Jewish community of Thessaloniki

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The Jewish community of Thessaloniki ( Greek Ισραηλιτική Κοινότητα Θεσσαλονίκης , Israilitiki Kinotita Thessalonikis ) is a core Sephardic community in Thessaloniki . Once very large, after the Holocaust it still includes around 1500 people.

history

Early history

Jewish emigration to Thessaloniki

The first Jews ( Romaniots ) are said to have been around 140 BC. BC came to Thessaloniki. The members of this community soon lived integrated among the Greeks. The oldest synagogue was the one in which the apostle Paul preached around 50 AD on his second missionary trip. This synagogue was called Etz Achaim and was completely destroyed in the great fire of 1917 .

Little is known about the history of the community in the Byzantine Empire . According to Benjamin von Tudela , who visited the city in 1169, 500 Jews lived there at that time. In the second half of the 14th century were Ashkenazi Jews from Hungary and Sephardic refugees from the Iberian Peninsula and the Provence to Thessaloniki. Whether the community survived the conquest of the city by the Ottomans in 1430 is unclear, but after the conquest of Constantinople in 1453 the Jews were probably forced to relocate to the new capital as part of the population policy of Mehmed II .

In the Ottoman Empire 1430–1912

While the population register of 1479 showed no Jews in Thessaloniki and more than half of the residents were Christians, this changed when Sultan Bayezid II made it possible for victims of the expulsion of Jews from Spain to settle in the Ottoman Empire from 1492 onwards . As a result, numerous Sephardi, but also so-called Conversos , as Jews forcibly converted to Christianity were called on the Iberian Peninsula, came to Thessaloniki. Jewish expellees from other parts of Europe also came and founded their own synagogues. As early as 1520, more than half of the population were Jews. They lived under the protection and restrictions of the Islamic legal principle of the dhimma , which granted the Jewish and Christian communities autonomy in the regulation of their internal affairs. The city developed into the "Jerusalem of the Balkans" with a predominantly Jewish population and Saturday as a general day of rest. Even if there were significant Jewish communities in other cities, such as Istanbul , Izmir , Aleppo and Baghdad , Thessaloniki was for a long time the only city in the Ottoman Empire in which Jews were the majority. It was not until the beginning of the 20th century that there was a Jewish majority in Jerusalem . Around 1900 the Jewish population of Thessaloniki made up about half of the population (80,000 out of 173,000). Jewish schools, libraries and newspapers ensured a lively cultural life.

Population development: Jews, Turks and Greeks (1500–1950)

In modern Greece

In the First Balkan War , Thessaloniki was conquered by Greece in October 1912 and in the London Treaty of 1913 the Ottoman Empire renounced a. a. on Macedonia. This regime change met with little approval from the Jews in Thessaloniki, as it was associated with financial disadvantages: The Ottoman Empire had granted Jews privileges and demanded loans in return, both of which now seemed lost. Greece treated all ethnicities and religious communities equally, in order to counter speculation about a possible exception, King George issued a decree according to which (also) the Jews of Northern Greece became citizens of equal status. Even its own schools met with resentment on the part of the state, and the Jewish community was allowed to establish a grammar school. The great fire of 1917 left numerous Jews homeless and a lot of private land was expropriated for reconstruction purposes, the owners of which were compensated with devalued money. The great fire resulted in a wave of emigration, so the population decreased in particular through emigration to the USA, and in the case of the Jews also through emigration to Palestine. The Jewish population had decreased to around 49,000 by 1940. After the Turkish-Greek War , Greeks (and Armenians) from Asia Minor were forcibly resettled in 1922. They came as refugees mainly to Athens and Thessaloniki, thus reducing the percentage of Jews. On June 29, 1931, anti-Semitic riots broke out, which the state feared could damage the reputation, especially abroad, attempts were made to downplay the incidents and to punish the perpetrators at home.

In 1933 Zvi Koretz was elected Chief Rabbi of Thessaloniki. This choice also had national consequences. Koretz was friends with Ioannis Metaxas , who three years later became Prime Minister under an authoritarian regime. Metaxas initially oriented itself strongly to Germany, but refused to follow German recommendations and to introduce racial laws or even to make anti-Semitic policies. In order to woo conservative Jews, there was also a Jewish department in the EON, his party's youth organization. Anti-Semitism in the press was combated through censorship.

Second World War

Rosenberg special command

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 von Ingram one 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 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.

Destruction of the Jewish community

“Jews not wanted”, Saloniki, 1941

The pre-war Jewish community in Salonika had 53,000 members. Only a small fraction, around 1950 people, of Saloniki's Jewish population survived the rapid extermination of the Jews by the German occupiers.

A few days before the occupation of the city on April 9, 1941, some Jews fled the city. According to a report by the Italian consul, around 1200 people fled to the Italian occupation zone. The German occupiers built the Pavlos Melas concentration camp in a former barracks area .

Registration of Jewish men for forced labor, propaganda recording by the Wehrmacht (July 1942)

In autumn 1941, at a meeting in the Führer Headquarters Wolfsschanze with Adolf Hitler, 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 power of attorney for deportation. By order of the military commander of Saloniki Aegean, General Curt von Krenzki , all male Jews between the ages of 18 and 45 had to assemble on July 11, 1942, a sabbath, on the Freedom Square for examination and registration 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 long had thrown a covetous eye) freed. The Aristotle University campus was later built on the site of the former Jewish cemetery .

On February 6, 1943, the special command of the security police for Jewish affairs arrived in Saloniki Aegean with SS-Hauptsturmführer Dieter Wisliceny and Alois Brunner in Thessaloniki. Local collaborators served as translators during the interrogations and enriched themselves with the confiscations of Jewish property. The command presented Max Merten with extensive prefabricated Jewish edicts, which the latter put into effect for the commander Saloniki Aegean of Army Group E. From then on, 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. The deportations began two and a half weeks later. The ghetto districts were often surrounded by the Jewish security service and the field gendarmerie at night for the deportations. The abandoned apartments were looted by German soldiers and the last time Greek collaborators, thieves and beggars appeared in search of valuables.

On March 1st, all Jewish families were asked to declare their property. On March 8, the Greek government set up the Office for the Administration of Jewish Property (YDIP) under the lawyer Elias Douros. The office was initially under the German military administration and the property of the Jews was made short shrift. 280 million drachmas went to the German military administration. The vacant Jewish homes and businesses were handed over to the Governor General of Macedonia in trust . 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 Holocaust Memorial on Freedom Square in the city center (April 2010)

From March 20, 1943 to August 18, 1943, 48,533 Greek Jews arrived at the Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp in 19 freight train transports . 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 .

As a reminder, a memorial was erected on Freedom Square in Thessaloniki. It is remembered in the Jewish Museum of Thessaloniki .

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 took part in the extermination of the Greek Jews by deporting the victims from Thessaloniki to the concentration camps. Over 58,000 Jews were deported from Greece. At the same time, the SS forced their victims to pay tickets for their abduction. Together with the initiative Train of Remembrance , the Jewish Community of Thessaloniki is committed to ensuring that Deutsche Bahn AG, the legal successor to the Deutsche Reichsbahn, pays compensation to the victims and their descendants for the injustice committed .

present

The Jewish community of Thessaloniki is currently the second largest Jewish community in Greece (after the Athens community and ahead of the Larissa community ) with around 1500 members who are active in all areas of city life. Several members sit in an advisory capacity on the city council under Mayor Boutaris . The community includes a primary school, a publishing house (publisher of a world-famous Haggadah in Hebrew, Judaeo-Spanish and Greek), a museum, an old people's home with a prayer room, two synagogues, a new cemetery, a Maccabi sports and football club, a choir, one Community newspaper, a society for the maintenance of Judaeo-Spanish, and other groups. At present (as of 2016) a faculty for Jewish studies has been re-established in the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki after a long time and a Holocaust museum in the city is being planned. Furthermore, attempts are being made with political help to get the municipal archives back from Moscow.

rabbi

Significant members of the community

literature

  • Giorgios Antoniou, A. Dirk Moses: The Holocaust in Greece . Cambridge University 2018, ISBN 978-1-108-47467-2 .
  • Rika Benveniste: The survivors. Resistance, deportation, return. Jews from Thessaloniki in the 1940s . Edition Romiosini, Berlin 2016, ISBN 978-3-946142-15-7 .
  • Stratos Dordanas, Vaios Kalogrias: The Jewish community of Thessaloniki during the German occupation . In: Ghetto: Spaces and Limits in Judaism (= Pardes, Issue 17), Universitätsverlag Potsdam, 2011, ISBN 978-3-86956-132-5 , pp. 97–118.
  • Hélène Guillon: Le Journal de Salonique. Un périodique juif dans l'Empire ottoman, 1895-1911 . Presses de l'Université Paris-Sorbonne, Paris 2013, ISBN 978-2-84050-882-3 .
  • Corry Guttstadt: Turkey, the Jews and the Holocaust. Association A, Berlin 2008, ISBN 978-3-935936-49-1 .
  • Paul Isaac Hagouel: History of the Jews of Thessaloniki and the Holocaust . West Chester University of Pennsylvania, 2006.
  • Thessaloniki Israelite Congregation in Memoriam, dedicated to the memory of the Jewish victims of Nazi rule in Greece. Edited under the direction of the unforgettable Michael Molho. After the 2nd (1973), rev. Ed. Of the unforgettable Joseph Nehama and the Greek translation (1976) by Georgios K. Zographakis translated into German by Peter Katzung. Katzung, Essen 1981.
  • Mark Mazower : Salonica. City of Ghosts. Christians Muslims and Jews 1430–1950 , London 2004.
  • Rena Molho: La politique de l'Allemagne contre les juifs de Grèce. L'extermination de la communauté juive de Salonique (1941-1944) . In: Revue d'histoire de la Shoah , No. 185, 2006, pp. 355–378.
  • Rena Molho: The Holocaust of the Greek Jews. Studies of History and Memory . Dietz, Bonn 2016, ISBN 978-3-8012-4238-1 .
  • Gilles Veinstein: Salonika, the Sefarad of the Balkans published in: A History of Jewish-Muslim Relations: From the Origins to the Present Day , ed. Abdelwahab Meddeb, Benjamin Stora, Princeton University Press, 2013, ISBN 9781400849130 , p. 171– 202.

Web links

Commons : Holocaust in Thessaloniki  - Collection of pictures, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Acts 17 : 1-3  EU
  2. ↑ Jacov Ben-Mayor, Chaim Yahil and Yitzchak Kerem: "Salonika", in: Michael Berenbaum and Fred Skolnik (eds.): Encyclopaedia Judaica, Vol. 17, 2nd edition, Detroit 2007, pp. 699-707, here: P. 700.
  3. ^ Mark Mazower, Salonica City of Ghosts, New York 2005, pp. 46-47.
  4. ↑ Mazower, p. 48.
  5. ↑ Gilles Veinstein: Salonika, the Sefarad of the Balkans published in A History of Jewish-Muslim Relations: From the Origins to the Present Day , ed. Abdelwahab Meddeb, Benjamin Stora, Princeton University Press, 2013, ISBN 9781400849130 , p. 171– 202, here: pp. 176-179.
  6. ↑ Mazower, p. 48.
  7. ↑ Wolfgang Benz: Handbuch des Antisemitismus , de Gruyter, 2010, ISBN 978-3-598-24071-3 , p. 253.
  8. ↑ Veinstein: Salonika, the Sefarad of the Balkans appeared in A History of Jewish-Muslim Relations: From the Origins to the Present Day ., Eds Abdelwahab Meddeb, Benjamin Stora, Princeton University Press, 2013, ISBN 9781400849130 , p.196.
  9. ↑ Halil Incalik: Foundations of Ottoman-Jewish Cooperation appeared in Jews, Turks, Ottomans: A Shared History, Fifteenth Through the Twentieth Century ., Eds Avigdor Levy, Syracuse University Press, 2002, ISBN 9780815629412 , page 7 et seq.
  10. ^ Corry Guttstadt: Turkey, the Jews and the Holocaust, Berlin 2008, pp. 20, 46–47.
  11. ↑ Stratos Dordanas and Vaios Kalogrias, p. 100.
  12. ↑ Hilberg: The Destruction of the European Jews, p. 738.
  13. ↑ Stratos Dordanas and Vaios Kalogrias, p. 100.
  14. ↑ Stratos Dordanas and Vaios Kalogrias, p. 101.
  15. ↑ Einsatzstab Reichsleiter Rosenberg on gedenkorte-europa.eu, the homepage of Gedenkorte Europa 1939–1945 , accessed on April 18, 2016.
  16. ↑ Hilberg: The Destruction of European Jews, p. 736.
  17. ^ Steven Bowman: The Agony of Greek Jews, 1940–1945 , Stanford University Press, 2009, ISBN 978-0-8047-5584-9 , pp. 60 ff.
  18. ^ 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.
  19. ^ Raul Hilberg : The annihilation of the European Jews. Volume 2, Fischer Verlag 1982, ISBN 3-596-24417-X , p. 738 ff.
  20. ↑ Peter Longerich: Politics of Destruction - A Complete Presentation of the National Socialist Persecution of Jews, 1998, Pieper Verlag, ISBN 3-492-03755-0 , p. 526f.
  21. ↑ Document VEJ 14/220 in: Sara Berger u. a. (Ed.): The persecution and murder of European Jews by National Socialist Germany 1933–1945 (collection of sources) Volume 14: Occupied Southeast Europe and Italy . Berlin 2017, ISBN 978-3-11-055559-2 , pp. 553-558.
  22. ↑ Thessaloniki on gedenkorte-europa.eu, the homepage of Gedenkorte Europa 1939–1945 , accessed on May 1, 2016.
  23. ↑ Document VEJ 14/227 and VEJ 14/229 in: Sara Berger u. a. (Ed.): The persecution and murder of European Jews by National Socialist Germany 1933–1945 (collection of sources) Volume 14: Occupied Southeast Europe and Italy . Berlin 2017, ISBN 978-3-11-055559-2 , p. 566.
  24. ^ Steven Bowman: The Agony of Greek Jews, 1940-1945 , Stanford University Press, 2009, ISBN 978-0-8047-5584-9 , pp. 64 ff.
  25. ↑ Stratos Dordanas and Vaios Kalogrias, p. 107 ff.
  26. ↑ Stratos Dordanas and Vaios Kalogrias, p. 117.
  27. ↑ Stratos Dordanas and Vaios Kalogrias, S. 115th
  28. ↑ Götz Aly: Hitlers Volksstaat , Fischer Verlag 2005, ISBN 3-10-000420-5 , p. 287.
  29. ^ Saloniki - Sacrifice , memorial site portal on places of remembrance, accessed on April 28, 2016.
  30. ↑ Ruth Jolanda Weinberger: Fertilitätsexperimente in Auschwitz pdf, Ludwig-Boltzmann Institute for Historical Social Science, p. 23.
  31. ↑ 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).
  32. ↑ Rena Molho : La politique de l'Allemagne contre les juifs de Grèce: l'extermination de la communauté juive de Salonique (1941-1944) , in: Revue d'histoire de la Shoah 185, 2006, pp. 355-378.
  33. ^ Train of Memory / Thessaloniki .
  34. ↑ Ισραηλιτική Κοινότητα Θεσσαλονίκης
  35. ↑ Thessaloniki City Council ( Memento of the original from December 8, 2016 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link has been inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.  @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.thessaloniki.gr
  36. ↑ ΠΟΛΙΤΙΚΕΣ ΣΥΝΑΝΤΗΣΕΙΣ ΓΙΑ ΤΑ ΘΕΜΑΤΑ ΤΟΥ ΕΛΛΗΝΙΚΟΥ ΕΒΡΑΪΣΜΟΥ , accessed December 5, 2016.
  37. ↑ Avraam Benaroya , Holding Room, accessed April 28, 2016.
  38. ^ Rhona Lewis: A Jewish Soldier In Greece , Jewish Press, May 26, 2015, accessed April 28, 2016.