Alberto Errera

Alberto Israel Errera (, 15 January 1913 – August 1944) was a Greek-Jewish officer and a member of the anti-Nazi resistance. He was a member of the ''Sonderkommando'' in Auschwitz-Birkenau from May to August 1944.

He took part in the preparation of the ''Sonderkommando'' Uprising of 1944. He is one of the possible authors of the ''Sonderkommando'' photographs. Errera died in Auschwitz-Birkenau.

Biography

Errera was born in Thessaloniki, Greece. Before the war, he was a soldier in the Hellenic Army, where he was promoted to officer and achieved the rank of captain. He married a woman called Matthildi from Larissa, where he settled and owned a supermarket. He joined the partisans and the Greek People's Liberation Army during the German occupation of Greece, working as a food supplier. He took the Christian name Alex (Alekos) Michaelides, or, according to his nephew, Alexandros Alexandris.See interview of his nephew : Alberto Errera photograph 280 Sonderkommando Auschwitz
Alexandros Alexandridis was the code name of the brother of Alberto Errera, Samuel Errera, who died as a resistance fighter in Thebes, Greece, in an airstrike. On the night of 24 March 1944, he was arrested by the Germans in Larissa, in addition to a group of 225 Jews, and then jailed in the Haidari concentration camp. According to his nephew, he was captured, not as a Jew, but as a leftist. He was deported from Athens on 2 April and arrived at Auschwitz on 11 April, at which point he was one of the 320 Greek (assigned serial numbers from 182,440 to 182,759) selected for labor. His number was 182,552. After spending two days in the ''Zentral Sauna'' in Birkenau, he and the other Greek men lived in the ''Block'' 12 of the ''Männerquarantäne Lager'' from April 13 to May 11. Then he was selected, along with 100 Greeks, to be part of the ''Sonderkommando''. He was assigned the job of a ''Heizer'' (" stoker"), a member of the ''Sonderkommando'' assigned to the crematorium furnace, in Birkenau ''Krematorium'' V. Alter Fajnzylberg talks about his athletic buildAlter Fajnzylberg, ''Les cahiers d'Alter Fajnzylberg : ce que j'ai vu à Auschwitz'', Éditions Rosiers, 2014. and Leon Cohen describes his unusual strength.Leon Cohen, ''From Greece to Birkenau : the crematoria workers'uprising'', Salonika Jewry Research Center, 1996. According to Filip Müller, Leon Cohen, and the historian and fellow prisoner Hermann Langbein, Errera was among those who actively participated in the preparations for the ''Sonderkommando'' Uprising, alongside Yaacov Kaminski, Jankiel Handelsmann, Jukl Wrobel, Josef Warszawski, a man named Władek, Giuseppe Baruch and Zalman Gradowski, among others.

According to Izack Cohen, who worked in the '' Kanada Kommando'', Errera was the leader of the Greek resistance group in ''Krematorium'' ''V''. He tried to recruit Izack Cohen in the resistance group.

Through the testimony of Alter Fajnzylberg, it has been revealed that it was Errera who took the famous "Sonderkommando photographs" in the beginning of August 1944, with the help of , another member of the resistance, and three other members of the ''Sonderkommando'', Szlama Dragon, his brother, and Alter Fajnzylberg, who kept watch. After taking the photographs, Errera buried the camera in the soil at the camp, for retrieval and discovery later.

On 9 August 1944, during the transport from the crematoria of ash that was to be discharged into the Vistula, Errera tried to convince his three co-detainees (including Hugo Baruch Venezia and Henri Nechama Capon) to escape, but they refused. Once on site, Errera stunned the accompanying two ''Schupos'' with a shovel and plunged into the Vistula. He was caught during the next two or three days, tortured and killed. As was usual when a fugitive was caught, Errera's body was exposed at the men's camp entrance (BIId) as an example to the other inmates.

Errera was awarded by the Greek government in the 1980s for his contribution in the Greek resistance during World War II.

''Sonderkommando'' photographs

For many years, the author of the Sonderkommando photographs was unknown. The photographs were credited as anonymous or, by default, assigned to Dawid Szmulewski, who himself mentioned a Greek Jew named Alex. The story of these photos was recorded in the writings of Alter Fajnzylberg, who evokes the figure of the Greek Jew named Alex (although he forgot the surname). In May 1978, Fajnzylberg answered a letter from the Auschwitz-Birkenau Museum, about the photographs. He wrote:

It was Alex from Greece, but I do not remember his name, who took the photographs. He died during an escape during the transport of ash from incinerated people. These ashes were regularly dumped in the Sola or in the Vistula. Alex disarmed both SS escort and threw their rifles into the Vistula. He died during the pursuit. I do not remember where the camera and other documents were buried because it asAlex who performed this work.

However, in his diaries written immediately after the war, Fajnzylberg mentions the attempted escape of a Greek Jew named Aleko Errera. His escape struck Fajnzylberg was also told by several surviving witnesses: Errikos Sevillias, Shlomo Venezia, Leon Cohen, Marcel Nadjary, Dr. Miklos Nyiszli, Alter Fajnzylberg, Henryk Mandelbaum, Albert Menasche, Daniel Bennahmias and Eddy de Wind. Eddy de Wind, ''Terminus Auschwitz'', Michel Lafon, 2020. Eddy de Wind, ''Eindstation Auschwitz'', Republiek der Letteren, 1946.

File:Alberto Errera - Sonderkommando photograph 283.jpg, No. 283 ''Sonderkommando'' in Auschwitz-Birkenau, August 1944 (clandestine photo) Picture pointed too high
File:Auschwitz Resistance 282a.jpg, No 282 ''Sonderkommando'' in Auschwitz-Birkenau, August 1944 (clandestine photo) Women being undressed before going into Gas Chambers
File:Auschwitz Resistance 281.jpg, No 281 ''Sonderkommando'' in Auschwitz-Birkenau, August 1944 (clandestine photo) Burning of the dead bodies art of 282 seen at leftFile:Auschwitz Resistance 280.jpg, No 280 ''Sonderkommando'' in Auschwitz-Birkenau, August 1944 (clandestine photo) Burning of the dead bodies

References

External links

{{DEFAULTSORT:Errera, Alberto
1913 births
1944 deaths
People who died in Auschwitz concentration camp
Sonderkommando
Hellenic Army officers
Jews in the Greek resistance
Greek Jews who died in the Holocaust
Sephardi Jews who died in the Holocaust
Jewish military personnel
Jews from Thessaloniki
Greek Sephardi Jews
Civilians killed in World War II
Holocaust photographers