basic: we didn't have much money; my father had some but not that much. We were just trying to survive.
We were eating pulses; I rarely had meat that whole time. There was a shop close by that made yogurt of terrible quality, our hosts would buy some and they would share it with us and a piece of bread. That was dinner. For lunch we would have pulses or a potato - very basic.
That period we weren't keeping Sabbath or any of the holidays we didn't even know when they were, my parents would calculate it could be [Yom] Kippur, but there was no way we could keep it. My mother and I would do all the housework, we would wash the clothes by heating up some water on coal and briefly try and clean them.
We would make bread if there was flour, and we were all allowed one piece each. The bread that was available at the time was called 'bobota', a kind of hard corn-flour bread, that's what the bakeries were selling. Time went by and my mother would wash and cook and keep the children busy; my younger sister was three years old.
My father was reading books from the doctor's library and I was too. I was reading a lot, both the doctor's and his wife's books. Or I would knit if there was wool, so I could make some clothes for my sisters; they had nothing to wear and there was no chance we could go out and buy any [clothes].
Naturally they [Dr. Karakotsios' family] limited to the minimum the people that visited them. Only a friend of my father's would come every fifteen to twenty days to see us and tell us what was happening in the outside world. Time was going by slowly and we were hearing stories about people getting arrested and we were very scared.
Then there was bombing in Thessalonica and I remember being in the room and watching the port on fire. We really were very grateful to these people; until the day she died my mother called George Karakotsios an angel. The Karakotsios' though were hit by a great misfortune. After the liberation my parents would see them sometimes.
We were eating pulses; I rarely had meat that whole time. There was a shop close by that made yogurt of terrible quality, our hosts would buy some and they would share it with us and a piece of bread. That was dinner. For lunch we would have pulses or a potato - very basic.
That period we weren't keeping Sabbath or any of the holidays we didn't even know when they were, my parents would calculate it could be [Yom] Kippur, but there was no way we could keep it. My mother and I would do all the housework, we would wash the clothes by heating up some water on coal and briefly try and clean them.
We would make bread if there was flour, and we were all allowed one piece each. The bread that was available at the time was called 'bobota', a kind of hard corn-flour bread, that's what the bakeries were selling. Time went by and my mother would wash and cook and keep the children busy; my younger sister was three years old.
My father was reading books from the doctor's library and I was too. I was reading a lot, both the doctor's and his wife's books. Or I would knit if there was wool, so I could make some clothes for my sisters; they had nothing to wear and there was no chance we could go out and buy any [clothes].
Naturally they [Dr. Karakotsios' family] limited to the minimum the people that visited them. Only a friend of my father's would come every fifteen to twenty days to see us and tell us what was happening in the outside world. Time was going by slowly and we were hearing stories about people getting arrested and we were very scared.
Then there was bombing in Thessalonica and I remember being in the room and watching the port on fire. We really were very grateful to these people; until the day she died my mother called George Karakotsios an angel. The Karakotsios' though were hit by a great misfortune. After the liberation my parents would see them sometimes.
Period
Interview
Lily Arouch