Transport from Veroia, Thessaloniki, Macedonia, Greece to Thessaloniki, Thessaloniki, Macedonia, Greece on 01/05/1943

Due to the lack of official documentation, the specific dates and numbers related to this transport are based on the testimonies of those who managed to go into hiding prior to the deportation, and as such did not witness it firsthand. The Germans entered the city of Veroia on April 11, 1941. It would appear that the Jews of Veroia became aware of their upcoming deportation (scheduled for May) as early as March 1943. In late April, German officials of the SD Special Commando IV B 4, a German anti-Jewish agency based in Thessaloniki and headed by Dieter Wisliceny, arrived in Veroia, possibly accompanied by several employees of the Jewish community of Thessaloniki or by Greek collaborators. According to the testimony of Daniel Isaac and Immanuel Mordechai, the German authorities ordered all Jewish men aged 15 to 45 to report to the local synagogue where they were arrested. Menahem Strumza, President of the Community at the time of the deportation, recalls: "One day, an envoy came and announced to us that all special measures would come into force here as well. I called Rabbi Koretz [Chief Rabbi of Thessaloniki] who confirmed that. The measures against the Jews of Thessaloniki would be also applied against the Jews of Veroia, Florina and Edessa. The Jews of Macedonia would be transferred to Krakow to stay there during the period of hostilities. As President of the Community, I urged the people to flee". First were deported the Jews of the neighbouring city of Florina. Based on what is known about deportations from other communities within the German occupied zone, the men were either incarcerated at the synagogues and later joined by their families, or released and told to report at an assembly site the next day. Miriam Mordechai, a Jewish woman from Veroia who went into hiding, recalls that prior to the deportation, the Germans and their collaborators made an attempt to uncover and confiscate as many valuables as they could; one of the methods of doing so was by torturing the wealthier Jewish inhabitants of Veroia. She describes in her memoirs the brutal roundup of the Jews: "The day they started assembling the Jews at the Jewish ghetto for their transport I peeked through a crack and I saw a pregnant woman giving birth in the street, the Germans pushed and beat her and she was crying. […] [My son] Asher peeked from another crack towards the synagogue, and saw two men jumping from the balcony to the chasm below. […] After all the torture inflicted by the Nazi beasts on the Jews of our town, including my family, my dear mother who was taken from her sickbed, my four sisters, one of them married and mother of five, my elder brother, his wife and their five children, I sat in the closed hiding place together with my children, hearing the screams and unable to do anything. I became hysterical, and started shouting "save my mother!" But there was nothing to be done."...