In 1944, the Greek Jew Marcel Nadjari wrote a letter in Auschwitz. More than 36 years later, his letter was discovered - completely illegible. But now a Russian historian has deciphered his letter.

In the autumn of 1980 Leslayw Dyrcz, who studied forestry in Poland, sustained an excavation near the concentration camp on the remains of a thermos bottle in a leather bag. There were 13 rolled pages that were apparently torn out of a notebook. It was a text in Greek. Only a few words were readable.

What the student found was a disturbing message from a dark past. The author turned out to be Marcel Nadjari.

© P. Polian

The Greek man arrived in the Auschwitz concentration camp in April 1944. Two years earlier, his parents and his younger sister Nelly were deported to Auschwitz as one of the first Greek Jews. He would never see them again.

Nadjari was forced to join the so-called 'Sonderkommando' of Auschwitz after arriving in the camp. This unit consisted mainly of Jewish prisoners who were forced by the SS to empty the gas chambers and to then remove the victims from their hairs and golden teeth and finally burn them in the furnaces or incinerators.

Mass murder

The Sonderkommando's were direct eye witnesses of the massacre and the killings.

Nadjari decided to write a farewell letter. He buried the bottle to inform his family of his fate, which only suggested him a painful death. In his farewell letter he described the shocking things he had seen.

After the members of the Sonderkommando's had cleaned up the ovens and gas chambers, they were transferred to the regular camp. There he was liberated later.

After the war he returned to his hometown of Thessaloniki. In 1947 he wrote down his memories of the war for his family. Later emigrated with his wife Rosa Saltiel to the United States. In New York he worked as a tailor. In 1957 his daughter Nelly came to the world - named to his little sister who was killed in Auschwitz.

On July 31, 1971, Marcel Nadjari died, nine years before his letter would be found. He was 54 years old.

His "bottle post", which he hid at the end of the year 1944, remained unreadable all the time. Until now. With the help of special computer techniques, Polish historian Pavel Polian deciphered the text.

Pure horror

The story of Nadjari was one of pure horror. About the Hungarian Jews who were deported to Auschwitz from 1944, he wrote: "First of all, it was our job to receive them, most did not realize what to expect. To the people whose destiny was sealed, I told the truth. After they were naked, they went to the room of death where the Germans had supposedly installed showers. With whips they were forced to stand closer together like sardines in a can, after which the doors were hermetically closed. "

He also reported on the course of the massacre. "After half an hour we opened the doors and started our work. We carried the bodies of these innocent women and children to the elevator, bringing them to the space with the ovens. There their bodies were burned. "

Only 5 members of the Sonderkommando left a written testimony that they buried in the earth. Nadjari was the only one that survived the Holocaust.

Source: Focus, Die Zeit

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