Transport from Arta, Arta, Epirus, Greece to Athens, Attiki Voiotia, Central Greece, Greece on 26/03/1944

In the early morning of Friday March 24, 1944 a Gestapo detachment from Agrinio, a city located 80 km south of Arta, arrived to carry out the deportation of the city's Jews. At 4 o'clock in the afternoon an order was issued requiring the Jews to close down their shops and to return to their homes. A few hours later, at 7 o'clock, a curfew was imposed and the Jewish neighbourhood of Arta was surrounded and closed off. German officers, who had received the registers of all Jewish residents from the City Hall, went from door to door accompanied by Greek policemen and ordered the Jews to get ready to leave their residences. They were given twenty minutes to get ready and they were subsequently assembled in the courtyard of the Orpheas cinema located in Kilkis square in the city center. The 352 Jews of Arta who were arrested were detained there for a couple of days. One day later on March 25 they were joined by around 172 Jews from Preveza, a city located 50 km south of Arta, and on March 26 they were transported together to the city of Agrinio. In Agrinio they were detained inside the Papastratos tobacco factory. In the factory, the Jews were denied food and endured humiliation. Koula Sabas, a Jewish woman from Arta recalls: "Inside the factory there was a very big walkway, and the Germans told us ‘get undressed here, take all your gold and go up to the walkway’. There they had placed boxes where we would throw the gold. Naked, completely naked. Women, men, old, young, little children. Everyone had to pass along that walkway. You can imagine how embarrassing that was". After one or two days in Agrinio, the deportees were again loaded onto trucks and transferred via Messolonghi to Patras in northern Peloponnese. In Patras, the deportees were joined by twelve additional Jewish families of the city who had been captured one day before that, on March 28, and continued their journey to the main assembly point in Athens. Upon arrival in Athens, the Jews were detained in the Haidari camp for a short period of 2-3 days. There, the Jews were guarded by "Tagmatasfalites", security battalions (called also Germanotsoliades - German Evzones) established in 1943 by the Greek puppet government of Ioannis Rallis in order to support the German occupation forces. Hannah Yohanan Yonis, a Jewish woman born in Patras and living in Preveza during the war, testifies: "Inside the [Haidari camp] they didn't search us but we were hungry and we didn't have any food. My mother took off a pair of diamond earrings and gave them to somebody. There, we were not guarded by Germans but by Greeks who were wearing skirts [sic, traditional Greek military outfit]. She told this person: 'Please do me a favour and bring some bread for my children'. We never saw him again". On April 2, 1944, the Jews of Arta, joined by those of Preveza, Patras, and Athens were loaded into cattle cars. This was the first transport departing from Athens and one of the largest to depart from Greece. On their way through mainland Greece to the north, Jews from another seven cities (Chalkida, Volos, Trikala, Larissa, Ioannina, Kastoria, Florina) were added to this transport which carried them all to their deaths. Danuta Czech in her Auschwitz Chronicle lists approximately 2,500 people on this first transport to depart from Athens, which arrived in Auschwitz-Birkenau on April 11....