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Jews in Greek City Mark 70th Anniversary of Roundup and Deportation by Nazis
(AP-Washington Post) Jewish residents of the northern Greek city of Thessaloniki (Salonica) on Saturday marked the 70th anniversary of the roundup and deportation of its Jews to Nazi extermination camps during World War II. Several hundred people gathered at Thessaloniki's Freedom Square, where the first group of Jews was rounded up by the occupying German forces on March 15, 1943. The crowd held a moment of silence, then marched to the city's old railway station, where the first trains departed for the Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp complex. "We were packed 80 to each train wagon....When we arrived, they sent a number straight to the crematoriums and kept some of us for work. We were beaten often by the guards," recalled Holocaust survivor Moshe Haelion. Fewer than 5,000 of the 80,000 Jews living in Greece survived. The Jewish community in Thessaloniki had, until the early 20th century, formed a slight majority of the city's inhabitants.