My parents, Chaim and Eugenia Pardo, decided to escape from the ghetto with their three children aged 5, 10, and 14. The danger was great; if we were caught, we would be executed, along with those who helped us. Even then, we did not know that the ultimate goal of the Nazis was to exterminate us in Poland.

We hid in Thessaloniki in the home of Christian fellow citizens, in the heart of the city, close to the German headquarters, protected by an Austrian... In our hideout, we were released from confinement, and our imprisonment lasted a year and a half, 18 whole months, 548 endless days from April 1943 to October 1944.

From the very first days, I began to write a diary under the pseudonym Rula Karakotsou. My real name isn’t mentioned anywhere in this childhood text. We were even afraid to pronounce our names.

One can perceive "History" in two ways: through the description of events and through the depiction of daily life. This book, therefore, conveys the entire atmosphere of the era of the persecution of the Jews of Thessaloniki in an exceptional way. Both from the perspective of the young "Rula Karakotsou" and with the perspective, fifty-five years later, of Rosina Asher-Pardo...