My grandmother, Stella Angel, was liberated from Auschwitz after almost 20 months on this day 76 years ago.

She would tell a story about how Mengele came to her as the Russians advanced and asked for prisoner's clothes. She played dumb, saying they only had women's clothes. 1/5

This small refusal was a big moment of resistance for her.

She was in close proximity to Mengele throughout her imprisonment. Greek Jews were selected for certain positions—and for experimentation—bc they spoke Ladino and often had no shared language with other Jews. 2/5

No one from any official Holocaust organization ever took her testimony. I can't help but wonder what kind of outreach they had to Sephardic Jews and Ladino speakers, if any. It's a great loss, as the experience of Greek Jews in Auschwitz was unique. 3/5

In 2003, due to lobbying from the Judeo-Espagnol A Auschwitz Association, they added a Ladino plaque at Auschwitz to the 20 others representing languages spoken by the prisoners. This delay/oversight even though 48,000+ Greek Jews went through the camp and very few survived. 4/5

I hold onto the few references to Greek Jews in Primo Levi's Survival in Auschwitz for glimpses of my grandparents. I suspect there's much more we could have known about their experience in the camps if not for entrenched patterns of marginalization in the Jewish community. 5/5