Holocaust in Greece

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Weeping woman during the deportation from Ioannina, northwest Greece, March 25, 1944

In the Holocaust in Greece in was World War II by the occupying powers Germany and Bulgaria 1943-1944 to ghettos , forced labor and expropriation of the Jewish population of Greece almost entirely in German concentration camps transported for disposal there. At least 58,885 Jews , including more than 46,000 from Thessaloniki , were mainly murdered in the gas chambers of the Auschwitz and Treblinka extermination camps .

prehistory

Jews have lived in Greece since pre-Christian times; the oldest Jewish communities in Europe were founded here. These Romance Jews did not see themselves as a group (with the exception of the practice of religion), but as part of the majority society; however, they were often to be found among upscale freelancers, such as doctors or lawyers.

From the late 15th century, Sephardic Jews came from Spain, who also spoke their own language, Ladino . These lived mainly in northern Greece and made up a large number of citizens in Thessaloniki until the 20th century.

After the seizure of power of Hitler's authoritarian ruling Prime Minister sought Ioannis Metaxas proximity to Hitler, but was particularly due to its anti-Semitism with him at a distance. Metaxas was friends with Rabbi Zvi Koretz . His policy was aimed at greater assimilation of Jews, so a Jewish section was established in the youth organization of his party, which Jews could join if they chose.

Due to the increasing repression against Jews in Germany in the years before the beginning of the Second World War , a few hundred Jews emigrated to Greece. Professional or academic purposes, such as archeology and history, were cited as excuses when creating passports.

Occupation of Greece

Occupation zones (1941–1944)

In the Greco-Italian War , Greece successfully defended itself against an Italian invasion, a war hero was the Jew Mardocheos Frizis , who fell as the first officer. The Greek army only surrendered when the Wehrmacht intervened, finally on April 21, 1941. No other country had resisted the Axis powers for so long.

Greece was divided into three zones of occupation by the victors Italy, the German Empire and Bulgaria . It became largely Italian as Hitler recognized Italian hegemony (preponderanza) in Greece. The regions of Saloniki-Aegean, Athens-Piraeus and the western part of Crete were placed under the German military administration. Bulgaria annexed a strip of land west of the Strymon and occupied eastern Macedonia, the islands of Thasos and Samothrace . George II of Greece formed a government in exile in London . After the failure of the puppet governments of Tsolakoglou and Logothetopoulos , the Axis powers appointed Ioannis Rallis , a politician with a royalist past, as Prime Minister of Greece. He took office on April 7, 1943.

The Jewish population was spread over the zones of occupation:

Zone annexed by Bulgaria under German administration under Italian administration
Jewish residents in 1941 5000 to 6000 approx. 55,000 approx. 13,000

Jewish policy of the occupying powers

"JUDEN UNERWUENSCHT", Saloniki, May 1941 (Photo by the Atlantic Press Image Service, which worked for the Reich Ministry for Public Enlightenment and Propaganda)

Immediately after the German invasion of Greece in early May 1941, a hit of the 12th Army affiliated detail of Reichsleiter Rosenberg Taskforce under Lieutenant Hermann one of Ingram in Greece. In Thessaloniki , a local task force working group in cooperation with the Wehrmacht's secret field police carried out over 50 raids on the Jewish community in Thessaloniki . In the process, the resident data necessary for subsequent deportations were collected and historically valuable documents, cultural assets and liturgical objects were stolen, including around 100,000 books from the Jewish libraries.

In the fall of 1941 at a meeting in was Wolf's Lair with Adolf Hitler of Reichsführer SS Heinrich Himmler in the presence of Reinhard Heydrich and the Wehrmacht officers Wilhelm Keitel , Alfred Jodl , Rudolf Schmundt and Gerhard Engel raised the question of the Jewish population of Thessaloniki and Himmler was given the power of attorney for deportation.

As in France, Italy stubbornly refused German pressure for coordinated anti-Jewish action in Greece. At the end of 1942, Himmler and Eichmann sent a special command under SS-Hauptsturmführer Alois Brunner and Dieter Wisliceny with far-reaching powers to Thessaloniki to carry out the deportation of the Jews from Saloniki-Aegean.

Bulgaria refused to deport Jews from the Bulgarian heartland. However, in February 1943 , SS-Hauptsturmführer Theodor Dannecker was able to arrange the deportation of 8,000 Jews from Macedonia and 6,000 Jews from Thrace with the Bulgarian Commissioner for Jewish Affairs Alexander Belev , an extreme nationalist and staunch anti-Semite, as the Jewish minority there was an obstacle to the Bulgarization plans were viewed.

Phase 1: Northern Greece

Deportations from the German-occupied zone

At the beginning of May 1941, the special command of the Einsatzstab Reichsleiter Rosenberg under Lieutenant Hermann von Ingram, affiliated with the 12th Army, arrived in Greece. In Thessaloniki, a working group led by the student councilor Hans Arnold in cooperation with the Secret Field Police carried out over 50 raids. In the process, the resident data and information about Jewish possessions, institutions and synagogues necessary for later deportations were collected and historically valuable documents, cultural assets and liturgical objects were stolen, including around 100,000 books from the Jewish libraries.

After the collaborating Greek General Inspectorate for Macedonia complained to the German military administration that, in contrast to the Greek population, Jews were not being called upon to provide labor and benefits in kind , all male Jews of old age had to retire by order of the military commander of Saloniki Aegean, General Curt von Krenzki Between 18 and 45 years of age gather on July 11, 1942, a sabbath , on Freiheitsplatz to be drafted and registered for forced labor . The fit Jews were sent to malaria-infested swamps or had to do heavy labor in chrome mines. An escape movement to the Italian-occupied zone of Greece began. Compulsory labor was lifted again in October 1942. War Administrator Max Merten from the Saloniki-Aegean Military Administration had pressed an agreement from the Jewish community that would prevent Jews from forced labor in return for payment of 2.5 billion drachmas and surrender of the valuable 300,000 square meter area of ​​the Jewish cemetery (on which the city administration had for a long time had thrown an eye) freed. According to Jewish estimates, 12% of the almost 3,500 people who were conscripted for forced labor died around 400 people.

Compulsory inspection on Freiheitsplatz, July 1942
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On February 6, 1943, the special command of the security police for Jewish affairs in Saloniki-Aegean with SS-Hauptsturmführer Dieter Wisliceny and Alois Brunner arrived in Thessaloniki with prefabricated Jewish decrees, which were presented to the War Administrator Max Merten on behalf of the Wehrmacht Commander-in-Chief Saloniki-Aegean, as this area under the administration of the army group e was.

In February 1943, War Administrator Max Merten from the Wehrmacht Administration Aegean Salonika obliged the public administration to dismiss Jewish officials and no longer do business with Jews. These were also excluded from associations under public law, organizations and associations. During the ghettoization in March, lists of assets and the keys to shops and apartments had to be surrendered. The formal Greek office for the administration of Jewish assets (Greek: Yperesia Diacheiriseos Isrilitikis Periousias ; short: YDIP ) took care of the exploitation under German supervision. With the help of informers and systematic torture, Eichmann's employees forced the defenseless Jews to name hiding places for their jewelry and gold. According to conservative estimates, at least 12 tons of gold alone were captured. The abandoned apartments were looted by German soldiers and the last time Greek collaborators, thieves and beggars appeared in search of valuables.

Greek Jews had to wear the Star of David, mark their shops and apartments with it, and move to ghettos. These were in the Baron Hirsch district and in two other districts near the train station (in Kalamaria, Singrou et Vardar / Agia Paraskevi). Rabbi Koretz was appointed as the central Jewish contact person, a Jewish security service was set up under Vital Aaron Chasson, and within less than three weeks the National Socialist measures of exclusion, labeling and ghettoization were implemented.

In the period from March 14 to August 7, 1943, 43,850 Jews were transported in 19 train transports. H. 95 percent of the Jewish population of Saloniki were deported, most of them to the Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp . In addition, other Jews from other cities and communities in northern Greece were transported on these trains.

Lists of the murdered Jews of Thessaloniki
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Jewish Museum of Thessaloniki , 2016

Zvi Koretz , the chief rabbi of the Jewish community of Thessaloniki, was deported to the Bergen-Belsen residence camp in August 1943, together with his family and 74 community members, as well as 367 Jews who had Spanish citizenship , where he later fell ill with typhus . He was one of the more than 7,000 prisoners in the camp who were to be transported to the Theresienstadt concentration camp in April 1945 and ended up as an inmate of the Lost Train in Tröbitz in Brandenburg , where, shortly after he was rescued, he contracted typhus on June 3, 1945 supposed to have died. Fleischer describes this as the official reading and states: "In fact, however, he is lynched by indignant compatriots." His grave is located in the local Jewish cemetery that was set up for the victims of the transport .

Deportations from the Bulgarian occupied zone

At the time of the Bulgarian occupation, between 4,000 and 5,500 people of Jewish origin lived in Western Thrace and Eastern Macedonia . They lived in the cities of Alexandroupoli , Drama , Kavala , Komotini , Serres and Xanthi . The occupiers sought to Bulgarize the territories they had taken. There are two contradicting narratives about the Jewish communities: One is that the Jewish population was collectively asked to take Bulgarian citizenship, but refused in solidarity with the Greek state. The other states that the Thracian Jews were not allowed to acquire Bulgarian citizenship.

The Bulgarian Commissariat for Jewish Issues under Belev planned to deport all Jews after registration and to confiscate their property. First, all Jews were obliged to pay a special tax of around 20% on their property. All money had to be deposited in blocked accounts, material assets were registered and made available to the police station. After the deportation from the Bulgarian-occupied territories, all property was confiscated.

On March 3, 1943, the Jews in Thrace were interned by Bulgarian soldiers, police officers and members of the Organization for Jewish Affairs and their money and property were taken from them. About 4,000 people were brought to the port of Lom via the transit camps Gorna Djumaya (approx. 2,500) and Dupnica (approx. 1,500) . While crossing the Danube, according to contradicting reports, occupants drowned when a boat went down. The survivors were handed over to the German security service at the Austrian border and then taken to Treblinka. None of the deportees survived.

In total, at least 11,343 people were deported by the Bulgarians from the Thracian (Greek) and Macedonian (Yugoslav) areas that were under Bulgarian occupation. The Germans charged 250 Reichsmarks per head for the transport , which the Bulgarians considered too high. No agreement was reached and nothing was paid for. The Greek Jews, at least 4,057, Fleischer numbered 4,200, were murdered in the Treblinka extermination camp .

Phase 2: Ioannina, Athens and the islands

During the occupation of Greece by the Axis powers Germany , Italy and Bulgaria , 15,000 Jewish women, men and children fell under Italian occupation sovereignty after the Greek surrender at the end of April 1941. They lived in 16 parishes, including 3500 in Athens , 2200 on Rhodes and Kos , 2000 in Corfu , 1950 in Ioannina , 1175 in Larisa , 882 in Volos , 520 in Trikala , 384 in Arta , 350 in Chalkida , 337 in Agrinion and Patras together, 275 on Zakynthos , 250 in Preveza , 150 in Karditsa .

After Italy entered the war on the side of the Allies in September 1943, German occupation forces replaced the Italians. The members of the Jewish population group were not threatened in life and limb under the Italian occupation, while in 1943 the deportations of the Jewish population groups, for example from Thessaloniki and Athens, were in full swing.

Since Athens was originally in the Italian occupation zone, the city's Jews - the number of whom had greatly increased due to refugees from northern, German-occupied Greece - had a better chance of survival than Jews in other countries under the Holocaust thanks to the Greek Orthodox Church Nazi rule. There were some rescue operations, for example the rescuing of almost all Jews on the island of Zakynthos by the island's population or the issue of false identity cards and birth certificates for Jews by the Athens authorities. However, the deportations from the formerly Italian-occupied zone started in March 1944 and were completed in August 1944. At least 8,821 people were deported and 6,056 of them were murdered in the gas chambers immediately after arriving in Auschwitz.

Ioannina

On March 25, 1944, German troops surrounded the Jewish quarter on Lake Ioannina and informed the Jewish community representatives that every Jewish family had to be at predetermined meeting places within three hours.

Deportations from Ioannina, March 25, 1944
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1,700 members of the Jewish population were trucked to the Wehrmacht by Larisa in a thereat concentration camp spent and then by train from Athens to the Auschwitz concentration camp were deported and murdered. 95 percent of the Jewish population group was wiped out by this action on March 25, 1944.

The on that day from the propaganda company photo documentation prepared the Wehrmacht is now (2016) in the Federal Archives in Koblenz .

Athens

Although Athens was under joint German and Italian administration immediately after the occupation of Greece in April 1941, the persecution of Jews until the end of August 1943 concentrated on the German and Bulgarian-occupied zones in the north and the systematic annihilation of the Sephardic Jewry of Thessaloniki. Thanks to Italian intervention, 551 Jews from Thessaloniki were able to move to Athens with official permission. Another 1,500 fled to Athens without permission, where they believed they were safe among the Italians.

In August 1943 the situation changed dramatically. On the one hand, after the armistice had been signed between Italy and the Allies, the Germans took sole and full control of the previously Italian occupation zones. On the other hand, the extermination of Jewry from Thessaloniki was completed with the last transport, which arrived at Auschwitz-Birkenau on August 18, 1943, and logistical capacities arose. But the situation in Athens was fundamentally different from that in Thessaloniki. When Wisliceny, meanwhile assigned to Bratislava, in September 1943 in Athens requested from Chief Rabbi Elias Barzilai lists of all Jews in Athens, including occupations and addresses (and also a list of assets of the Jewish community), he received the answer within the given period of 24 hours, the books had been stolen and it was therefore impossible to fulfill the order. The chief rabbi then immediately fled with his family.

On October 7, 1943, the Higher SS and Police Leader Jürgen Stroop , who had just arrived, issued the order that all Jews in Athens had to register within five days. In the Judenrat came forward almost 1,200. Failure to comply with the order served Stroop as a pretext for confiscating Jewish property. Instead of the expected 8,000 registrations, only around 1,500 were made by March 1944. Then the Nazis spread the rumor that flour and sugar would be distributed in the synagogue on the evening of March 24, 1944 - on the occasion of the upcoming Passover festival . “With this trick they succeeded in luring an above-average number of Jews into the synagogue, arresting them and then barracking them temporarily in the Chaidari transit camp, which was specially built for this purpose.” Fleischer recalls that the arrests on the eve of the Greek Independence Day took place. He names 800 people arrested in the synagogue and another 500 who were picked up from their registered homes. "Together they are crammed together for a few days in the nearby Chaidari concentration camp under inhumane conditions until the victims from the province are also 'ready for transport'."

Crete

There were only two Jewish communities on the island of Crete , a smaller one in Heraklion and around 315 people in Chania . Although the Germans and the Italians occupied Crete from 1941 onwards, they did not gain access until after the Italian surrender. Before that, only registrations were made. At dawn on June 21, 1944, the Jewish citizens of Crete were arrested and shipped to continental Europe on the Danae . On June 8, the ship was sunk - presumably by enemy action - and all passengers died.

Corfu

Jews lived in Corfu since the 12th century and gained the same rights as Christians in the 18th century. An anti-Semitic incident is known to have occurred in 1891 when Jews were accused of ritual murder of a girl, but the victim was actually Jewish. As a result, the two parishes and the council merged.

After taking power from the Italians in 1943, the Germans managed to win over the Christian Orthodox majority for their Jewish policy. In addition, there was great disagreement within the Jewish community of around 2,200 people at the time, which made it impossible to establish contacts with the outside world and to plan to save the community. Eichmann's structure therefore had an easy time of it and was able to arrest almost all Corfiot Jews on June 9, 1944, barracks in the Neue Burg and transfer them to the Chaidari concentration camp on June 11, 14 and 17 . On July 20, they were transported by train to Auschwitz-Birkenau .

Rhodes, Kos

Deportation route of the Dodecanese Jews from Kos and Rhodes to Auschwitz, July / August 1944

The last Jewish communities that the Germans seized were the islands of the Italian Dodecanese , Rhodes and Kos . The diasporic history of the Jews living there began with the expulsion from Palestine under Roman rule. The influence of the Johannite and from 1523 the 450-year Ottoman rule resulted in a social structure that clearly differed from the Greek one. Ottomans and Jews lived within the city walls, the Greeks lived in the suburbs. Since the Treaty of Lausanne , citizens have had limited Italian citizenship, namely without the right to elect representatives. Thanks to the Turkish consul Selahattin Ülkümen , 42 Jewish citizens of Turkey and a number of their relatives were able to remain on Rhodes. Although they were subjected to harsh repression in the following months, they were able to leave the island for Marmaris on January 10, 1945 and get to safety.

On July 13, 1944, Lieutenant General Ulrich Kleemann , commandant of the East Aegean , ordered the arrest of the Jews. At least 1,651 women, men and children were deported from Rhodes, and at least 83 from Kos. Three ships from Rhodes left on July 24, 1944, one from Kos joined them and they took the prisoners to Chaidari concentration camp . Immediately after the Jews were evacuated , Kleemann set up a collection commission for the Jewish estate . On August 3, the last deportation train from Greece took the Jews from Athens to Auschwitz, where they arrived in cattle wagons on August 16, 1944 after 13 days. 600 people were singled out for labor service, all others were murdered in the gas chambers immediately upon arrival. "Only 151 of those deported from Rhodes survived."

“Although the German military was already in retreat on all fronts, capacities were still available for this last transport of Sephardic Jews from the Aegean. With a duration of 24 days and a distance of 1,600 kilometers, it was also one of the longest and longest deportation routes to an extermination camp. The extermination of the Jews of Rhodes represents in an almost paradigmatic way the cruel intransigence of the bureaucracy, which, against all logic, continued to adhere to the mass extermination. "

- Aron Rodrigue : Rhodos, in: Encyclopedia of Jewish History and Culture , ed. by Dan Diner on behalf of the Saxon Academy of Sciences in Leipzig. Volume 5: Pr-Sy. Metzler 2014, p. 218

Rescue operations

Identity card as issued to protect the Jews. Eva Alhanati is as Evangelia Alexiou referred

The high rate of murdered people in Greece is partly explained by the fact that, for example, the Sephardic Jews in Thessaloniki, who had lived peacefully with Christians and Muslims for centuries, lacked a feeling of endangerment, or that the Romaniotic Jews of Ioannina themselves because of them believed that advanced assimilation was not threatened. Above all, men of military age who joined the partisans or families like the Cohens in Athens who found shelter with Christians were able to save themselves on an individual basis.

In Athens in particular, a considerable number of Jewish people could be saved through forged documents: the Greek Orthodox Church distributed forged baptismal certificates with the express permission of Archbishop Damaskinos . The Athens police chief Angelos Evert took this as a guideline and made it possible to issue identity cards with a false religious affiliation and sometimes with changed names.

Citizenship of a neutral state such as Turkey , Spain or Argentina also offered some protection . Jews with Spanish and Argentine passports were also deported, but not to the Auschwitz and Treblinka extermination camps , but to the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp , known as a transitional camp , where they were more or less held as hostages. Turkish Jews were able to escape from Rhodes to Marmaris. Until Italy's armistice with the Allies on September 8, 1943, Jews with an Italian passport were also protected from deportation, which Günther Altenburg also complained about , because “the economically powerful Jews” also had Italian citizenship and thus a free pass in Thessaloniki.

Four Jewish communities in Greece could be saved almost completely on the one hand due to moral courage of individual and happy circumstances on the other hand:

Karditsa

The small Jewish community of Karditsa had no synagogue, no Jewish cemetery, and no rabbi. Six young Jewish men served in the Greek army in the 1940 war against attacking Italy. Several Jews from Karditsa were active in the resistance. When the Germans also occupied this city in 1943, one of their first activities was to ask the mayor for a list of all Jews with their addresses. However, the National Resistance had provided all of Karditsa's Jews with new documents in Christian names. When their persecution began, they were able to escape to the mountains and a friendly village. After the end of the German occupation, everyone returned to the city unharmed.

Katerini

The small town of Katerini at the foot of Mount Olympus then had around 17,000 inhabitants, including thirty to forty Jews. When Zvi Koretz forwarded the order to the police chief of Katerini, Papageorgiu, on March 29, 1941, that all Jews in his city should be arrested and sent to Thessaloniki the next day, he delayed the official acceptance of the telegram, informed the Jewish community and gave her three to 24 hours. Everyone was able to escape in time.

Volos

According to Nechama / Molcho, 882 Jewish community members lived in the Thessalonian city of Volos . These were to be registered in 1943, arrested by the Wehrmacht and deported to extermination camps. In a memorable rescue operation, in which the Orthodox Archbishop Joakim and the German consul Helmut Scheffel were also involved, the resistance groups of the EAM (see ELAS ) managed to distribute several hundred people to 24 Pelion villages and there under the supervision of ELAS and to provide or hide with the help of the local population with a new identity. Nevertheless 155 members of the Jewish community of Volos were murdered by the Nazis .

Zakynthos

The rescue of all Jews on the Ionian island, according to Santin 275 people, is described by Michael Molcho and Joseph Nehama as the miracle of Zakynthos . The deportation and murder could be prevented by the cooperation of the local authorities, the island population and the German commandantur. The historians, however, set the weighting differently. Fleischer ascribes the main responsibility to the German commandant Lüth (or Lütt), who is said to have refused and delayed the deportation because of the friendship and marriage between the Jewish and the Christian Orthodox sections of the population. Fleischer describes the commandant as “obviously critical of the regime.” Chrysostom and Karrer do not appear in his narrative.

Molcho / Nehama, on the other hand, focus on the island's population, who have hidden and rescued Jewish citizens “from the highest employees and the most honorable dignitaries to simple workers and villagers”. According to the two authors, the Jews were very well recorded and had to go to roll call every day.

Another narrative is offered by the local historian Dionysios Stravolemos , who describes the Metropolitan Chrysostomos of Zakynthos and the Mayor Lukas Karrer as "the two benefactors" of the Jews of Zakynthos. They refused to compile the list of all Jews of Zakynthos requested by the Germans and are said to have only put two names on the list, their own. His version is underpinned by the award of the two dignitaries as Righteous Among the Nations by Yad Vashem .

Murder of Greek Jews in other countries

Stumbling blocks for the victims of the massacre on Lake Maggiore from Thessaloniki

Everywhere in Europe, where the Nazis seized power, Jews were not sure of their lives. Many Greek Jews fled to Italy after the attack on Greece . When German troops occupied large parts of Italy after the fall of Mussolini , the persecution and murder of Jews began there too. Here's an example.

In September 1943 members of the 1st SS Panzer Division Leibstandarte SS Adolf Hitler murdered 50 Jews on the Piedmontese side of Lake Maggiore , including 16 guests at the Grand Hotel in Meina , all of whom came from Thessaloniki and fled to Italy due to the German occupation of Greece were. This murder is commonly referred to as the Meina massacre and has been filmed three times. Arrests of Jewish civilians took place in a coordinated action in Meina, Arona , Baveno , Mergozzo and Orta San Giulio after they had been identified as people of Jewish descent on lists from the local authorities. Further arrests were made in Stresa and Pian Nava . Valuables and considerable sums of money were always stolen or extorted, and one of the company commanders raped the wife of the caretaker of a villa whose Jewish owner had fled. In Meina, members of three Greek families between the ages of twelve and 76 were taken into SS custody, as was the hotel owner's family of five, Jews of Turkish nationality. Between September 19 and 22, 1943, a company commanders meeting of the battalion took place in Baveno under the direction of Hauptsturmführer Röhwer and the decision was made to kill the captured Jews and to throw their bodies in Lake Maggiore. On the night of September 22nd to 23rd, a firing squad picked up four of the victims held in Meina in a truck on three trips and shot them on a forest path. Another command rowed the bodies in boats out onto the lake, weighed them down with rocks and sank them. The next day three corpses floated on the lake and were brought ashore, watched by many residents. The following night the last four of the hotel guests were shot in the same way and their bodies disposed of. Captured Jews were also murdered in this way in Stresa and Baveno.

In 1968 the Osnabrück Regional Court sentenced a total of five people for these crimes, but the Federal Court of Justice overturned the judgments in 1970 due to the statute of limitations. During the negotiation it turned out that the murders on Lake Maggiore did not take place on orders from above, but on the initiative of the Leibstandarte SS Adolf Hitler.

Greeks in the concentration camps

According to German records, between March 20, 1943 and August 18, 1943, 48,533 Greek Jews arrived in 19 freight train transports at the Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp . Some transports went to other death camps, including the Treblinka extermination camp . Only a minority of the deportees were " selected " after their arrival as forced laborers for the surrounding factories (a total of 11,200, of which 4,200 were women and 7,000 men) or were selected for human experiments like hundreds of girls for sterilization experiments by SS doctors. All others were killed in the gas chambers and cremated in the crematoria immediately upon arrival .

Communication, attitude, functions

Only 11,200 Jews from Greece, including 4,200 women, were admitted to the Auschwitz concentration camp in 1943 . That was 23% of the comers. Their fate differed considerably from that of other Jewish concentration camp prisoners from Eastern, Western and Central Europe. For one thing, the Greek Jews were not used to the extreme weather conditions in Poland. On the other hand, there were massive communication problems with the other prisoners, who mostly spoke German, Yiddish and Polish, while the prisoners from Thessaloniki communicated mainly in Ladino , Greek and French. Almost all of the arriving Greek prisoners had already lost several or all of their family members on arrival at Auschwitz, which left them massively traumatized. In this respect, the Greeks in Auschwitz mostly formed closed groups. Primo Levi characterizes them in his first book Is that a person? as follows:

“These few survivors of the Jewish colony of Salonika, with their two languages, Spanish and Greek, and with their varied jobs, are the keepers of a concrete, earthly, well-considered wisdom in which the traditions of all Mediterranean cultures meet […] [D ] he disgust for senseless brutality and the astonishingly pronounced awareness of the continued existence of at least potential human dignity [made] the Greeks the most closed and in this sense also the most civilized group in the camp. "

- Primo Levi : Is that a human?

For many of the concentration camp prisoners from Greece, a Greek identity only developed in the concentration camp. Due to the linguistic isolation and the resulting group formation, a certain national pride developed. “We Greeks” is a prototypical formulation in the survivors' narrative. It is also often reported that the Jews from Greece liked to sing often and often - almost exclusively Greek songs. Among other things, the later chief cantor of Berlin, Estrongo Nachama , only survived the extermination camp because of his beautiful singing. The Sephardic Jews also provided three of the most successful boxers in Auschwitz : the Tunis-born Victor Perez (1911–1945), who was shot on a death march , and the two Greeks from Thessaloniki Salamo Arouch (1923–2009) and Jacko Razon (born 1921 - until 2015), both of whom survived Auschwitz.

The Jews from Thessaloniki who survived the selection represented important resources for the forced labor inside and outside the camp. The guards used their manual and physical skills to build barracks and factories in Monowitz, within the special command for the crematoria in Birkenau, also in mines and on farms. In the autumn of 1943, several hundred Greek prisoners were sent to the Gesiowka labor camp to remove the ruins of the Warsaw ghetto and clear away the rubble.

Photographs of the Holocaust

Corpses in Auschwitz, secretly photographed by Alberto Errera , August 1944

One of the few photographic documents ( “Pictures in spite of everything” ) of the Holocaust comes from the Greek officer Alberto Errera , who belonged to the ashes removal department of the Sonderkommando . In 1944 he secretly documented a group of women before the gassing as well as masses of corpses afterwards. Errera is of Greek survivors as soul of the insurgency characterized, even though he was on the day of the uprising no longer alive. He had knocked down two guards, jumped into the Vistula and fled. The next day he was caught by SS men, murdered and burned under supervision.

Auschwitz uprising

On October 7, 1944, there was an uprising among the concentration camp inmates of the Sonderkommando, who had to operate the gas chambers and crematoria and were kept separate from the other inmates as a security risk. At that time, the Sonderkommando consisted of around 450 Hungarian, 200 Polish, 180 Greek, three Slovak, five German and one Dutch Jews as well as 19 Soviet prisoners of war, five Polish prisoners and a German Kapo.

The majority of the 300 prisoners chosen by the kapos were Hungarian and Greek Jews. Even before the list was handed over to Busch, some of those affected by the selection contacted the leaders of the resistance group and declared that none of the three hundred were prepared to be slaughtered without resistance. They said the time for the planned uprising had now come and asked the Sonderkommando to take part, regardless of whether the rest of the camp would join in or not.

Female prisoners had smuggled explosives from an arms factory, and part of Crematorium IV was destroyed. That is why on January 5, 1945: Ala Gertner , Rózia Robota , Regina Safirsztajn and Ester Wajcblum were executed . The prisoners then attempted a mass escape, but all 250 who had escaped were caught and murdered by the SS shortly afterwards.

Refusal to work in the Sonderkommando

The steadfastness of those 435 Jews from Corfu, Athens and Ioannina who were assigned to the special detachment in Auschwitz-Birkenau after the quarantine on July 22, 1944 and who collectively “participated in the murder of their fellow believers and -sisters ”refused. They were therefore gassed on the same day.

When the Red Army advanced in early 1945, the Greek prisoners who had survived until then were forced to go on death marches in the direction of Germany, and many again lost their lives.

numbers

List of names of Holocaust victims in Rhodes

On the basis of various sources, including the tickets in Greek and German found in the Auschwitz train station after the war, Danuta Czech established that a total of around 55,000 people were deported from Greece to Auschwitz. The study by Hagen Fleischer on the Holocaust in Greece, published in Dimension des Genocide , edited by Wolfgang Benz, resulted in the following numbers of victims and survivors:

Casualty numbers
number Circumstances of death
52.185 Victims of Auschwitz (German Zone)
4,200 Treblinka victims (Bulgarian zone)
2,500 Executions and other occupation-related deaths within Greece
58,885 Total death toll
Numbers about the survivors
number Survival circumstances
10,226 registered survivors in Greece (Dec 45)
about 300 Estimate of the unregistered survivors
approx. 200 Concentration camp survivors emigrated directly to Palestine
approx. 2,000 fled to the Middle East during the occupation
12,726 total estimated number of survivors

Survivors

It was difficult to return home from the underground and from the camps. Apartments and shops were occupied by Greeks, food cards and work did not exist because the returnees were neither registered with the state nor in the workers' associations. In June 1945 the Central Council of Israeli Congregations in Greece (KIS) was established. He was supposed to help with the restitution of the stolen property, the prosecution of perpetrators and with the help and communication with foreign Jewish organizations. The Greek state did not provide any special aid for the Greek Jews. For a long time they had to rely on the help of UNRRA , the Red Cross, the Joint Distribution Committee , the Jewish Claims Conference , the Jewish Agency and also the Association of the Jews of Thessaloniki in America.

Almost all reports agree that of the at least 54,385 people deported to concentration camps, only 1,800 to 2,000 survived. According to Fleischer, the higher number also includes around 150 Dodecanese Jews who were first sent to Italy after the liberation, as well as those from the group of 552 Jews with Spanish nationality interned in the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp, who were directly or indirectly at least temporarily came back to Greece.

Fleischer names a total of 12,726 as the total number of surviving Jews from Greece after the end of the German occupation and breaks them down in detail. Accordingly, they fled to the Middle East during the occupation period in 2000 and survived. In Greece itself, in 1946 there were a total of 10,226 people who could be registered and an estimated 300 who were not. As a concentration camp survivor who emigrated directly to Palestine, he gives the number 200.

Today around 5000 Jews live in Greece. In the post-war years, numerous Jews decided to emigrate, especially to the British Mandate Palestine or Israel or to the USA . Many Greek Jews married Christians, which also contributed to the decimation of Judaism. In Thessaloniki, the once proud metropolis of Sephardic Judaism , there are only barely a thousand people of Jewish denomination today, and Ladino is hardly spoken there anymore.

Individuals

The following Holocaust survivors in Greece are documented with their own articles in Wikipedia:

Work-up

Criminal action

With the formation of a special court for collaborators in Thessaloniki in spring 1945, the privileges listed in the YDIP files and their recipients also became relevant. The returning surviving Jews demanded the punishment of these “Nazi collaborators”, but because of the Greek Civil War , the state now decidedly valued many “administrators” as valuable anti-communists who could pursue post-war careers. Many “administrators” were able to successfully assert their claim to the property of the Jews a second time and keep it.

  • Herbert Gerbing is said not to have survived the end of the Nazi regime and was pronounced dead by the Vienna Regional Court on May 22, 1952. Theodor Dannecker evaded his responsibility by suicide on December 10, 1945 , Walter Schimana on September 12, 1948. Rolf Günther is also said to have killed himself with poison - in August 1945 in the American prisoner-of-war camp in Ebensee - but this was doubted for many years. Anton Zita is said to have died on June 16, 1946 in the Pankrác prison in Prague . The fate of the other main responsible persons after 1945:
  • Günther Altenburg remained unmolested. Although he was questioned several times in 1947 as part of the Nuremberg Trials , he was never charged. He was the General Secretary of the German Group of the International Chamber of Commerce based in Cologne and died in 1984 at the age of 90.
  • Adolf Beckerle , envoy of the German embassy in Sofia in the years 1941–43, was indicted in the Frankfurt diplomatic trial in 1967 for the deportation of New Bulgarian Jews from Thrace and Macedonia. The proceedings against him were discontinued in 1968 due to illness.
  • Ernst Brückler remained unmolested. In 1950, investigations were initiated into the so-called Aryanization of a residential facility in downtown Vienna as well as abuse using official authority as interim head of the so-called assessment department at the Central Office for Jewish Emigration , but these were discontinued in 1955 "because the evidence was insufficient".
  • As Eichmann's right-hand man, Alois Brunner was responsible for the deportation of at least 120,000 Jews in several European countries. He was never held responsible for his actions. After the fall of the Nazi regime - under the name Alois Schmaldienst - he worked in Munich as a truck driver for the US Army , as a picker in the Ruhr area and as a waiter in Essen. He is said to have worked for the US Counter Intelligence Corps (CIC) and later also for the Federal Intelligence Service . Brunner did not leave Germany until 1954, traveled via Rome to Egypt, where he worked as an arms dealer , and finally to Syria, where he is said to have worked as a government advisor on Jewish issues. He lived there under the code name Dr. Georg Fischer and Rischer and lived with the former camp commandant of Treblinka, Franz Stangl , in an apartment. In his absence he was sentenced to death twice in France in 1954, but the sentence could not be carried out. Brunner survived two letter bombs in 1961 and 1980 that were allegedly sent to him by the Mossad . It lost one eye in the first case and four fingers of the left hand in the second. According to Simon Wiesenthal, after Eichmann's arrest, he is said to have planned the kidnapping of the President of the World Jewish Congress, Nahum Goldmann , in order to free Eichmann. Brunner ran several companies, corresponded regularly with his daughter, who is said to have also visited him, was photographed several times and gave interviews. In 1985, he told the illustrated magazine BUNTE that the only thing he was sorry for was "that he had not killed any more Jews". Attempts by the French government to obtain his extradition failed because of Hafiz al-Assad and his government, who flatly denied Brunner's stay in Syria. At the instigation of Serge Klarsfeld and with the support of President François Mitterrand , Erich Honecker negotiated with the Syrian regime in 1988 about deporting Brunner to the GDR . The project failed when the wall came down. Alois Brunner died unmolested in Damascus in 2009 or 2010.
Adolf Eichmann, 1942
  • After a short US captivity, Adolf Eichmann was able to go into hiding under false names and then survive as a lumberjack, casual worker and poultry farmer. In 1950 he traveled unhindered to Argentina via the so-called rat lines with German-Catholic support. He caught up with his family, named his son Ricardo Eichmann, born in 1955, and finally found a job as an electrician in the Daimler-Benz truck plant in González Catán. He was caught by the Israeli secret service in May 1960 and taken to Israel, where he was tried between April 11 and December 15, 1961. The death sentence for crimes against humanity and other offenses was carried out on May 29, 1962. It was the only execution by the Israeli state so far .
  • Fritz Gebhardt von Hahn was a diplomat in the Foreign Office who dealt with the deportation of New Bulgarian and Greek Jews. During the Frankfurt diplomatic trial in 1968 he was sentenced to 8 years in prison for aiding and abetting the murder of over 31,000 Jews .
  • After the end of the Nazi regime, Alfred Slawik was initially able to go into hiding as a servant. He was arrested in 1946, handed over to the Austrian judiciary by the CIC in March 1947 , sentenced on September 20, 1949 to five years of imprisonment in the event of financial collapse for mistreatment and his involvement in the deportations, but released in May 1950. As during the Eichmann trial appeared new alleged crimes that he had committed together with Eichmann a murder of a Jewish prisoner in Budapest, he was from July 1961 to February 1962 in remand taken. The prosecution dropped the case because they saw little prospect of conviction.
  • Jürgen Stroop was arrested by American forces on May 8, 1945 and sentenced to death as part of the Dachau Trials on March 21, 1947 for his involvement in the murder of Allied airmen . The sentence was not carried out, but Stroop was extradited to Poland, where he was sentenced to death by hanging on July 23, 1951 for the bloody suppression of the uprising in the Warsaw ghetto . The execution took place on March 6, 1952 at around 7 p.m. in Warsaw.
  • Dieter Wisliceny was executed in Czechoslovakia in February 1948 for crimes committed there. Before that, the SS officer had testified before the Nuremberg War Crimes Tribunal, praised the willing cooperation of the Wehrmacht in the extermination of the Jews in Greece and underlined that "without close cooperation with the military administration, the action in Thessaloniki could never have taken place", ie without the war administrator Merten.

Chaidari concentration camp

On September 14, 1952, a preliminary investigation was initiated against the camp commanders Paul Radomski and Karl Fischer and others for the execution of hostages, murders, torture, internment under inhuman conditions and terror. After a confidential agreement between the Greek Prime Minister Karamanlis and Federal Chancellor Konrad Adenauer , the investigations were discontinued by the public prosecutor in 1959 because the accused could not be found.

Ioannina, Rhodes

The members of the SS, police and armed forces involved in the deportation from Ioannina were not brought to justice by the West German judiciary after 1945; all preliminary investigations were discontinued on the basis of flimsy reasons.

  • Ulrich Kleemann was released from American captivity in 1947 . A preliminary investigation against him for murder has been dropped. He died in a traffic accident in 1963 at the age of 70.

Denied prosecution in the FRG

In April 1956, a delegation from the Greek War Crimes Bureau handed 167 files on 641 war criminals to the Foreign Office and the Federal Ministry of Justice. There it was made clear, however, that they had no interest in clarification or prosecution, but only wanted to deposit the material under German jurisdiction. Occasionally, Greek victim information was questioned, especially in relation to the Holocaust, as "in Germany, for example, only 0.01% of the population (ie 8,000 people) were persecuted". Blessin, a representative of the Federal Ministry of Finance, even questioned the existence of “real” concentration camps in Greece.

Restitution and compensation

Compensation request from Samuel Josué Samuelides, November 1960

At the end of October 1944, two weeks after Athens was liberated, a law was passed requiring all seized assets to be returned to their rightful owners. While the Greek Foreign Ministry tried to bring Jewish affairs in the national interest into negotiations for reparation by Germany, the Greek military and the judiciary did not enforce the Jewish claim for return against Greek Orthodox Greeks. In addition, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs tried to delay the return of Greek survivors from the concentration camps .

Michael Molho points out that the restitution by KYDIP took place to a large extent in the formerly Italian-occupied territories, which hardly happened to the Jewish assets confiscated in Thessaloniki. Rena Molho states that by 1953 the Jewish survivors from Thessaloniki were only able to obtain the return of 543 houses and apartments, 18 barracks and 51 shops.

Furthermore, the Jewish community of Thessaloniki sued the ECJ against the Federal Republic in order to get back the ransom that members of the community then paid to the Nazi occupiers in order to redeem their relatives. Despite the payment, which was part of an agreement with the occupiers, the Jews were deported. The ECJ and Germany rejected this lawsuit.

The Deutsche Reichsbahn participated in the extermination of the Greek Jews with the deportation trains to the extermination camps . At the same time, the SS forced the victims to pay for tickets to be abducted. The Train of Remembrance Initiative works together with the Jewish Community of Thessaloniki to ensure that the injustice committed by Deutsche Bahn AG, as the legal successor to the Deutsche Reichsbahn, is compensated for by paying compensation to the victims and their descendants.

Commemoration

In 2003 the Greek parliament decided unanimously to declare January 27, the anniversary of the liberation of the Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp , Holocaust Remembrance Day . Since then, official commemorative events have taken place in Greece on this day. In 2016, the Monument to the Righteous of the Peoples of Greece was ceremoniously unveiled near the Athens Synagogue.

Contemporary witnesses

Since 1994 the Shoah Foundation has been recording conversations with contemporary witnesses worldwide as visual history and the Centropa association maintains an acoustic digital archive of contemporary witnesses for Central and Eastern Europe, including the Balkans.

One of the survivors of the deportations from Thessaloniki was Shlomo Venezia (1923–2012), who came from an Italian family and lived in Italy after the fall of the Nazi regime. It was only decades later that he began to speak publicly of his experiences as one of the few surviving Italian witnesses of the Holocaust. As a guest on numerous television programs and at schools, he aimed primarily at young people with his storytelling. He was also a consultant for Roberto Benigni's film Life is Beautiful .

Two boxers from Thessaloniki, Salamo Arouch and Jacko Razon , survived the Shoah and then emigrated to the British Mandate Palestine . Arouch's memoirs were filmed under the title Triumph des Geistes , and in 1995 Razon gave the Shoah Foundation in Tel Aviv an almost two-hour interview in Hebrew.

In her dissertation, The Holocaust in the Testimonies of Greek Jews , published by Duncker & Humblot in 2003 , the philologist Tullia Santin analyzes the contemporary testimonies of twenty victims and survivors of the Holocaust.

Owadjah Baruch survived a death march to Mauthausen concentration camp in 1945 , married Alisa after the war, who had also survived a death march , moved with her to Palestine and they had two children. In 2008 he returned to the scenes of his youth and his martyrdom for the documentary film You in love remembered .

Literary processing

In 1996 Anne Michaels presented her novel Fugitive Pieces , which tells the fate of a Polish boy who escapes arrest and is rescued to Zakynthos by a Greek archaeologist. The book was also published in German under the title Fluchtstück . There is also a stage adaptation. The novel was filmed in 2007 by Jeremy Podeswa under the same title . Book and film won a number of awards.

In 2003 Nina Nahmia presented her book Reina Gilberta - A Child in the Thessaloniki Ghetto , drawing attention to the 6,000 children and young people from Thessaloniki who were raised either by Christian families or in monasteries - or who joined the partisans and survived . The book inspired the film director Costa-Gavras , who wanted to film it under the title Estrella mi vida . A script for it was written by Ioanna Karystiani . The volume was also published in German in 2009.

Individuals

Archbishop Damaskinos
Alice von Battenberg

By the end of 2015, a total of 328 Greeks had been awarded the title Righteous Among the Nations by Yad Vashem . This honor goes to the rescue of Jews during the time of National Socialism . Greece has a particularly high density of award winners in relation to its population and ranks twelfth in the ranking of nations. Examples are:

  • The single cleaning lady Sofia Kritou (Greek Σοφία Κρητικού) lived with her daughter Agapi in Peristeri . She took David Kazansky and his children Zwi (18 years), Liana (16 years) and Gina (8 years) into her home, despite the threat of the death penalty. All four of those housed with her survived.
  • The Metropolitan Chrysostomos of Zakynthos and the Mayor Lukas Karrer refused to compile the list of all Jews of Zakynthos demanded by the Germans and put only two names on the list: their own.
  • Damaskinos Papandreou , Archbishop of Athens and later Prime Minister of Greece, spoke out against the abduction of forced laborers, hostage-taking and the threat to Greek Jews by the Germans.
  • During the occupation, Princess Alice von Battenberg , daughter-in-law of the murdered King George I of Greece and mother-in-law of Queen Elizabeth II of England , lived in Athens. She worked for the Red Cross and hid the Jewish Cohen family from the Nazis.
  • Angelos Evert , police chief of Athens from September 1941, supported the Greek resistance , maintained contact with the Greek government in exile and had false documents with the religious designation Greek Orthodox issued for a number of Jewish families .
  • Elena of Greece , mother of the Romanian King Michael I , actively campaigned for the rescue of the Romanian Jews.
  • The only 30-year-old Turkish consul general on Rhodes, Selahattin Ülkümen , the only righteous man in his country, fought against the deportation of all Jews with Turkish citizenship from Rhodes and also issued their partners and children with Turkish papers. As a result, German armed forces bombed his house and injured his heavily pregnant wife so badly that she died a few days later. The unborn son at the time of the attack survived. He later answered his son's question whether he would have done the same if he had known what was going to happen: “ Islam is like Judaism ; whoever saves a person's life saves the whole world. Your mother would be proud of me and I would do exactly the same thing all over again. "

Jewish museums and monuments

In 1977 Εβραϊκό Μουσείο της Ελλάδος, the Jewish Museum of Greece , was founded in an extension of a synagogue in Athens . In 1997, with the help of the Ministry of Culture, a new building at 39 Odos Nikis, not far from Syntagma Square , was acquired and converted for the museum. It shows around 8000 exhibits on 800 m². Also in 1997, the Εβραϊκό Μουσείο Ρόδου, the Rhodes Jewish Museum , opened in an extension of the Kahal Shalom Synagogue in the Odos Dossiadou. In 2006 it was completely renovated and has been looked after by the Israelite Community of Rhodes ever since. The custodian is an Auschwitz survivor.

In 1997, Thessaloniki was the European Capital of Culture . In addition to the Museum of Contemporary Art , the Εβραϊκό Μουσείο Θεσσαλονίκης, the Jewish Museum of Thessaloniki , opened in the former Jewish quarter of the city. The museum has existed under its current name and as an institution since 2001. It is located in a former office building of the Banque d'Athènes , which was designed in 1904 by Vitaliano Poselli . It is one of the few Jewish buildings that were not destroyed in the fire in Thessaloniki in 1917 . The main focus of the permanent exhibition is on the one hand the history of the Sephardic Jews and on the other hand the Holocaust in Thessaloniki. The name of the museum is in Ladino : Museo Djudio de Saloniki .

Stumbling blocks for 81 school children in Thessaloniki

Monuments commemorating the Holocaust can be found in Thessaloniki , in Drama and Didymoticho , in Kastoria , Ioannina , Trikala and Larisa , on Corfu and Lefkada , in Chalkida , Athens and Rhodes . Stumbling blocks for 81 school children and a stumbling block were laid in Thessaloniki by the German artist Gunter Demnig .

See also

Hall of the Murdered in the Thessaloniki Jewish Museum

literature

Filmography (selection)

  • Triumph of the Spirit , feature film by Robert M. Young , 1989
  • Salonika, City of Silence , documentary by Maurice Amaraggi , 2006 (52 min.)
  • Remember you with love. The story of Owadjah Baruch. The International School for Holocaust Studies & The Center for Multimedia Assisted Instruction, Hebrew University of Jerusalem. Israel 2008 (47 min.), DVD
  • Song of Life , documentary, 2011
  • Kisses to the Children , documentary, 2011 (115 min.)
  • A bookshop in six chapters , documentary, 2012 (25 min.)
  • Magic Men , feature film by Guy Nattiv and Erez Tadmor, Israel 2014 (100 min.)

Web links

Commons : Registration of employable Jews in Thessaloniki (1942)  - Collection of images
Commons : Deportation of the Jews from Ioannina (1944)  - Collection of images
Commons : Photographs of the Holocaust (Alberto Errera)  - collection of images

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Gotthard Deutsch , M. Caimi:  Greece. In: Isidore Singer (Ed.): Jewish Encyclopedia . Volume 6, Funk and Wagnalls, New York 1901–1906, pp.  84–85 ..
  2. ↑ Jason Chandrinos, Anna Maria Droumpouki: The German Occupation and the Holocaust in Greece: A Survey . In: Holocaust in Greece . Ed .: Antoniou and Moses, Cambridge University 2018, ISBN 978-1-108-47467-2 , p. 17.
  3. ^ Raul Hilberg : The annihilation of the European Jews. Volume 2, Fischer Verlag 1982, ISBN 3-596-24417-X , p. 737.
  4. ↑ Einsatzstab Reichsleiter Rosenberg on gedenkorte-europa.eu, the homepage of Gedenkorte Europa 1939–1945 , accessed on June 19, 2016.
  5. ^ Steven Bowman: The Agony of Greek Jews, 1940–1945 , Stanford University Press, 2009, ISBN 978-0-8047-5584-9 , pp. 60 ff.
  6. ↑ Jason Chandrinos, Anna Maria Droumpouki: The German Occupation and the Holocaust in Greece: A Survey . P. 21.
  7. ^ Hagen Fleischer: Greece . P. 251 f.
  8. ^ Hagen Fleischer: Greece . P. 255 f.
  9. ^ Raul Hilberg: The annihilation of the European Jews . Fischer 1990, Volume 2, ISBN 3-596-24417-X , pp. 806 f.
  10. ↑ Einsatzstab Reichsleiter Rosenberg on gedenkorte-europa.eu, the homepage of Gedenkorte Europa 1939–1945 , accessed on April 18, 2016.
  11. ↑ Jason Chandrinos, Anna Maria Droumpouki: The German Occupation and the Holocaust in Greece: A Survey . P. 18.
  12. ^ Wolfgang Breyer: Dr. Max Merten - a military officer in the German armed forces in the field of tension between legend and truth . University of Mannheim, Mannheim 2003, urn : nbn: de: bsz: 180-madoc-771 , p. 48ff.
  13. ^ Raul Hilberg : The annihilation of the European Jews. Volume 2, Fischer Verlag 1982, ISBN 3-596-24417-X , p. 738 ff.
  14. ^ Hagen Fleischer: Greece . P. 250.
  15. ^ Peter Longerich : Politics of Destruction. An overall presentation of the National Socialist persecution of the Jews . 1998, Pieper Verlag, ISBN 3-492-03755-0 , p. 526f.
  16. ↑ Thessaloniki on gedenkorte-europa.eu, the homepage of Gedenkorte Europa 1939–1945 , accessed February 23, 2019
  17. ^ Hagen Fleischer: Greece . P. 251.
  18. ↑ Steven B. Bowman: The Agony of Greek Jews, 1940-1945. Stanford University Press, 2009, ISBN 978-0-8047-5584-9 , pp. 64 f.
  19. ↑ Stratos N. Dardanos, Vaios Kalogrias: The Jewish community of Thessaloniki during the German occupation . In: Ghetto, Spaces and Borders in Judaism . Pardes 2011 issue 17, ISBN 978-3-86956-132-5 , p. 110.
  20. ↑ Stratos N. Dardanos, Vaios Kalogrias: The Jewish community of Thessaloniki during the German occupation . P. 114.
  21. ↑ Götz Aly: Hitlers Volksstaat , Fischer Verlag 2005, ISBN 3-10-000420-5 , p. 287.
  22. ↑ Stratos Dordanas and Vaios Kalogrias, The Jewish community of Thessaloniki during the German occupation , p. 117
  23. ↑ Steven Bowman: The Agony of Greek Jews, 1940–1945 , pp. 64 ff.
  24. ↑ Stratos Dordanas and Vaios Kalogrias, The Jewish community of Thessaloniki during the German occupation , p. 107 ff.
  25. ^ Hagen Fleischer: Greece . P. 270 (with reference to Matarasso and Estrongo Nachama)
  26. ↑ Numbers are at a time of increased mobility, refugee movements and the effort to hide, at most snapshots (and in some cases vary significantly depending on the time and method of the survey). Molcho / Nechama name 5,615 people of Jewish faith in the six cities mentioned, Hoppe remains among them in his article Bulgaria (in Benz, p. 292f).
  27. ↑ Molcho / Nechama, p. 130.
  28. ^ S. Hoppe, 293
  29. ^ Hans-Joachim Hoppe: Bulgaria . P. 284.
  30. ↑ Jason Chandrinos, Anna Maria Droumpouki: The German Occupation and the Holocaust in Greece: A Survey . P. 25.
  31. ^ Hans-Joachim Hoppe: Bulgaria. In: Dimension of Genocide. P. 293 f.
  32. ↑ Hoppe, p. 298.
  33. ^ Hagen Fleischer: Greece . P. 272.
  34. ↑ Santin, p. 25, there quoted from Molcho / Nechama, p. 351.
  35. ^ Hagen Fleischer: Greece . P. 273.
  36. ↑ Mark Mazower : Inside Hitler's Greece. The Experience of Occupation, 1941-44. Yale University Press, New Haven CT, ISBN 0-300-06552-3 , pp. 252-253.
  37. ^ Czech, Hefte von Auschwitz 11, p. 18.
  38. ↑ Santin, p. 26.
  39. ↑ G. Reitlinger: The final solution. P. 429, quoted here. According to Czech: Hefte von Auschwitz 11, p. 19.
  40. ↑ Santin, p. 26.
  41. ^ Hagen Fleischer: Greece . P. 263.
  42. ↑ Santin, pp. 21f.
  43. ↑ Fleischer writes on p. 265 that the correctness of this version “can be considered certain, although, significantly, in this case too, a staged sinking seemed more likely.” He justifies this in a footnote with the fact that the Chania is one of the last available German ships and the German Navy was interested in bringing the ship "through to Piraeus unharmed". Therefore, the cargo was also deliberately transmitted in unencrypted radio traffic. A deliberate sinking by the Allies therefore seems "strange" to Fleischer, it is not clear whether the loss of the ship and its passengers was due to a torpedo or a mine.
  44. ↑ http://www.jewishencyclopedia.com/articles/4656-corfu
  45. ↑ Daphnis, p. 37f, Santis, p. 28, Siebert, pp. 206-220.
  46. ↑ Emile Y. Kolodny: Une Comunauté insulaire en Méditerranée orinentale: les Turcs de Chypre. In: Revue de geographie de Lyon. 46.1 (1971) 5-56, here: p. 18.
  47. ^ History of the island of Kos ( Archived copy ( Memento from July 25, 2009 in the Internet Archive ), Greek).
  48. ↑ According to other sources, 1,673 people were deported from Rhodes and 96 people from Kos, cf. EJGK, Volume 5, p. 217.
  49. ↑ Götz Aly: Hitler's People's State , p. 306
  50. ↑ EJGK, Volume 5, p. 218.
  51. ↑ Santin, p. 27.
  52. ↑ Santin, p. 26.
  53. ↑ Files on German foreign policy, Series E, Volume III, Göttingen 1974, quoted here. According to Hagen Fleischer: Greece . P. 251.
  54. ^ Central Board of Jewish Communities in Greece: The Jewish Community of Karditsa , June 12, 2009, accessed March 28, 2016.
  55. ↑ Santin, p. 21.
  56. ^ Abravanel: Saving the Jews of Katerini during the Shoah . September 2, 2008, accessed March 28, 2016.
  57. ^ Occupation and resistance in Volos. ( Memento from September 24, 2015 in the Internet Archive ) Lecture by Nikos Tsafleris, given at the German Consulate General in Thessaloniki on March 15, 2011.
  58. ^ The Jewish Community of Volos during the War Years
  59. ↑ Molcho / Nehama, p. 247, quoted here. after Santin p. 29.
  60. ^ Hagen Fleischer: Greece . P. 266.
  61. ↑ Molcho / Nehama, p. 248, quoted here. after Santin p. 29.
  62. ↑ Dionysius Stravolemos: Enas iroismos - mix dikaiosi. I diasosi ton Evraion tis Zakyntou stin Katochi. Athens 1988, p. 40, quoted here. after Santin p. 28.
  63. ↑ The information in this section is essentially based on the most comprehensive document on the murders, namely the factual determination in the judgment of the Osnabrück Regional Court, in: Justiz und NS-Verbrechen. Volume XXX. Later research revealed some minor modifications, which are included with reference to the source.
  64. ↑ The arrests in Pian Nava are described by Galli 2008, p. 39.
  65. ↑ Salonika Holocaust Memorial - Victims . In: Memorial portal on places of remembrance in Europe , Foundation Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe , accessed on February 22, 2018.
  66. ↑ Ruth Jolanda Weinberger: Fertilitätsexperimente in Auschwitz pdf, Ludwig-Boltzmann Institute for Historical Social Science, p. 23.
  67. ↑ On the number of victims in Auschwitz, see Danuta Czech : Deportation and extermination of the Greek Jews in KL Auschwitz. In: Hefte von Auschwitz 11, 1970, pp. 5–37; Spengler-Axiopoulos: From the Romaniots and Sephardi (including the number of victims for the 34 communities at the time throughout Greece).
  68. ↑ Liz Elsby, Asaf Tal: The Jewish Community of Salonika - the Jerusalem of the Balkans . Yad Vashem. Retrieved March 28, 2016.
  69. ^ Tullia Santin: The Holocaust in the testimonies of Greek Jews (= contemporary historical research . Volume 20). Duncker & Humblot 2003, ISBN 3-428-10722-5 . Berlin, Freie Univ., Diss., 2001, p. 112.
  70. ↑ Filip Müller : special treatment. Three years in the crematoria and gas chambers of Auschwitz . German adaptation by Helmut Freitag. Steinhausen, Munich 1979, ISBN 3-8205-3464-4 , p. 211.
  71. ↑ Verbatim quotation from Santin, p. 116.
  72. ↑ The first known report of this incident can be found in Czech, Hefte von Auschwitz 11, pp. 28f.
  73. ↑ Bracha Rivlin (Ed.): Book of Communities. Greece, Thessaloniki. Pinkas HakeHilot, Yad Vashem, Jerusalem 1998, pp. 276-282.
  74. ^ Danuta Czech: Deportation and extermination of the Greek Jews in KL Auschwitz. Booklets from Auschwitz 11, 1970.
  75. ^ Hagen Fleischer: Greece . P. 272.
  76. ↑ Rena Molho: The Holocaust of the Greek Jews . P. 75 ff.
  77. ^ Hagen Fleischer: Greece . P. 270.
  78. ^ Hagen Fleischer: Greece . P. 272.
  79. ^ Ben G. Frank: A travel guide to Jewish Europe. P. 411.
  80. ↑ Jewish Museum of Greece : Mois Yussuroum ( Memento of the original from March 19, 2016 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. , accessed March 30, 2016.  @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.jewishmuseum.gr
  81. ↑ Joanna Kakissis: 'We Are Next': Greek Jews Fear Rise Of Far-Right Party , Interview with Mois Yussuroum, in: NPR parallels, September 4, 2013, accessed March 30, 2016.
  82. ↑ Stratos N. Dordanas: The Jewish Community of Thessaloniki and the Christian Collaborateurs: "Those did are leaving and What They are leaving behind". P. 219 f.
  83. ↑ Ernst Klee : Auschwitz - perpetrators, assistants, victims and what became of them: Ein Personenlexikon , S. Fischer 2013.
  84. ^ Records of the United States Nuernberg War Crimes trials Interrogations 1946-1949. (PDF; 186 kB) 1977.
  85. ↑ Albert Oeckl, Rudolf Vogel (Ed.): Pocket book of public life 1958 . Festland-Verlag, Bonn 1958, p. 167.
  86. ↑ The Beckerle case - The trial . In: Fritz Bauer Archive , accessed June 26, 2016.
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