Moshe Ha-Elion

Moshe Ha-Elion was born in 1925 in Thessaloniki

Moshe Ha-Elion was born in Thessaloniki, Greece, on 26 February 1925, to a middle-class Sephardic Jewish family. His grandfather was a rabbi, and his father Eliau worked as a bookkeeper. The family spoke Ladino at home, and he studied at the Talmud Torah school and later at a Greek public gymnasium.

In April 1943 he was deported with his family to Auschwitz, where his mother and sister were murdered on arrival. He did forced labor in Auschwitz until January 1945, when he was sent on a death march. He was then held in Mauthausen, Melk and Ebensee, and was liberated on 6 May 1945.

In June 1946 he reached the Land of Israel on the immigrant ship Wedgewood and was held for a month in a British camp in Atlit. He served in the Artillery Corps, fought in the War of Independence, and retired from the army in 1970. He later worked at the Ministry of Defense and earned B.A. and M.A. degrees from Tel Aviv University.

He published his memoir in 1992 and Ladino poems about the camps in 2000. He translated the Odyssey and the Iliad into Ladino. From 2001 to 2015 he was president of the association of Holocaust survivors from Greece in Israel, and he lit a torch at the 2017 ceremony. He died on 1 November 2022.