6. Kounio Photography store

The contemporary Kounio photo studio is located at 24, Komninon Street, on the same square as the Yad Lezikaron Synagogue, and a few steps from the Modiano Market, opposite the Yahudi (Jewish) Hammam. But it formerly was at 15, Venizelou Street, located on the corner of Venizelou Street

Salvator Kounio's photography store was founded in 1917. Being the Kodak product dealership (cameras, film, chemicals for film development and photographic paper) and systematically serving amateur photographers, it became the most important store of its kind in Thessaloniki. Many photographs from the pre-war period have been printed in the Kounio photography store. The first store was located at the corner of Komninon and Tsimiski Streets and from 1919 it was housed at 15, Venizelou Street, almost on the corner with Vassileos Irakleiou Str., where it remained for 92 years. Next to it was the Vital Cohen clothing store. In the 1930s, Salvator Kounio collaborated with the Macedonia newspaper and offered coupons to buy Kodak cameras, thus providing 25,000 cameras for the market. Salvator Kounio's family lived in a seaside house in the Allatini area. The descendants of Salvator Kounio still operate the store located on Komninon Street.

The Salvator Kounio family of four was one of the few to survive in Auschwitz. The reasons for this rare luck were on the one hand that they spoke fluent German and on the other hand that they were among the first Jews deported from Thessaloniki. Thus, the executioners of the camp needed the translation services of the family. Returning to Thessaloniki was painful, as the store had been looted by the Germans and their associates. It was not until 1946 that Salvator Kounio was re-enrolled in the Chamber of Commerce and Industry. In 1959 he testified as a key prosecution witness in the trial of Max Merten, a German official in Thessaloniki during the Occupation. The family’s children, Erica and Heinz, contributed their work to the study of the chronicle of the extermination of the Jews. In 2002, Erika Kounio-Amarillio published her book Oral Testimonies of the Jews of Thessaloniki on the Holocaust, which included interviews with survivors collected by herself and Albert Nar. Heinz Kounio was released in May 1945. He looked like a skeleton and could not walk alone, and describes living in a concentration camp in his book I Lived Death: The Diary of No. 109565.

The Saul Gallery, built in 1879, measuring ​​4,900 sq m and hosting 96 shops and workshops, was the largest commercial gallery in Thessaloniki. It spread across an area larger than what occupies today the building block Venizelou-Ermou-Ionos Dragoumi-Vasileos Irakleiou. It was built by Saul Modiano, owner of the homonymous bank housed inside the Gallery. It was damaged during the 1917 fire, however the façade on Vasileos Irakleiou Str. was saved. Inside, it preserves the entrance of the Saul Modiano Bank and the decorative medallion with the initials of its founder. Under the new urban plan, the north side of the gallery was demolished in order to open the way for Ermou Street. Eli Modiano's ambitious architectural plans for its reconstruction were not materialized. The southeastern part of the Gallery plot was sold as separate property, bought by the brothers Moses, Vital, Samuel, Joseph and Daniel Cohen.