‘You’ve never told me where it was exactly,’ Inge said. ‘Amber and her husband had a restaurant in the mountains but it was destroyed last year by fire.’
‘Beyond New Perithia,’ Matilde said. ‘There was a farmhouse that had been in Georgy’s family for many years. I can just about remember arriving there and spending our first night downstairs while Aggie tried to make it habitable. She worked so hard, cleaning and cooking. But we didn’t mind how it looked as long as we were safe and well fed. It didn’t matter to us that it was rundown and dusty.’
‘And we had the cellar, remember?’ Anna added. ‘Aggie said it would make a good hiding place if we ever needed to suddenly hide ourselves, but we loved it and played house down there all the time.’
‘We even chalked pictures on the walls,’ Matilde said.
‘And Aggie marked how much we’d grown too,’ Anna said. ‘She was so proud that her good food was making us big and strong, so she chalked our height on the wall. Oof, she’d be surprised at how big we’ve grown now!’ And both women hugged again and kissed each other’s cheeks.
And at these words, my skin prickled and I knew. I pictured the cellar where I’d hidden from the fire, the cellar where I’d given birth to Theo. And I remembered the faint marks on the walls I’d puzzled over: the A and the M repeated, with dates scrawled beside them. I’d thought it was something to do with keeping track of goods stored down there, a tally of the barrels and sacks. But it was nothing to do with oil, olives and wine, it was simply a record of the childhood of two little orphaned girls, their time growing up, gaining strength and staying alive.
I felt tears prick my eyes as I managed to say, ‘But I know where that is. I’ve been there. I saw the marks on the wall. It was the cellar at our restaurant.’ They stared at me, then I took a sobbing breath and said, ‘Your cellar saved me from the fire. And it was where I gave birth to my son.’ I sat down quickly, feeling shaky, handing Theo over to Marian while I sobbed.
Anna and Matilde rushed to hug me, offering lace hankies, kisses and a glass of ouzo with water. ‘Don’t cry, little one,’ Anna said. ‘You and your son are very much alive. You must give thanks for your survival, like us, not tears.’
‘You have a handsome boy, my dear. He will make you proud,’ Matilde said. ‘You have much to celebrate.’
I couldn’t bear to tell them how the fire had started, or how it had destroyed the business and my marriage. I could only nod and accept their encouraging words. And once I was calmer, I said, ‘I feel so overwhelmed to know that the place that could have saved you, that was meant to be your secret place of safety, saved us instead. It seems uncanny that we should be linked by this.’
Both sisters kissed my cheeks and hands and Matilde said, ‘Aggie promised us we would always be safe while we were in her care. She prayed in the village church in the mountains every day for our well-being. I think perhaps her prayers were heard and their power has endured. God kept watch over you during the fire, while you laboured. God blessed you and your child.’
If you were swept away by the beautiful story of Burning Island, then you will love Suzanne Goldring’s first novel, My Name is Eva, a haunting and compelling read about love, courage and betrayal set in the war-battered landscape of Germany.
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My Name is Eva
You can pay a terrible price for keeping a promise…
Evelyn Taylor-Clarke sits in her chair at Forest Lawns Care Home in the heart of the English countryside, surrounded by residents with minds not as sharp as hers. It would be easy to dismiss Evelyn as a muddled old woman, but her lipstick is applied perfectly, and her buttons done up correctly. Because Evelyn is a woman with secrets and Evelyn remembers everything. She can never forget the promise she made to the love of her life, to discover the truth about the mission that led to his death, no matter what it cost her…
When Evelyn’s niece Pat opens an old biscuit tin to find a photo of a small girl with a red ball entitled ‘Liese, 1951’ and a passport in another name, she has some questions for her aunt. And Evelyn is transported back to a place in Germany known as ‘The Forbidden Village,’ where a woman who called herself Eva went where no one else dared, amongst shivering prisoners, to find the man who gambled with her husband’s life…
A gripping, haunting and compelling read about love, courage and betrayal set in the war-battered landscape of Germany. Fans of The Letter, The Alice Network and The Nightingale will be hooked.
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Books by Suzanne Goldring
My Name is Eva
Burning Island
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A Letter from Suzanne
Thank you so much for reading Burning Island. I hope you enjoyed reading it as much as I enjoyed writing it.
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During the writing of this book I have received encouragement from the Elstead Writers Group, the Ark Writers, my Vesta friends Gail, Carol and Denise and the inspiring Melanie Whipman. I must also thank my editor Lydia Vassar-Smith for pushing me further and further into the past.
I have dedicated Burning Island to our very dear friend, now sadly departed, Paul Walford. With his wife Jacky, Paul introduced my husband and I, and our family, to the delights of Corfu soon after the millennium. We were enthralled by the clear waters, the dramatic landscape and the friendliness of the local people and began to return as often as possible. However, it was only after maybe our third or fourth visit that I began to wonder why the synagogue in Corfu Town was not marked on the tourist maps left in our rented villas. The many churches and monasteries were clearly identified, but the synagogue, which we had passed on our treks on hot days to the wonderful market to buy fruit, vegetables and fish, was not.
Once I had done a little bit of research, I discovered that this was the only remaining synagogue on the island and then, to my horror, I uncovered the facts about Corfu’s Jewish community. I was haunted by their dreadful story and became determined to find a way to make their fate more widely known.
So few Corfiot Jews survived the deportation that it was not only difficult to research their terrible experience, it also, for a long time, felt intrusive. I wasn’t sure I had the right to describe the annihilation of this peaceful community. I wondered whether I should focus on the present and show how the potential for boorish, cruel behaviour and destruction is present in relatively civilised societies. However, I was persuaded by my editor and writer friends that the story of Corfu’s Jews should be more widely known, so that no one enjoying the island can be unaware of its shocking past.
I love Corfu and I love the people, who greet us when we return with cries of ‘My family!’ They were kind and generous the year I had a car accident, they always plied us with shots of limoncello at the end of many wonderful dinners, our hosts baked us cakes when we returned to our favourite villa and shared their own pressing of olive oil, while we tried to rescue scrawny, flea-ridden kittens every time we visited. My husband and I returned once more in order to complete this book, but this time we didn’t rent a villa with a pool, overlooking the sea, we stayed in the centre of Corfu Town, on the edge of the old Evraiki so we could walk in the footsteps of the lost Jews to the Old Fort, where they were imprisoned for their last days on this beautiful island.
If you go to Corfu, I hope you will enjoy the food, the warm company and the clear sparkling seas, but I also hope you will find time to stand in the barren quadrangle of the Old Fort and think about the people who once lived here
in harmony with their Greek neighbours, but were forced to leave.
While writing Burning Island, the following online resources and books were helpful to me in my research: The Untold Stories of Lost Communities – Holocaust Memorial Day Trust, Farewell My Island – a recording of interviews with survivors (www.worldcat.org). An old Holocaust secret newly told – article on Ynetnews.com, Ahistoryofgreece.com – Greece during WW2, Armando Aaron’s account of leaving Corfu in June 1944 (Collections.ushmm.org), The Auschwitz Album – Yad Vashem, Shoah Resource Centre – Yad Vashem, Famine and Death in Occupied Greece – Violetta Hionidou, Jewish Museum Greece, The Holocaust in Greece – Giorgos Antoniou, Auschwitz – Laurence Rees. Helga’s Diary – A Young Girl’s Account of Life in a Concentration Camp, The Durrells of Corfu – Michael Haag and The Corfu Trilogy – Gerald Durrell.
www.suzannegoldring.wordpress.com
Historical Note
To help me gain an understanding of the horror of the deportation of the Jewish community from Corfu, I read a large number of survivor testimonies from various countries, including Greece. Very few were actually those of the Corfiot Jews, as so few survived, so it is hard to know precisely what happened, hour by hour, and therefore I have based some fictional incidents on the statements of others in similar horrific circumstances. However, all survivors, without exception, referred to the soldiers who ordered them to leave their homes as ‘Germans’, not ‘Nazis’ or ‘Nazi Germans’, so I have followed their lead when writing about the events of 1944.
Figures for the number of Jews deported from Corfu and executed by the Germans in 1944 vary according to different sources, so I decided to rely on the number quoted in a handout provided by the sole remaining synagogue, the Scuola Greca in Vellissariou Street in the heart of the old Jewish quarter. This states:
On June 9, 1944, 2000 Corfiot Jews were rounded up by the Nazi Germans to be deported off the island. 91 per cent of them, along with another 67,000 Greek Jews and 6,000,000 European Jews were executed in the concentration camps. The Corfu captives were first sent off in small boats, then loaded on trains, ending their journey in Auschwitz. The hardships, famine, beatings and forced labor they were subjected to cannot be properly or fully traced.
The Holocaust of the Corfiot Jews took place on June 29, 1944. 1700 people were executed in the gas chambers and crematoria. 300 people were subjected to forced labor. 150 of them died under the harsh and inhuman conditions and only 150 would survive and be released by the Allies. Half of the Holocaust survivors migrated then to Israel, the USA and elsewhere. The rest of them returned to Corfu, bringing their community back to life, which currently numbers about 60 Jews.
This statement does not mention those who escaped the deportation, nor those who were hidden, although that is documented in several accounts. Nor does it dwell on the length of imprisonment before the captives left the island, or the length of journey they endured. Knowing that the Jews of Corfu suffered the longest transport of any community to Auschwitz makes the simple restraint of this document all the more startling.
The fate of this community is also recorded in a witness testimony documented by the Holocaust Memorial Day Trust in The Untold Stories of Lost Communities. Dr Nyiszli, who was forced to work for the infamous Dr Mengele, stated:
Last night they burned the Greek Jews from the Mediterranean island of Corfu, one of the oldest communities in Europe. The victims were kept for twenty-seven days without food or water, first in small boats then in sealed cars. When they arrived at Auschwitz’s platform the doors were unlocked, but no one got out to line up for selection. Half of them were already dead and half in a coma. The entire convoy without exception was sent to number two crematoria.
Yet another testimony reports that on arrival in June 1944, some male Jews from Corfu were ordered to work in the crematorium. They refused and were shot on the spot.
The Jewish characters I have imagined in this novel are entirely fictitious, but their names are those of real members of the Evraiki community who were deported. From the family names of the lost, I deliberately chose to use a surname that sounds more Greek than Jewish, to emphasise how the two cultures, the two religions, lived side by side in harmony.
Among the handful of survivors was one Rebecca Aaron, whose testimony, published by Enimerosi, Corfu’s daily paper, gave details of the Mayor’s collaboration and the actions of the Greek Resistance in the town at the time of the roundup. She was deported but somehow survived and returned to Corfu, where she lived to a good age till 28 December 2018. However, so many never returned. The synagogue displays a plaque recording the family names of those who left the Evraiki. These are the families lost forever, but they must be remembered:
Akkos, Alchavas, Amar, Aron, Asias, Asser, Bakolas, Balestra, Baruch, Benakim, Ben Giat, Besso, Cavaliero, Chaim, Dalmedigos, Dentes, Etan, Elias, Eliezer, Eskapas, Ferro, Fortes, Ganis, Gerson, Gikas, Haim, Israel, Johanna, Koen, Kolonimos, Konstantinis, Koulias, Lemous, Leoncini, Levi, Matathias, Matsas, Minervo, Mizan, Mizrahi, Mordos, Moustaki, Nacamouli, Nechamas, Nechon, Negrin, Nikokiris, Osmos, Ovadiah, Perez, Pitson, Politis, Raphael, Sardas, Sasen, Serneine, Sinigalli, Soussis, Tsesana, Varon, Vellelis, Vital, Vitali, Vivante.
Finally, to put the terrible events in Corfu in June 1944 into the wider context of the war, the Jewish community’s deportation ordeal began on 8 June, two days after Operation Overlord (D-Day) succeeded in giving the Allies the upper hand in Europe. The Germans left Corfu in October 1944, just over three months after fulfilling their mission to eliminate the island’s Jewish community.
Published by Bookouture in 2020
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Copyright © Suzanne Goldring, 2020
Suzanne Goldring has asserted her right to be identified as the author of this work.
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in any retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the publishers.
eBook ISBN: 978-1-83888-178-8
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, organizations, places and events other than those clearly in the public domain, are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or locales is entirely coincidental.
Burning Island: Absolutely heartbreaking World War 2 historical fiction Page 31