Holocaust Project Katzenelson High-School, ISRAEL.
mail: aviya.sadeh@gmail.com , relationet2014@gmail.com .
First name: Malka
last name: Assouline.
Previous name: Sultana.
Previous last name: Shaul
Father: Rephael.
Mother: Sarah.
Foster Family: Suzi & Amrik Houzner.
Year of Birth: 1942.
City of Birth: Thessaloniki.
Country of Birth: Greece.
Country: Turkey.
RelatioNet Project
Holocaust Survivor's Project
Presented by : Shahaf Kirshenboim & Aviya Sadeh
Thessaloniki
Thessaloniki is the second largest city
in Greece. Its population is 300,000 people. It was founded in 316 BC. The
city's economy is based on its port.
efore
the Second World War, Thessaloniki had the biggest Jewish community in Greece.
It became a great Jewish center after Spain deportation and Poland sanctions.
The Jews were economically active; they developed the city industry and
banking. They also opened schools, published newspapers and Zionist guilds.
After the Balkan war, Jews numbered a third of Thessaloniki population.
During
the Second World War, Thessaloniki was bombarded by Fascist Italy. The Italians
didn’t manage to invade Greece. Instead, the Nazis entered on 8 April 1941. The
city was liberated by the Greek People's Liberation Army from the Nazis in 1944.
Thessaloniki was vital to Germany, because it has strategic location; they even
wanted to add it to the 3rd Reich.
When
entering the city, the Nazis humiliated the Jews and imposed sanctions on them.
In January 1943, Eichmann ordered his assistant to eliminate all Jewish
population in the city. 46,000 Jews had been sent to Auschwitz-Birkenau
concentration camp and most of them didn’t survive.
After
the war, the number of Jews dramatically dropped and most of the city survivors
immigrated to Israel. Today there is a small and elderly community in
Thessaloniki. The Thessaloniki municipality has set up a memorial day and built a monument.
Malka's story
Malka was born in Thessaloniki Ghetto in
1942. Her birth name was Sultana Shaul.
Her mother, Sarah Altras, a Turkish woman
met Rephael Shaul, a Turkish man that left his homeland and immigrated to
Greece, because he deserted the Turkish army. Their first meeting was when
Sarah was 13 years old and Rephael was 20.He left to Greece and came back 17
years after. Their reunion was by coincidence. They met through friends and
were very thrilled from the surprise and got married in 1939. They decided to
settle down in Thessaloniki.
Rephael & Sarah at their wedding
Sarah and
Rephael in their house in Thessaloniki.
Before Malka was born, Sarah was a seamstress.
She had a business: A kids clothes sewing shop. She was the manager. Rephael
was anaccount manager in an Italian company in Greece.They lived among Gentiles in an untraditional house. Before the
Nazis invaded Greece, the Greek population treated the Jewish nicely, unlike
after the invasion in 1941, their neighbors started to show anti-Semitism towards them.
When the Nazis invaded Greece on
23.4.1941, they forced the Jewish community to concentrate in ghettos. The
Shaul family entered the ghetto and their house was taken by a Nazi officer.
Sultana was born a few months afterwards
on 11.10.42.
Sultana's name is after her two
grandmothers who were both named Sultana.
Rephael's company offered its Jewish
employees to move to Italy on one condition- only themselves without their
families. Rephael refused to leave his wife so they stayed in Greece.
In 1943,Rephael was sent from the Ghetto
to Auschwitz Bureau. A friend of Rephael, Salvador Versano who was with him and
survived Auschwitz told the family how Rephael found his death. Rephael and
Salvador worked together and one day Rephael discovered that he was sick with
Tifus and was sent to quarantine. Salvador visited him every day, until the
Nazis told him he had no reason to ever come again.
Rephael Shaul,
1910-1944
This is
the letter Sarah got from Salvador,after a long time she tried to find out what
happened to him through the red cross. She got this letter when she was already
in Turkey.
Rephael and
Salvador in Thessaloniki before the war.
Because Sarah had a Turkish passport
(Turkey was neutral) she had a way out of the Ghetto. The problem was that baby
Sultana didn't have one.
In fact, the Nazis didn't believe that
Sultana was Sarah's daughter because in that time, it was common that people
tried to save orphans. Eventually, Sarah managed to get the required papers so
both Sarah and Malka (Who was then called Sultana) could move to Turkey, where
Sarah's family waited for them.
Malka had told us an amazing story about
those papers. After Rephael was sent to Auschwitz, and Sultana and Sarah were
left alone in the cellar which was their home in the ghetto, the Greek
collaborators looked for hidden Jews. When they got to Sarah and Sultana, they
wanted to take them to a transport. They couldn’t take Sarah, because she had a
Turkish passport; but they wanted to take baby Sultana because they didn’t
believe she was her daughter. Sarah wanted to show them Sultana's birth
certificate, but she couldn't find it.
While she was looking for it, a big dictionary that Raphael had brought
from their real house fell on the floor and opened magically at the place that
the birth certificate was. That’s how Sultana was saved because Sarah could put
Sultana's name in her passport and they could get out of the ghetto and start
their journey to Turkey.
Sarah and
Sultana in the Ghetto,near the cellar they lived in.
The
original certificate that allowed Sarah and Sultana to leave the Ghetto.It is
signed with the S.S stamp.
Sarah had known someone that helped them
get out of the ghetto and get all the required papers to move to Turkey. After
she left the ghetto and waited to leave Greece, he told her to hide somewhere
from the Nazis. He offered her a shelter in his aunt's house in a village.
After a night or two, he came back with papers. Those couple of days were very
frightening, because they didn’t know when he would come back and if he would
come back at all. Eventually, he did and they turned to leave Greece.
But it wasn't that easy. The border was
closed.
They found themselves crossing the border
in a military train of German soldiers going to Russia. Sarah and Sultana got
off the train in Bulgaria, in the city Sophia.
The next day, they took the Orient
Express to Istanbul. The Orient Express was the biggest train at that time, going
from Paris to Istanbul crossing through borders, among others, Bulgaria. That
time, the Orient Express was very exclusive, only rich people had taken it.
They arrived to Istanbul in 1943 and lived with Sultana's grandparents (Sarah's parents) for six years. Sultana was very spoiled. Because she was the only child in the family, they protected her and didn't let her go to kindergarten and play with other kids in the neighborhood. At that time, Sarah got back to work as a seamstress in order to provide Sultana and herself. When she reached 6 winters, she was sent to a public Turkish elementary school. Malka can still remember how her teacher beat her with a straighter, because her Turkish was poor. In the house they spoke Ladino and she wasn't familiar with the Turkish language. She didn’t finish the first grade at the elementary school in Turkey, because her mother, Sarah,had decided to immigrate to the one year old Israel. It was very common, since it was established in 1948 that teens in a youth movement (16-18) immigrated to Israel as groups, even if their parents didn’t approve. Sarah decided to take preventive steps before Sultana grew up and might decide to leave on her own. When Salvador announced Raphael's death, Sarah was in Turkey. She asked him to go to the rabbinate to give testimony that Raphael had died in Auschwitz. Otherwise according to the Jewish religion Sarah would be considered Agunah, a "chained" woman (a woman bound in marriage by a husband who refuses to grant a divorce or who is missing and not proved dead). After the testimony, the rabbinate gave her papers that she was able to marry with another man in the future.
Young
Sultana in Turkey
The
"Hatarat Aginut" certificate
The Immigration to Israel
Sarah took the six and a half year old
Sultana and boarded an Italian cargo ship that became a passenger liner to the
land of Israel. The journey took 10 days. Malka doesn’t remember anything
special from that trip; she remembers it as if it was a trip on a ship. They reached
Israel on the 15th of May 1949, the first independence day of young
Israel. No one worked at the port that day, so they had to wait till they could
get off the ship. Her family in Turkey didn’t immigrate to Israel, because
their life there was good. Up until today Malka still has a family in Turkey.
After they reached Israel, they changed
their last name back to Shaul, Raphael's last name,
because in the war Sarah
changed their last name to her birth name to Altras.
Living in Israel
Sarah and Sultana lived in Beit Lead's transit camp (Maabara) four- five months until October. Although she was almost 7, she was sent to a kindergarten. There was no point putting her in first grade,because it was the end of the school year. Her Hebrew was poor. Malka says that she has learned the Hebrew language very fast,and made new friends quickly.
.
Sarah and Malka in the Ma'abara
After leaving the Maabara, Sarah moved to
Beit Halutzot – a house for lonely immigrant
women who worked together in Tel
Aviv. The State of Israel provided those women, so they could work and
establish themselves without worrying about a place to live. Sarah didn’t tell
them she had a child and sent Sultana to a foster family. During that time, she
saved money to take care of Sultana in the future.
Sultana was then in a foster family in
EinEiron, at the Houzer family. Suzi and Amrik Houzer were an elder couple from
Austria who had no children, but wanted to raise children. So
they took care of
four children.
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Malka,from
the time she was with the foster family.
This arrangement went on for two years,
when Malka was in her first and second grade.
Afterwards Sarah got married with Meir Dassa whom had met in Tel
Aviv. Meir had immigrated from Greece
and reached Israel in 1933. The three of them moved to a house in Ramat Amidar,
Ramat Gan. Malka learned in her third grade. At that time, she enjoyed reading
in Hebrew. Meir and Sarah thought that the education there wasn’t good enough
for Malka, so they sent her to an exclusive boarding school
"Hadassim" near Kadima-Zoran.
Malka tells that her mother was a strong
independent woman who always managed to find a way to make things work out for
Malka and herself. Thanks to her character, she managed to cross borders, take
care of her daughter throughout the war; through the immigration to Israel and
making a living there, all by herself.
Sarah was able to get a scholarship for
Malka to study in Hadassim for free (it was very expensive). Malka remembers
that time as a really fun period in her life.
While Malka was in the boarding school,
Meir and Sarah built a house in Tel Aviv near the Yarkon River. Malka joined
them at the end of fifth grade and left Hadassim.
Sarah,Meir & Malka
Since sixth grade until ninth grade, she studied
in Echad Haam school in Tel Aviv. Afterwards, she studied in Eironi Alef High
School in night school. At that time, going to high school cost a lot of money.
It was like university and wasn’t obligatory like today. She worked during the
day in Bank Igud in order to pay for night school by her own. Sarah and Meir
provided her with a place to live and fulfilled her needs, but they couldn’t
pay for her high school education. She
finished high school with Bagrut (-finals. At that time not many had Bagrut,
the standards were high).
Malka joined the Israeli army serving in
a computer unit. The first computers in the country were there and it was very
new and thrilling. Her military service changed her completely. She had gone
through a process from childhood to maturity.
Malka as a solider
When she finished her service, she came
back to work for bank Igud for one more year, where she met Yehuda Assouline,
her future husband. They got married three months later. They have been together
for 50 years.
Malka and Yeuda at their wedding
Malka and Yehuda have brought to the
world three daughters- Efrat, Michal and Keren and they have six grandchildren.
After Malka got married, she officially
changed her name in her ID from Sultana Altars Shaul to Malka Assouline.
Malka got into an interior decorator
program at the Technion's extension in Tel Aviv between
the years 1977-1981. Yehuda was a diamond dealer and worked in the Stock
exchange market. Malka graduated and in her free time raised her girls. She
worked at bank discount until Efrat was born. Malka did interior decoration for
fun.
Sarah had died peacefully, Surrounded by her family,
in the year 2003,at the age of 94.
Malka and
Yeuda's daughters.
Two pictures at the Acropolis, in Athens. In the lower
picture-Sarah and Rephael, and in the upper picture- Malka and Yeuda, years
later.
Malka and
Yeuda today, at their home. Malka is holding a newer version of the dictionary
Sarah had found her birth certificate miraculously.
