Daniel Bennahmias

Daniel Bennahmias (1923 – 22 October 1994) was a Greek-born Jewish Italian national captured by the Nazis in Greece during World War II and transported to Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp.

He was saved when the foreman returned him to the block, where he cleaned for a week before going back to the same job, separating the bodies using a belt and the crook of a walking cane, which for a full gas chamber took about eight hours.

The subsequent job for others was to cut off the hair and remove gold from teeth before the bodies were placed in a lift to be raised one level to the oven.

A revolt was organised with a plan to blow up the crematoria, in which Bennahmias and the Greek Dario Gabbai – convinced they were to be killed anyway – were given the task of disarming their Nazi guard, but the revolt was postponed before eventually being started in error, at a time when there many more Nazi guards present.

By then, Bennahmias had witnessed a baby being shot, children thrown over the heads of adults to fit them into the gas chamber and he was used to eating his lunch with the cadavers.

If there were too few people to make gassing worthwhile, Nazi soldiers simply shot them in front of the ovens.

[2][3]: 36–41, 44–49, 53–54, 63–81 [5] [6] On 18 January 1945, with the eastern front very near, they were marched eight kilometres in the snow – verbally abused by some local people – to Auschwitz-III from where they were taken through Czechoslovakia by lorry and train.

He was put to work in an underground weapons factory, where he collapsed due to an infected foot from the march.

After receiving identity cards from the Americans on 26 May 1943, the pair travelled by train through Italy where they were treated kindly.