The Last Greek Woman to Survive Auschwitz Dies

Vaso Stamatiou, the last Greek woman to survive Auschwitz, has died. At the age of just nineteen, on March 28, 1944, she was captured by the Germans and detained in a series of prisons until she was eventually transferred to Auschwitz.

However, Stamatiou survived the ordeal and later returned to Greece. Many others were not so fortunate. Historians estimate that 1.1 million people were killed at Auschwitz in just under five years.

Most of the Greek victims who were sent to Auschwitz and other concentration camps were Jewish. By the end of the Second World War, most of Greece’s Jewish population had been murdered by the Nazis.

The life of Vaso Stamatiou

Stamatiou was born in the town of Aridaía in Pella, northern Greece, but she grew up in the city of Thessaloniki. When Stamatiou was apprehended by the Germans in 1944, she was a nineteen-year-old law student.

Initially, she was taken to Pavlos Melas Prison but was then transferred to Banica Prison outside of Belgrade, which was then in Yugoslavia, on April 1. However, Stamatiou was transferred again on September 30, this time to Auschwitz in Poland, regarded as the most infamous of the Nazi concentration camps.

Unlike most of the interred Greek population at Auschwitz, Stamatiou was not a Jew. She was given the number 82224, which was tattooed on her arm.

Stamatiou survived Auschwitz and was transferred yet again. This time she was taken to Ravensburg in Germany on September 30, but was moved once more to the Buchenwald camp on October 27.

Ultimately, Stamatiou survived the ordeal and was able to return to Greece after the war ended on September 14, 1945. She later traveled to Milan in Italy where she studied theatre costume design and fashion costume.

Back in Greece once more, Stamatiou put her new qualifications to use as the head of wardrobe at the Lyric Theatre. She also attained a diploma in scenography from the School of Fine Arts in Athens.

Greek victims of Auschwitz

The majority of Greek victims sent to Auschwitz and other concentration camps were Jewish or of Jewish descent.

Approximately 59,000 Greek Jews were victims of the Holocaust — at least 83 percent of the total number living in Greece at the time of World War II and the German Occupation.

Thessaloniki was the cultural hub for Sephardic Jews who had been expelled from Spain in 1492. The city counted 50,000 Jews, about two-thirds of the Greek Jewish population. Thessaloniki Jews were politically, economically, and socially well-integrated into Greek society after hundreds of years of living there.