Bidspirit auction | Shoes of a Jewish prisoner

Shoes of a Jewish prisoner from the Bergen-Belsen camp - Shoes of the Jewish prisoner Yitzhak Carasso from the Bergen-Belsen camp. Wooden and iron sole with leather covering. Bergen-Belsen, early 1940s. Isaac Caraso was born in Salonika, Greece in 1891. He owned an ice cream shop and was married to Julia née Asher. Before World War II, he lived in his hometown of Salonika. Most of the Salonika Jewish community was deported for extermination at Auschwitz-Birkenau, but a small group was transferred to Bergen-Belsen. Isaac was deported to Bergen-Belsen in August 1943 in a transport that included 441 Jews from Salonika. This group consisted of Salonikan Jews who held foreign passports – mainly Spanish, Italian, or South American. The Germans regarded them as ”exchange Jews” (Austauschjuden), who could potentially be exchanged for Germans held prisoner by the Allies. Therefore, they were not sent to Auschwitz, but were initially held in ghettos in Greece (in prisons and closed-off areas), and from there deported to Germany on a special train. These Jews were placed in the ”diplomatic section” of Bergen-Belsen, where Jews with foreign citizenship were held under harsh forced labor conditions. However, most of them were not murdered by the Nazis, who preferred to keep them alive as potential candidates for exchange with German prisoners. Isaac survived the Holocaust. After the war, he lived in Spain and later in the Land of Israel. See Yad Vashem Central Database of Shoah Victims' Names, record no. 12255854 Light wear. Good condition.