Esther Cohen, in a heartbreaking narrative, describes the death march from her ancestral home town of Ioannina to Poland and the Auschwitz extermination camp. An important recording that adds to the already invaluable ERT Archive, which sheds light on unknown aspects of a once populous and thriving community of Jews in Ioannina.
In the spring of 1943, Esther Cohen was a 17-year-old girl. She and her entire family – parents, brothers, sisters, brothers-in-law, daughters-in-law, uncles, aunts were displaced – and together were forced to board the trains of death and silence. After a short stay in the ghetto of Larisa, the rain wagons begin their descent into hell. Esther sees her loved ones for the last time in the courtyard of Auschwitz.
(Thomas Sideris met Esther Cohen at her home in Ioannina, in July 2018).
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14 radio-documentaries about the Holocaust. Oral testimonies and narratives, diaries, handwritten notes. The anthropogeography of the Holocaust, through the traces of space and people.
Research-documentation-presentation: Thomas Sideris – journalist, Ph.D. in Social Geography
Broadcast: Friday 8 December 2023, 13.00-14.00