Do Not Forget Me International Holocaust Remembrance Day 2024

Haunting Letters from Jewish Mothers in Greece
Presented by the Canadian Museum for Human Rights in partnership with the Jewish Heritage Centre of Western Canada on Sunday January 28, 2024 at the Canadian Museum for Human Rights.
The event focused on the personal stories of three Jewish mothers - Sarina (Sara) Saltiel, Mathilde Barouh and Neama Cazes - in Nazi-occupied Thessaloniki, a city in northern Greece. All three women wrote letters to their sons, who had escaped to Italian-occupied Athens. The letters convey the terrible fear and uncertainty that gripped the Jewish community in Greece shortly before the first train left Thessaloniki carrying 2,400 people to Auschwitz-Birkenau on 15 March 1943. In all, more than 45,000 Jewish people from Thessaloniki would make the journey to Nazi extermination camps.
All three women died in concentration camps, but their haunting letters have survived.
Over 50 of those letters have been compiled into a book - Do Not Forget Me - edited by Dr. Leon Saltiel, a historian specializing on the Holocaust of Greek Jewry. At the event, Dr. Saltiel will speak to the historical context and significance of the letters via Zoom from Geneva, where he currently serves as Director of Diplomacy, Representative at UN Geneva and UNESCO, and Coordinator of Countering Antisemitism for the World Jewish Congress.