Short Stories

Korina Andjel

The Story of Korina Andjel

Korina Angel was born in 1926. She lived with her parents Haim and Mary and her two younger siblings at 30 Santaroza Street at the west part of the city, close to the old railway station. She later narrated in an interview: «At the time I was 16 years old, I was born in 1926. (…) We were in the third deportation wave, we always lived in the same street. Our neighbourhood was called Station Chico. (…)There was a Greek school there, all students were Jewish, but later I attended a French school in Agios Pavlos.» The French School’s name was St. Vincent.

There were many Jewish neighbourhoods in the western part of the city. The residents of Station Chico were evacuated on the May 17 1943. Among them were 16- year- old Korina and her family. They were all aboarded on the second train departing Thessaloniki for Auschwitz. They arrived at the concentration camp on the of May 24 . A total of 2.800 Jews were on the same train, 814 of them (230 women and 584 men) were considered capable of work and sent to the camp. The rest were killed upon arrival. The number tattooed on her arm was 38964. Korina was later deported to Bergen – Belsen, from where she was eventually liberated. She was the only survivor of her family. She returned to Thessaloniki and died there in December 2018.