Morris Venezia

He died in September 2013 in Palm Springs, California at the age of 92.

Morris features throughout "Auschwitz - The Final Witness", a 2001 NY Festival winning film made by Sky for Channel 5 which reunited him with his two Sonderkommando cousins as they revisited the death camp together for the first time in over 50 years.

Morris and Shlomo joined the Greek partisans, while remaining in Athens. As the months passed, the control of the Nazis on the Greek Jews became more and more pressing, with deportations and with the introduction of a weekly sign-in obligation at the Jewish Community: in March 1944, as they were signing, they were arrested and detained in an Athens prison (Haidari). Shortly after, they were deported to Auschwitz concentration camp.

The brothers Maurice and Shlomo, with their cousins Dario and Jakob Gabbai and their families, arrived in Auschwitz on 11 April 1944.

After 8 September 1943, as Italy signed an armistice with the Allies, Athens came under full German power.

When the Racial Laws against the Jews were introduced in 1938, Morris was expelled from Italy, without finishing his studies, and returned to Greece. In 1940, after the Italian declaration of war, the subsequent invasion of Greece and the bombardment of Thessaloniki (November 3, 1940), by the Italian armed forces, the Greek police began arresting people of Italian nationality. Many Italians were captured, including Maurice, and imprisoned in a building in the center of the city; afterwards, they were transferred around Athens and were released on arrival of the Italian Army.

Maurice Venezia (25 February 1921 – 2 September 2013), later Morris Venezia, was an Italian-Greek Jewish survivor of the Auschwitz concentration camp. A member of the special squads, Sonderkommando, he was one of the few remaining eyewitnesses to the gas chambers at the time of his death.