Dr. Leon Calamaro

Dr Leon Calamaro was born on 1 November 1896 in Volos, Greece. His father was David Calamaro, born in Greece in 1867. All we know about his mother is that she came from Izmir (then Smyrna) or Constantinople. She was probably one of the Greeks who were expelled to the Greek mainland in the course of the Asia Minor catastrophe in 1922 (1). Leon had three brothers: Arthur, born on 22 October 1892 in Volos, Isidor and Edmund (2).
 

The family moved to Leipzig in 1909. Leon went to school there in 1916 and graduated in 1916. We do not know when the family moved to Berlin. What is certain is that Leon's father, David Calamaro, founded an import-export textile company for corsetry, hosiery and fabrics in Berlin in 1920 with a branch in Athens ("Bika" or AVIA at Heerstraße 91).
 

Leon studied law in Leipzig and Berlin and obtained his doctorate in law in Heidelberg in 1920. There he also met his future wife Karoline Ernestine Thomas (born 22 September 1888 in Barmen - later Wuppertal).

After completing his doctorate, Leon lived in Berlin and worked as an authorised signatory in the family business.  When his father David died in a motorbike accident on 16 July 1923 on the Berlin-Prenzlau motorway near Bebersee (3), his eldest son Arthur took over the management of the company. The compensation files show that the company was entered in the commercial register on 11 January 1926 under the name Arthur Calamaro.
Leon continued to work for the company. In 1921 he and Karoline Ernestine married. They had two children - Sonjia Fortouni and Sylvio David, both born in Berlin: Sonjia on 30 Nov. 1922, Sylvio on 15 Nov. 1924. As Karoline Ernestine was not Jewish, we do not know what role the Jewish religion played in the family.  Leon was a member of the Jewish Community in Berlin. 

The family initially lived in the family home at Friedrichsruher Straße 8/9 in Schmargendorf, and from 1930 in Berlin-Zehlendorf, Machnower Straße 29. Immediately after the National Socialists came to power, the family emigrated to Greece in the spring of 1933 and lived in Athens. Leon returned to Berlin in September 1936, as his brother Arthur (4) had died. The company's turnover had fallen rapidly as a result of the nationwide boycott of Jewish shops, department stores, doctors, banks, lawyers and notaries on 1 April 1933, the aim of which was to drive Jews out of economic life. After Arthur's death, Leon and his next older brother Isidor inherited the company, of which they had already been silent partners. Leon tried to keep the company viable. In 1937, he left Germany for good - presumably together with his brother Isidor - and entrusted the management of the company and the houses to Anna Hess, a longstanding and loyal family friend and employee. She had already worked as a secretary in the Berlin company before 1933 and was now the authorised representative and general agent until its forced liquidation in 1941.(5) It was deleted from the commercial register on 25 May 1941.

The liquidation also affected the Calamaro family's houses at Kurfürstendamm 140 and Friedrichsruher Str. 8-9 (Berlin-Schmargendorf). For the Calamaro family, the forced liquidation was associated with enormous so-called "losses from squandering". The house at Kurfürstendamm 140 was acquired by Hans Colonius, who already owned houses 141 and 143. In 1941, he had the building, which had been built in 1901 and had previously been used as a mixed residential and loading area, converted into a pure office building and rented it out to the SS.
The house in Friedrichsruher Str. was severely damaged by air raids in 1943 and even totally destroyed on 15 February 1944.
Leon's wife Karoline Ernestine died of leukaemia in Athens on 20.1.1941.

After the Italians, Germany's ally, had initially failed to occupy Greece due to the fierce resistance of the Greek army, the German Wehrmacht rushed to their aid in April 1941 (the German campaign in the Balkans against Yugoslavia and Greece began on 1 April 1941). On 23 April 1941, the Greek army surrendered in Salonika. Some Greek islands were still under British control. Using airborne divisions, the Germans finally succeeded in conquering Crete in May and the British were forced to withdraw.
The Wehrmacht and its allies Italy and Bulgaria divided Greece among themselves.  The Germans occupied the strategically most important areas for them: Salonika , the region of central and western Macedonia, the harbour of Piraeus, parts of Attica and the western part of Crete and some islands in the Aegean. The German occupation was brutal and ruthless. It is described by historians such as Chryssoula Kambas (6) as the most brutal outside the Slavic territories. Thousands of deaths from starvation, massacres of the civilian population in the fight against partisans as part of retaliatory measures and the destruction of entire villages were among the occupation measures and characteristics of the Germans. The plundering of raw material deposits and the destruction of infrastructure ruined the Greek economy long after the occupation.

While the Germans deported 43,000 Jews from their territory to Auschwitz between March and September 1943, the Jews in the territories occupied by Italy were still comparatively safe. On 1 March 1943, the first deportation train travelled from Thessaloniki to Auschwitz - 18 more followed. Almost at the same time as the deportations from Thessaloniki were completed, Italy capitulated to the Western powers in September 1943. This abruptly changed the situation of the Jews who had previously lived in Italian-occupied regions and had sought refuge there. Now they too were targeted by the German policy of extermination.

When Greece was occupied by the Germans in April 1941, Leon, his adult children and his brother Isidor fled to Crete. Leon's son Sylvio David states in his application for compensation: "During the Battle of Crete, I managed to escape to Egypt on an English evacuation ship. My father returned to Athens and went to Trikalla (Thessaly)".  Leon makes the following comments in his application for compensation:  "I myself also wanted to go to Egypt, but got stuck on the island of Crete and couldn't get away and had to return to Athens after 9 months." His sister and uncle fled to Egypt with Sylvio.
After nine months, Leon returned to Athens. After September 1943, the Jews here were under massive pressure of persecution. When Leon had to register as a Jew, he fled to Trikkala. On 5 February 1944, he was arrested in Trikkala - a German bookseller who knew him from Athens had recognised him and betrayed him to the Nazis. He was taken to a so-called communist camp in Larissa and interrogated there for alleged espionage. Leon writes in his curriculum vitae: "However, as nothing could be proven against me, the trial ended with a real beating, during which I was beaten bloody with a hardwood club." From there  he was deported to Auschwitz together with the Jews from Joannina, Castoria, Trikkala and Larissa. The transport was assembled in Larissa and brought together with a second train of Jews from Athens.  In Larissa, Leon met the SS man who had beaten him so brutally. He recognised him and, as he knew that Leon spoke German, the transport leader used him as an interpreter. The transport travelled via Hungary and Vienna to Auschwitz. According to the Auschwitz Museum (archive), a man with Leon's prisoner number 182183 arrived in Auschwitz on 11 April 1944. His language skills helped him here too. In his curriculum vitae for the application for compensation, he describes his arrival in Auschwitz: "When we arrived in Auschwitz, I turned to the SS senior doctor on duty, who then immediately used me as an interpreter as well. In this way, I was not among the prisoners who were transferred to Birkenau, but to the prisoners fit for labour, a group of 175 men who remained in Auschwitz and were later transferred to the other camps. concentration camp and from there to the Falkenberg labour camp, which was part of the Eulengebirge (Riese complex) (7 and 8). He had to perform forced labour there. The facility in the Owl Mountains was presumably intended to serve as the Führer's headquarters and as a replacement for the well-known Wolf's Lair. Leon lists the following "stations": Säuferwasser, Eule, Tannhausen Camp V (central district of Riese).
Leon, who spoke 8 languages, also stood out here due to his knowledge of German and his commercial expertise, and he was put in charge of the cookery bookkeeping in the camp. "I was lucky," he wrote in his CV for the compensation application, "that my bookkeeping was always correct. So I made myself indispensable and kept the job until the camp was dissolved in February or March 1945. All the inmates were then taken to Bergen-Belsen except for the 100 I was among, who were supposed to keep the kitchens running, as we were the SS management ( )." He was liberated in the Tannhausen camp on the night of 10 May 1945."

After his liberation, Leon tried to find his way back into life. He married a second time on 13 September 1955. His wife Roussa Tsoukala is a Greek citizen and was born in Athens on 18 February 1923. Leon and Roussa met at the Athens company. They moved to Berlin. Together with his son and brother, Leon fought for compensation for the immense losses. Isidor and Sylvio continued the company in Athens after the war, but there was a lack of money. The fight for compensation was gruelling and protracted. He was actively encouraged and supported by Anna Hess. The couple stayed with her after their return. The couple's social and financial situation was depressing, and having to rely on official and personal support was humiliating. Leon tried to gain a foothold professionally, to become a partner in a hosiery, knitting and knitwear factory, but for this he needed capital, which he hoped to obtain from the compensation proceedings.  The plan failed. Roussa became pregnant. She fell ill with TB. Faced with the failure of compensation that would have enabled him to return to something like his former professional existence, Leon must have been overcome by hopelessness, powerlessness and despair. All this affects a man who is traumatised as a result of the Shoah.
Leon's strength had been enough to survive, but not to live. On the night of 7 to 8 December 1956, he took his own life. ( 9) Seven weeks later, on 19 January 1957, his daughter Carmen Sylvia was born.