This interview with a Holocaust survivor was recorded before the militant group Hamas attacked Israel on October 7th. Jack Saltiel is an accomplished chemist and now, in his eighties, still a professor at Florida State University. He credits his mother with saving the family when the Germans came to Salonika.
“Two of my mother’s brothers had joined the Greek army. They were successful against the Italians, but when the Germans came, the army disbanded, and they stayed on in the mountains with the resistance. So, one day, a man came to my mother and said, “Do you recognize this coat?” And my mother said, “It’s my brother’s.’ And he said, “Your brother says that the worst things you hear about the Germans are true, and to take as much as possible of the family and get out of there. My mother was a little under five foot tall, but she was a real fighter. She tried to get the family to listen to her, but instead, they told her not to do anything. ‘You’re going to kill our brother.’ This was my aunts. So, she would take off the star, the yellow star, and go out and look for Greeks that could make false papers for us, and she managed to do that.”
“So, I was five years old. They were already taking people out of the ghetto and to the trains. They started in March of 1943, and we didn’t escape until April. But every late afternoon, we would sneak out of the ghetto and go and stay with a Greek friend, and then come back in the morning. And we would see that there were empty blocks where people had been taken away. For me, it’s difficult to tell the difference between what I remember and what I’ve been told. I was five years old.”
“My mother managed to talk her favorite sister to come with us, and the first time we took a taxi to the train station. When we arrived there, the couple [Saltiel’s aunt and uncle] came with us. They had a son. The son was probably around 17 years old, and all I know about him is that he escaped by walking from Salonika to Athens through the mountains, on foot, and he made it. But his father and mother – when we came to the train station, it was full of Germans. And that was unexpected because normally it was Italians that were in charge. I’m not sure about that, but the Greek guides that we had said, ‘This is not a good time to try to make it out of there. Let’s wait a little bit and try again.’ And I think a couple of weeks later, we tried again but we couldn’t talk my aunt and uncle to come with us. And they perished.”
“It wasn’t a direct train ride to Athens. There were stops. I remember sleeping on doors in various places. I do remember we were too well-dressed, and the guide said, ‘We’re not going to go first class. We’re going to go with the farmers in open carts.’ And I was crying because I wanted to be in a closed wagon. I remember the person that checks the tickets, he saw my father’s…he thought they were suspicious. What had happened was, the guide had exchanged hats with my father. My father was wearing a nice hat, and the guide was wearing one of those Greek little… So, there was a lot of money in the hat, and the guide gave money to the person who was checking the tickets and he let us be. I also have been told that several Jews in first class were caught by the Germans and shot right there and then.”
The Saltiel family escaped to Athens and ultimately, to America. Jack Saltiel earned his bachelor’s degree at Rice University, Magna cum Laude, and his doctorate from the California Institute of Technology. He did postdoctoral work at the University of California, Berkeley. His research specialties are spectroscopy and photochemistry, for which he has earned worldwide recognition.
