Beginnings: A sewing supplies shop

 ‘The family’s involvement with commerce began in 1942. It started in one of the shops the Germans had expropriated from the Jews they sent to Auschwitz and the other extermination camps. During the German occupation, my father was forced to work in Germany. I don’t know if you remember, but Germans used the practice of mass kidnappings during the occupation; they would round up 18- and 20-year-old youngsters and force them to go to Germany and work in factories. So, my father worked in Germany for two years and when he left they gave him a document and told him: “When you go back to Greece, you can ask the German authorities for a job”. Things were very hard back then, people were hungry, there were no jobs, there was no food. So, my father went to the responsible authority and they said, “Since you worked in Germany, we will give you a shop”, and they gave him a shop on Venizelou Street which was almost fully stocked. It had textiles, linings, sewing supplies, buttons. So the whole family started working in the store. My father was 22 at the time, the country was under occupation, it was a very difficult time.’    

In the extract, the store owner narrates how his family’s involvement in the trade of sewing materials began. The company in question became closely associated with the clothing sector boom in Thessaloniki, as it was a major supplier of buttons and other raw materials for garment manufacturing, collaborating with manufacturing businesses, workshops and ateliers in the city and beyond. According to the present owner’s narrative, the history of the company begins during the Second World War, when the interviewee’s father returned from a forced labour term in Germany and the German authorities granted him an expropriated store on Venizelou Street.

According to Panaretou, forced recruitment for labour in Germany mainly targeted young men who had at some point participated in the resistance or were just in the wrong place at the wrong time and were consequently displaced to Nazi forced labour camps (see also GKT013). The practice was a result of the heavy human losses sustained on the war fronts, combined with the pressing need for the constant production and uninterrupted supply of materiel to these same fronts. Consequently, the displaced usually worked in camps producing military supplies for Nazi Germany. Such displacements of non-Jews from Greece reached a peak during 1943 and 1944, but had started as early as 1939. To this day, the total number of people who found themselves held hostage and forced into labour remains unknown (Chandrinos, 13/05/2020).

Besides displacement, torture, and movement restrictions, another measure taken by the Nazi authorities in Thessaloniki in order to control the population during the occupation was the expropriation of stores and assets, as well as the requisition of spaces, with the expropriated stores often being granted to new owners for use. The harsh conditions created by the profound humanitarian crisis directly affected and forcefully reshaped the city’s business community.