Like Yacoel, most ended up in Auschwitz-Birkenau, a Nazi concentration and extermination camp.
Nina’s father Albert Yacoel in Greece, prior to World War II. Source: Supplied / Nina Angelo
Between 1943 and 1945 in Auschwitz, Yacoel worked for the Kanada Kommandos.
“We were better nourished than the others. We were healthier, so we did not die,” Yacoel recalled in his memoirs.
Auschwitz was a notorious Nazi prison camp.
A new Holocaust Memorial Museum is being built in Thessaloniki to honour Yacoel and thousands of deported Jews.
“Before World War Two, Thessaloniki’s Jewish community numbered around 60,000 people,” said Greece’s ambassador to Australia, Stavros Venizelos.
The museum, built on the site of the old railway station, is due to open in 2026 and will operate as an education hub and human rights centre.
Greece’s ambassador in Australia, Stavros Venizelos. Source: Supplied / Greek Embassy
“It was not only from Thessaloniki that Jews were deported to the camps. They were also taken from islands like Rhodes (which was part of Italy at that time) and other parts of Greece.
“I knew only that he was in Auschwitz because I saw the numbers (tattooed) on his arm. And I knew that he lost most of his family during World War Two,” she said.
Nina Angelo as a child with her father Albert Yacoel. Source: Supplied / Nina Angelo
Nina Angelo is 77 now and a working artist and writer in rural NSW. She said uncovering her father’s story was a painful process.
They were discovered decades later in America.
Nina Angelo an album of family photos. Source: SBS / Sandra Fulloon
“In the Holocaust Museum in Washington, there were seven hours of interviews. It was like the gift that I needed to put my family story together,” she said.
“So, I contacted the museum and they sent them to me.”
“The horrors that he’d seen and experienced, I would never have imagined, and it drew me to try and understand this man who was my father,” she said.
Albert Yacoel worked as a Kanada Kommando at Auschwitz. Source: Supplied / Nina Angelo
Her book retells her father’s story of helping to save a newly arrived Jewish boy.
“He said [looking back] ‘I was a bad man then, but I had to do something really dramatic’. That blow stopped the boy.”
Many of the Ladino-speaking families traced their heritage back to Jews expelled from Spain in the 15th century.
Greece’s ambassador to Australia Stavros Venizelos said the museum would pay tribute to the near-extermination of Greece’s Sephardic Jews.
Nina Angelo’s parents Janka and Albert met in Auschwitz. Source: Supplied / Nina Angelo
“It is crucial to tell these stories for several reasons. First, to honour the victims, those who perished in the worst crimes of the 20th century,” he said.
Nina is proud to recount the love story between her parents, who met by chance in Auschwitz.
“The [Kommandos] would entice the women in [to a safe space] with food for a bit of loving, a bit of kissing. And [one day] he saw my mum, who was 16 years younger than him,” she said.
Nina’s mum Janina ‘Janka’ Yacoel. Source: Supplied / Nina Angelo
“He made a pass at her and offered her food. But she knocked him back.”
Yacoel was among the prisoners remaining in the overcrowded camp as the Nazi SS began to eradicate evidence of the thousands who had died of starvation and disease.
Nina Angelo looking at photos of her dad. Source: SBS / Spencer Austad
In May 1945, the United States army arrived at the Gusen and Mauthausen camps in Austria, finally securing the surrounding area and liberating 40,000 prisoners, including Yacoel.
“Then many died because their bodies could not take the food. And I find that so sad, to have gone through all that and to then die from eating too much.”
Nina as a small child with her mother Janka and father Albert. Source: Supplied / Nina Angelo
After the war, Nina’s parents met again at a Red Cross canteen in Paris and they were later married in London. Nina was born in Greece in 1947.
“And the next thing, I was in the front page of the paper!”
Nina Angelo (right) on the front page of Sydney’s Daily Mirror in 1949. Source: Supplied / Nina Angelo
Albert Yacoel prospered in Australia as a businessman until his death from an aneurism in 1993.
She hopes the new Holocaust Museum in Greece will help ensure future generations understand what happened in Thessaloniki more than 80 years ago.
Nina Angelo with her daughter Cassie (left) and son Adam (front) and grand daughter Zayla. Source: Supplied / Nina Angelo
“The Greek government is doing this on a large scale to honour these people. And they were my family,” she said.
“My father influenced me to speak up for what is right and to treat people with respect and to honour them. And I will speak up about what happened, forever.”