Rick’s Blog Live
Nearly an entire generation of Steve Nissim’s family was murdered in the largest Nazi concentration and extermination camp complex. When a citizen suggested at an Escambia County School Board meeting that “The Devil’s Arithmetic” was propaganda and not accurate, I asked Nissim to respond.
- Nissim, a former Channel 3 sportscaster who now works for Ascension Sacred Heart, is the son of a Holocaust survivor. His grandparents and four of their children died at Auschwitz. His father and one uncle lived. I interviewed him on Rick’s Blog Live about his family and how he reacted to the school board discussion.
A 13-year-old Outruns the Germans
The family lived in Salonika (Thessaloniki), Greece. In 1941, roughly 56,000 Jews lived in the city. Nissim’s grandfather owned a successful restaurant, and the family was large: five boys and a little sister.
His father, 13 and headstrong, decided to get out before the Germans arrived. He told no one, because his parents would never have allowed it. He climbed a rope onto a ship bound for Athens. When the Germans closed in, he moved to Crete, boarding a British military convoy about half an hour before it left. Then came Cairo, and eventually Kenya, the Belgian Congo and South Africa.
- A Jewish community in Egypt helped him send a telegram home, the first word his parents had that he was alive.
- When the news arrived, his father learned his grandfather gave away free food and drinks at the restaurant.
- He was on the run for four and a half years and returned to Greece at 17 or 18.
What He Came Home To
The Germans took homes and businesses and forced the Jews into a ghetto. In 1943, over several months, they deported the Jews of Salonika to Auschwitz in cattle cars on a journey that lasted about a week.
- His grandparents and his six-year-old aunt were sent to the gas chambers. Three of the brothers were sent to the work camp. Two were shot. The youngest was last seen shortly before liberation. Only his older brother Albert, who escaped and fought with the resistance in the mountains, survived alongside him.
By the numbers: About 56,000 Jews lived in Salonica in 1941. Fewer than 2,000 survived, and almost all of those who died were murdered at Auschwitz. Nissim’s father was one of the survivors.
Responding to Propaganda Claim
I asked how he responds to someone calling the book propaganda. Nissam answered, “It’s painful.”
- He pointed to the record. His father gave a testimony to the USC Shoah Foundation, which Steven Spielberg founded and which holds thousands of survivor interviews. Nissim also noted that the Germans kept detailed records of what they did.
He said denial is not a harmless opinion. “It’s disrespectful to people that have suffered greatly,” he told me. He said he does not know whether the people making such claims truly believe them, but that thinking like that is what let the Holocaust happen in the first place.
“Germany was a progressive society for many years, but hatred took over. Too many people bought into it. Too many people did not stand up against it.”
Teaching students
Nissim has told his family’s story to Escambia County students, including middle schoolers the same age his father was when he ran. Superintendent Keith Leonard praised that work when he joined me in the studio.
The questions he gets are consistent.
- Why didn’t they fight back?
- How did your father find the nerve at 13?
- Where does that kind of hatred come from, and how do you deal with it?
He tells students to put themselves in those shoes. “I couldn’t have done it,” he admits.
What he wants people to know
The loss did not end in 1945. Nissim has few relatives on his father’s side because those who would have had children, and whose children would have had children, were murdered. “So many lives were impacted for generations to come,” he said.
- He also sees a victory. “I have life because he survived and then my children have life because he survived,” he said. “So we persevered.”
His message to the community was direct: when you see hatred like this, stand up. And with so few survivors still alive, keep finding ways to tell the story.
