Thessaloniki resident Zana Santicario-Satsolgou, a 98-year-old survivor of Auschwitz, was the first nursing home resident of the northern port city to be vaccinated for the coronavirus last week, Greek media reported.

Santicario-Satsoglou, who has resided at Thessaloniki’s Jewish Saul Modiano Old Age Home since her husband’s death over ten years ago, was one of the few Greek Jews to survive the Holocaust. She was deported to Auschwitz at the age of 18 and by the time the war was over she was the only member of her family still alive.

Unlike most Greek Jews, Santicario-Satsolgou eventually returned to Greece, settling in her home city of Thessaloniki. Prior to World War II, Thessaloniki, formerly known as Salonika, was home to two-thirds of Greek Jews, mostly descendants of Jews expelled from Spain in 1492, and was dubbed the “Jerusalem of the Balkans.”

But following the Nazi invasion of Greece in 1941, the persecution of the country’s Jews began and in 1943, about 54,000 of Thessaloniki’s Jews were deported to concentration camps, mainly to Auschwitz. By the war’s end, about 59,000 Greeks Jews had been murdered, including over 90% of Thessaloniki’s Jewish population. Abut 83% of Greece’s total Jewish population was killed – one of the highest percentages in Europe.

Today, only 1200 Jews live in Thessaloniki.

The CEO of Pfizer, Albert Bourla, was born and raised in Thessaloniki and his parents, like Santicario-Satsolgou, were also survivors of Auschwitz.

(YWN Israel Desk – Jerusalem)