Evicted barber draws strength from past

050916 ATLANTA,GA.: At 82, he has been a fixture at his little barber shop, ' The Trim Shop,' near Sixth & Peachtree for more than four decades. But now Eli Sotto (CQ),(left) a survivor of the holocaust has to move to make way for, well, progress. In his shop doing a trim on customer Bob Vance (CQ). (JOEY IVANSCO/ AJC staff)

Credit: Joey Ivansco

Credit: Joey Ivansco

050916 ATLANTA,GA.: At 82, he has been a fixture at his little barber shop, ' The Trim Shop,' near Sixth & Peachtree for more than four decades. But now Eli Sotto (CQ),(left) a survivor of the holocaust has to move to make way for, well, progress. In his shop doing a trim on customer Bob Vance (CQ). (JOEY IVANSCO/ AJC staff)

Maybe they thought Eli Sotto was gone, too. More than once in the past month or so, signs posted on the door to the Trim Shop had announced the barber was away at a doctor's appointment.

But it was never long before Eli was back, in his white smock, behind his red leather chair.

At 82, the barber could simply call it quits, pack up like the rest of the tenants, and make way for the wrecking ball. But there's a reason that Eli is the last man standing.

As he says, "This is my life."

And it's a life hard won.

For decades now, he has cut hair here on the ground floor of the two-story Peachtree Medical Building, less than a mile from the Fox Theatre. He arrived in 1953, a Holocaust survivor who'd gone through hell --- sometimes walking, sometimes running.

"It was a terrible day, " he says.

The barber is thinking back now, to a day in October 1940, when the Italians declared war against his native Greece.

He was 16, one of thousands of Jews ordered to the town square, then put to work building an airfield. Eventually, he was taken to Auschwitz, where his parents and two sisters were sent to their deaths in the gas chamber.

"You could see flames at nighttime go way up to the sky.'' He raises his hands to the ceiling.

Eli and his brothers, Charles and Isaac, were all that remained of his family. He and Charles were packed like animals onto cargo trains and transported to Buna (a subcamp).

Death put on hold

Eli Sotto was about to experience what he calls his first miracle.

While washing barrels one day behind the barracks, word came that the prisoners had been ordered to the square. As he ran there, an officer grabbed him to put him on a truck headed to the gas chamber in Birkenau.

The truck was already full. Eli Sotto's death was put on hold. The next day, he was ordered back to work. Three more days passed before it was time to make the selection for the gas chamber once again.

"They lined us up in front of the barracks naked, " he remembers.

Eli was in the third row, watching as the officers played Russian roulette with the prisoners' lives. As they counted off prisoners in the second row, Eli moved up into a space vacated by someone chosen to die. He was left among the survivors, marched off to work, and he says 115303 was etched into his left forearm "like a VIN number on a car."

Two days later, he was transferred to Warsaw to clean up after the ghetto uprising. As the Russian and American Allies began arriving to liberate them, Eli and the other prisoners were marched five days to Landsberg, Germany. There, they boarded cargo trains to Dachau and eventually Czechoslovakia.

"After four or five months there, " Eli says, "they took us somewhere else."

But en route, Eli spotted nuns and Red Cross workers, jumped from the train and, feigning illness, landed in a Catholic hospital in Prague.

It was spring 1945. Two weeks later, the European phase of World War II ended.

Eli and the other prisoners were issued clothes and put in a shelter before finally arriving back home in Thessaloniki. His brother Charles had died in the camp. Isaac had survived.

One day, while Eli was at the farmers market, a stranger introduced him to another Holocaust survivor, Lucy Levy. They were married three months later and in 1948 applied to come to the United States.

Skyline in transition

Eli had heard about Atlanta, and so he and Lucy asked the American consul in New York if they could go there instead. They arrived with only the barber skills Eli's father had taught him.

He landed his first job at a five-chair shop downtown on Georgia Avenue run by Chris Perez. When Perez lost his lease in 1953, Eli scanned the newspaper and found an ad for a space at 849 Peachtree St.

Over the years, the building changed hands four times and four times managed to survive. Each time his lease was renewed and his rent increased.

And so, there he was the other day, comb in one hand, a pair of scissors in the other, cutting hair under the buzz of a city block in transition. Photos tacked along the upper edge of a mirror capture another time, when Eli had a full shock of black hair and his clientele included the likes of former Atlanta Mayor Maynard Jackson, former Georgia Gov. Roy Barnes and television host Bert Parks. Those were good years, but today is good, too, as customers dart in and out.

In June, he and the building's nine other tenants were given notice it was time to go, to make way for progress. The Novare Group planned more residential tower construction like the building it recently completed across the street. They had less than 30 days to move.

"It was bad, " he says of the news.

Eli lost his wife a decade ago. He couldn't bear losing his shop. "I come here to see people, " he says.

The other tenants packed up and left, and one day the new owner stopped by.

How long you been here? he asked Eli.

"I say over 50 years, " he recalls in his thick Greek accent.

Then he did what survivors do --- he thought on his feet. Could he stay a little longer, he asked the man. Just until he can find another location?

Conor McNally, developer for Novare, had heard of Eli, knew he'd survived the Holocaust, that he was a "part of the fabric" that made Midtown Midtown.

"Because of this, " he said, "we wanted to give him special consideration."

He gave Eli until Nov. 30.

Now Eli is looking for another place to land, a spot to carry on --- maybe someplace close, like West Peachtree Street.

"I survive on miracles, " he says with a glint in his eyes. "Thank God miracles work out."