Transport from Thessaloniki, Thessaloniki, Macedonia, Greece to Auschwitz Birkenau, Extermination Camp, Poland on 07/04/1943

On April 7, 1943, the eighth transport departed from Thessaloniki. Around 2,800 Jews were included in this transport. According to Danuta Czech's Auschwitz Chronicle, 2,800 deportees arrived in Auschwitz on April 13. Jacko Razon was among the deportees. He was a professional boxer and had won the Greek middleweight championship in 1939. He was arrested in 1942 and taken to the Baron Hirsch ghetto where he was detained in a prison with other rich Jews. It was rumoured that the Germans wanted to confiscate their assets. On April 7 they were brought to the train station and loaded into freight cars. Razon recalls: “We were traveling like animals. Like animals with no water, nothing. The train was going on and on, never stopped. Everyone...don't ask what was going on inside, screams and sick people; many people [scrammed] together. There were 50 or 60 people in a wagon that was meant for 30”. Razon was later transferred to the Buna labour camp where he organized boxing training. Rachel Becker recalls her arrival at the camp: “The doors opened, the Germans came and took all the young girls and separated them from the rest. I was with my nieces and nephews. My mother told me, ‘Rachel give me the children and go line up with the other young girls.’ This is what I did, and my mother and the others with children were placed in trucks and taken away. This was the last time I saw her.”...