The life history of Iosif Ko(n)en

The Jewish population of Chania was almost entirely eradicated during the Second World War. Those who were spared had either left the island before the mass arrests began, like Iosif Ventouras, or managed to escape on that early morning when the Jewish quarter was evacuated, like Flora Ventouri and Iosif Ko(n)en.

However, unlike Flora, Iosif stayed in Chania for a long time after the rest of the Jewish community was displaced. He was left all alone, with no friends or family. The testimony he gave a few years later in Israel describes how he wandered desperately trying to survive. On the one hand, he was constantly in danger because he was Jewish; on the other, he had no one to turn to for help or refuge because he had lost everyone.

Iosif was born in Chania in 1920. He was the second child of a poor nine-member family who lived in the Jewish quarter of the city. On the day when the mass arrests began, Iosif jumped the wall into the neighbouring house, where Christians lived, and escaped. He heard his family being arrested through the shared wall. For months, he wandered both inside and outside the city of Chania on a stolen identity. He survived German check points and encounters with Nazi collaborators. He was offered help and care, sometimes selflessly, other times not. Later, he joined the army. During the civil war, he served all across the country. When he was discharged from the army, he had to suffer through the complexities of Greek bureaucracy. He considered converting to Christianity but, in the end, decided to resettle in Israel where he lived until the end of his life in 1998.

In 1967, in Israel, the Yad Vashem World Holocaust Remembrance Centre recorded Iosif’s written testimony in order to honour the person who helped him the most while he stayed in Chania, Emmanouil Petrakis. The excerpts presented here paint a picture of how the young man wandered desperately after the Jews were rounded up, how precious any offer of help was, and how his life came to depend on the attitudes and resources of his social environment.