I’m not sure if you are checking this blog anymore, but if so I wanted to thank you for writing about your time in Greece. I’ve been dreaming of visiting this fascinating country for some time now and now have the opportunity to actually go. I am in the midst of planning a two month trip, and thanks in part to your thoughts will spend the month of September at the Ikarian Center learning Greek. Your photos on Flickr (I will post a note there too) are beautiful and inspiring. Many thanks from a fellow Grecophile here in the states (San Francisco). I hope you were able to make it back this year.

Cheers, Lauren

Thank you for taking the time to comment on this post. I’m sorry about the inaccuracies about what turned out to be your family (yes, we were indeed at the Politia), and my wife and I enjoyed meeting your cousin (we didn’t meet his wife) and our conversations with him very much. Obviously some family facts got “lost in translation,” so thanks for correcting them. And thanks for your corrections about the Kastro; they were more accurate than our guidebook, apparently.

One thing you should definitely know is that I’m Greek (father’s side), born in the US and learning the language, play the traditional music, and that I’ve been here about 5 times, the first time to visit my relatives here. I certainly have no more bias toward or against Greeks than anyone else, just maybe more familiarity.

I don’t know if you read any of my other posts other than the Ioannina one, but it might help put the comment about the father who was educating his 18-month old in the fine art of smoking cigarettes and drinking beer into perspective. It didn’t matter to me that he was Greek, it mattered what he was doing to his child. And I’ve made comments in earlier postst about the effect of smoking on the youth and child population in Greece, as I see it, earlier in the journal. So, the two things dovetailed.

Regarding the Jewish information, I wish indeed we had met you and your Jewish friends. We asked around to try and get information and at first were told that “no one was left.” Then on our last day we were told that there were “55″ people left in the community. But that person didn’t know how to contact anyone, and we left the next day. I wish we could have known about that article in the library…

I don’t have time right now (this is my last night in Greece!) to read the last post you made with all the info. I look forward to it when I get back, as it has been hard to find information (and last year my wife and I went to the Jewish museum in Athens, which we thought was well done). Some of the information I had previously was from a book, Last Train to Salonika (I think), that has a large section on that city’s relationship with the Jews and the war. I don’t know how accurate that info was, but that and the museum in Athens were the only sources of info I had at the time. (By the way, your info on Solun, Selanik, etc. was completely accurate, thanks for including it; I was just using a shorthand, probably not a good idea on the Internet!). I don’t consider Greece’s role in WW2 re: the Jews to be any worse than other countries, and in many cases it was much better. My own country could have bombed the train lines to the camps and chose not to, after all, as one example.

I think it’s important that you understand that I am coming from a place of growing up proud to be Greek and then discovering, as I grew older and became more educated, the inevitable problems that beset any country and people. If you knew what I thought about the US and Americans these days, you might cool off some! It’also important that you understand that a lot of what I’m repeating has been said this trip to me by Greeks born and living here; these are not just an “outsider”’s views. And please don’t forget that I’ve said that we’ve met some really wonderful people here (we’re having dinner with two of them tonight), as we have every year that we’ve come. I do stand by my criticisms, however, and don’t find them racist at all; I’m harder on my own brith country, believe me (and for good reason).

I hope that at some point you will communicate more directly with me, and include your name. In the meantime, I hope that this response to your comments clarifies where I’m coming from, and finds you perhaps more receptive to the idea that I’m not such a (Greek-Italian-American) creep after all!

Best wishes,
david bilides

In his latest series on the Holocaust in the Balkans, Serbian-American historian Carl Savich sets the murder of almost 60,000 Greek Jews in the context of both the events of the Second World War and the wider context of the long and colorful history of Judaism in northern Greece. Yesterday’s first part covered the history of Judaism in Greece up through the arrival of the Nazis in 1941. Today’s second installment provides a city-by-city recounting of the Holocaust in several parts of Greece, and concludes with a short treatment of the resistance against the Nazis and the liberation.

Salonika

The first deportations of Jews occurred in Macedonia and Thrace, in the Bulgarian zone of occupation. German official Theodor Dannecker proposed that 20,000 Jews from the Bulgarian zone be deported to Germany. In February 1943, Peter Gabrovski, the internal affairs minister of Bulgaria, agreed to this number proposed by Dannecker. The deportations were organized by Yaroslav Kalitsin, head of the administrative section of the Bulgarian Commissariat for Jewish Affairs or the Komisarstvo za Evreiskite Vuprosi. The Jewish victims were assembled at Gorna Dzhumaya, and Radomir. The deportations began at 4:00 a.m. on March 4, 1943. The Jews of Thrace, Macedonia, and eastern Serbia under Bulgarian occupation were arrested and assembled at transit camps which consisted of former tobacco warehouses. About 200 Jews survived by being drafted into forced labor battalions or by escaping to the Italian zone.

The main group, however, was taken to Bulgaria proper from where 4,100 Jews were sent by train and boats to Vienna; from there they were transported to Treblinka and the gas chambers. There was widespread popular opposition to the Final Solution in Bulgaria, and there remains considerable debate as to how much responsibility Bulgarian officials bore for the genocide. The initiative and implementation of this deportation order was made by German officials, particularly Danneker. Moreover, it was restricted to areas not part of Bulgaria before the war, i.e., Macedonia, Thrace, and eastern Serbia.

In the Italian zone, the Final Solution was not enforced.

In the German zone of occupation, anti-Jewish measures were enforced immediately. The deportations to the death camps began in spring 1943, and saw a gradual and incremental buildup to the Nazis’ program for the Final Solution.

In 1941, Salonika or Thessalonika, part of the German occupation zone, had a population of 56,000 Jews, making it the largest Sephardic community in the world. In June of that year, the Jewish Affairs Commission (Judenangelegenbeiten) or Einsatzstab Rosenberg/Rosenberg Commando arrived in Salonika and seized and confiscated the Jewish libraries and archives in Salonika and Athens. Private libraries, manuscripts, liturgical art, rabbinical and Beth Din libraries were seized. These materials were then sent to the Institute for Jewish Studies in Frankfurt.

The city was part of the German zone of occupation where the Final Solution was enforced. Dieter Wisliceny and Alois Brunner were put in charge of the deportations in Greece. The deportations were organized with the assistance of the Jedenrat or Jewish Council headed by Chief Rabbi Zvi Koretz, who appointed the president of the council in December, 1942.

In the summer of 1942, persecutions of Jews began to be accelerated. On July 11, 1943, all Jewish men between the ages of 18 and 45, some 9,000 altogether, were conscripted into forced labor with the Organization Todt labor battalions. They were assembled in Liberty Square for hours in the heat and humiliated by being forced to perform exercises on command. Many died from exhaustion. The Salonika Jewish community sought to ransom them but was unsuccessful. What also resulted was that the Jewish cemetery in Salonika was destroyed. Jews were also forced to wear the infamous “Yellow Star.”

In February, 1942, the Nuremberg Race Laws were applied to the German zone in Greece through the efforts of Maximilian Merton, the adviser to the German military occupation administration. The Jewish population of Salonika was concentrated in three districts: 1) the 151 quarter, 2) the Hagia Paraskevi district, and, 3) the Baron de Hirsch transit camp.

On March 15, 1943, the deportations began. In March and April, Salonika Jews were transported from the Hirsch camp to Auschwitz by rail. The first transport consisted of 2,500 Jews loaded onto 40 freight cars. Every three days, railroad cars containing 2,000 Salonika Jews would be transported to Auschwitz. There were transports or convoys on March 17, 19, 23, and 27. In April, convoys left on April 3, 5, 7, 10, 13, 16, 20, 22 and 28. Two transports left on May 3 and May 9. A total of 48,000 Jews would be deported to the concentration camps, of whom 37,000 were sent to the gas chambers upon arrival while 11,000 were selected for forced labor. In Salonika, 96 percent of the Jewish population would be killed. Today, 1,200 Jews live in the city.

From April 30 to May 8, 1943, the German forces arrested the Jews of Orestias, Florina, Veroia, Souflion and Didimotikon. Some were then transported by ship to Salonika from where they were sent to Auschwitz on May 9. Most of them were sent to the gas chambers when they arrived. They were part of the 17th shipment from Salonika.

The last Jews to be deported from Salonika were sent to Bergen-Belsen in August, 1943. This transport included members of the Jewish Council or Judenrat, consisting of 74 members. The trains used in the transports were supplied by the German Army or Wehrmacht. The military jurisdiction fell to Army Group E under the command of General Alexander Lohr.
Ioannina

There had been a Jewish presence in Ioannina or Yannina, the capital of Epiros province, since 70 A.D. In the 15 and 16th centuries, Sephardic Jews settled in the city. Under Italian occupation, the Jews were not threatened. But when the German forces took control of Ioannina, they arrested the president of the Jewish community of the city, Moses Koffinas. On March 25, 1944, the entire Jewish population of 1,860 was deported to Auschwitz.

Kastoria, a fur trading town located in southwestern Macedonia, had a pre-war Jewish population of 900, primarily Sephardic Jews. There is a record of Jewish settlement in the city even before the 15th century. The city was a major fur and leather processing center on a trading route much frequented during the Ottoman Empire period, in the mountains between Ioannina and Salonika. Jews too played an important role in the fur and leather trade of Kastoria.

On March 25, 1944, 763 Jews were rounded up and held at a school building awaiting deportation. They were without food and water. German soldiers are alleged to have raped Jewish schoolgirls held there. This group was then transported to Salonika and then to Auschwitz. Only 35 Jews survived. Today, it is believed that one Jewish family remains in Kastoria.

Resistance and Rescue

Italian officials in the Italian consulate in Salonika helped Jews flee to the Italian zone of occupation. The Italian consul Guelfo Zamboni, voice-consul Cavalliere Rosenberg, Mark Mosseri, and Valerie Torres issued fake consular documents to Salonika Jews which allowed them to settle in Athens. Orthodox Archbishop Damaskenos, Salonika lawyers, Orthodox religious leaders and educators all made appeals and efforts to stop the deportations. The Ioannis Rallis government protested German orders, as did Professor Nikolaos Louvaris, the education minister, who resisted the deportations. Constantine Logothetopoulos, the head of the government in 1943, wrote a letter of protest over the genocide to the German plenipotentiary in Athens, Gunther Altenberg, on March 23.

Over 600 Greek Orthodox priests and clergy were arrested, and they themselves were deported because of their brave efforts to protect Greek Jews. The Greek Orthodox Church, under the metropolitan of Athens, Archbishop Damaskenos, launched a resistance campaign that consisted of formal protests, encyclicals that called upon Orthodox clergy to protect Jews, as well as the issuance of fake baptismal certificates to Jews. Over 250 Jewish children were hidden by Orthodox clergy. As has been said, the Athens police also resisted the deportations by issuing fake ID documents to Jews.

Of course, there was also a guerrilla resistance movement in Greece. Active military resistance did not begin until 1942, led by the non-Communist, royalist partisan forces, known as the National Republican Greek League (Ellenikos Dimokratikos Ethnikos Stratos, or EDES) led by Napoleon Zervas. A second group was the National and Social Liberation Movement (Ethniki kai Koinoniki Apeletherosis, or EKKA) led by Colonel Dimitrios Psarros.

On the other side of the ideological spectrum was the nationalist, communist guerrillas known as the National Liberation Front (Ethnikon Apeletherotikon Metopon, or EAM), formed in September, 1941. Its military wing was the Popular Greek Liberation Army (Ellenikos Laikos Apelethorotikos Stratos or ELAS), established 2 months later and led by Athanasios Klaras, known as ‘Aris Velouchiotis.’ The Greek Communist leader, Nikos Zakhariadis, was imprisoned at the Dachau concentration camp by German occupation forces.

Conclusion

The pre-war Jewish population of Greece and the island of Rhodes, then part of Italy, was 77,178. During the Holocaust, approximately 61% percent of the Jewish population of Greece was killed. Salonika had the largest Sephardic community in the word with a population of 56,000, 96 percent of whom were killed during the Holocaust. From Salonika, only 2,000 Jews survived; 1,000 returned after the war, while another 1,000 emigrated. The majority of the Jewish populations in Thessaly, consisting of Volos, Larissa, and Trikkala, survived the Holocaust. By contrast, there were no Greek survivors from Bulgarian-controlled Thrace.
Today, Greece has a population of 5,000 Jews, most of who live in Athens, the capital, and in Salonika. Both cities have museums that document the long history, sometimes triumphant, sometimes tortured, of the Jews in Greece.

I don’t see any Greek fascists or collaborators in the Holocaust mentioned here.

I also loved your following comments : I’m sure this kind of behavior is not unique to this guy, or to thie Greek guy. But it’s hard not to see this as some kind of microcosm of the state of the culture here, as unfair as such a judgment would be. I suppose it applies to all the other people you met here, i.e. anyone who speaks Greek and/or is of greek citizenship, and that wouldn’t make you a racist bigot at all, no…

Some other facts: The town castle predates the arrival of the Turks by several centuries and consists of several cores, it was built in more than one phases by Byzantines, Normans and others, inlcuding the Turks, who did the final building and restaurations.
And, finally, to say that the old name of Thessaloniki was Solun is at least inaccurate. It was (and is still) called Solun by all Slavs, Thessaloniki in Greek, Selanik in Turkish and Ladino ( the language of Sephardic Jews, who at the time made out the majority of the city’s population).

Have fun, maybe I’ll see you around !

We didn’t talk with Oikonomidis, although we wanted to. He was busy setting up sound, and then we left after 5 hours and he was still palying. Souzana said she had taken 3 lessons with him over the years she’s been here, and they were “invaluable.” If Sandra & I ever spend a longer chunk of time here, as we’re thinking, he is certainly at the top of her list of possible teachers.