History of the Jews of Thessaloniki

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The city of Thessaloniki, formerly Salonika, housed a major Jewish community, of Sephardic origin, until the Second World War. It is the only known example of a city in the Jewish diaspora of this size that retained a Jewish majority for centuries.

The Jews' arrival for the most part followed the Alhambra Decree in 1492, by which the Jews of Spain were expelled from that country. Thessaloniki's Jews are inextricably linked to its history, and the influence of this community both culturally and economically was felt throughout the Sephardic world. The community experienced a golden age in the 16th century, and a relative decline until the middle of 19th century.

The History of the Jews of Thessaloniki then took a tragic course. The outcome of the Nazi regime's implementation of its Final Solution in Greece resulted in the near-extermination of the entire community.

Contents 1 History 1.1 Early settlement 1.2 Arrival of Sephardic Jews 1.3 Religious organization 1.3.1 Economic activities 1.4 Decline 1.4.1 Economic decline 1.4.2 Deterioration of Judaism and arrival of Sabbatai Zevi 1.5 Revival 1.5.1 Industrialization 1.5.2 Haskala 1.5.3 Political and social activism 1.6 Arrival of Greeks 1.6.1 Salonika, Greek city 1.6.2 Fire of 1917 and development of anti-Semitism 1.6.3 Under Metaxás 1.6.4 Emigration 1.7 Second World War 1.7.1 Battle of Greece 1.7.2 Occupation 1.7.3 "Destruction of the Jews of Salonika" [30] 1.7.3.1 Deportation 1.7.3.2 Factors explaining the effectiveness of the deportations 1.7.3.3 In the camps 1.8 Post-war 2 Culture 2.1 Language 2.2 Cuisine 3 Additional reading 3.1 See also 3.2 Bibliography 3.3 External links 3.4 Notes and references

[edit] History

[edit] Early settlement

Paul of Tarsus' First Epistle to the Thessalonians mentions Hellenized Jews in the city about 52 CE. In 1170, Benjamin of Tudela reported that there were 500 Jews in Thessaloniki. In the following centuries, the native Romaniote community was joined by some Italian and Ashkenazi Jews. There was thus a Jewish presence during the Byzantine period, but it remained minimal and has left virtually no trace.^[1] The exact location where these first Jews resided in the city is not known with certainty.^[2]

At the beginning of the Ottoman domination in 1430, the Jewish population was small. The Ottomans were in the habit of transferring populations within the empire at the whim of military conquests by the method of Sürgün. Following the fall of Constantinople in 1453, the Ottomans forced Jews from the Balkans and Anatolia to repopulate the new capital of the Empire, renamed Istanbul.^[3] As a result of these measures, Salonica was emptied of its Jewish population, as evidenced by the Ottoman census of 1478, in which there were no Jews.^[1]

[edit] Arrival of Sephardic Jews

The Alhambra Decree expelled Sephardic Jews from Spain in 1492. Some of these immigrated to Salonica, sometimes after a stop in Portugal or Italy. The Ottoman Empire, based on the Islamic law regarding people of the book (Arabic: ahl al-kitâb), granted protection to Jews as dhimmis, accepted and even encouraged the settlement on its territory of those affected expulsion.

The first Sephardim came in 1492 from Majorca. They were "repentant" returnees to Judaism after their forced conversion to Catholicism.^{[citation needed]} In 1493, Castilians and Sicilians joined them. In subsequent years, other Jews came from those lands and also from Aragon, Valencia, Calabria, Venice, Apulia, Provence and Naples. Later, in 1540, 1560, Jews from Portuguese sought refuge in Salonika in response to the political persecution of the marranos. In addition to these Sephardim, a few Ashkenazim arrived from Austria, Transylvania and Hungary. They were sometimes forcibly relocated under the Ottoman policy of "sürgün," following the conquest of land by Suleiman the Magnificent beginning in 1526. Thus Salonika's registers indicate the presence of "Buda Jews" after the conquest of that city by the Turks in 1541.^[3][1]

Immigration was great enough that by 1519, the Jews already represented 56% of the population and in 1613, 68%.^[1]

[edit] Religious organization

Each group of new arrivals founded its own community (aljama in Spanish), whose rites ("minhaggim") differed from those of other communities. The synagogues cemented each group, and their names most often referred to the groups' origins. For example, there is a Katallan Yashan (Old Catalan), founded in 1492 and a Katallan Hadash (New Catalonia) at the end of the 16th century.^[3]:

Name of synagogue	Date of construction	Name of synagogue	Date of construction	Name of synagogue	Date of construction
Ets ha Chaim	1st century	Apulia	1502	Yahia	1560
Ashkenaz or Varnak	1376	Lisbon Yashan	1510	Sicilia Hadash	1562
Mayorka	1391	Talmud Torah Hagadol	1520	Beit Aron	1575
Provincia	1394	Portugal	1525	Italia Hadash	1582
Italia Yashan	1423	Evora	1535	Mayorka Sheni	16th century
Guerush Sfarad	1492	Estrug	1535	Katallan Chadash	16th century
Kastilla	1492-3	Lisbon Chadash	1536	Italia Sheni	1606
Aragon	1492-3	Otranto	1537	Shalom	1606
Katallan Yashan	1492	Ishmael	1537	Har Gavoa	1663
Kalabria Yashan	1497	Tcina	1545	Mograbis	17th century[4]
Sicilia Yashan	1497	Nevei Tsedek	1550

A government institution called Talmud Torah Hagadol was introduced in 1520 to head all the congregations and make decisions (haskamot) which applied to all. It was administered by seven members with annual terms. This institution provided an educational program for young boys, and was a preparatory school for entry to yeshivot. It hosted hundreds of students.^[5] In addition to Jewish studies, it taught humanities, Latin and Arabic, as well as medicine, the natural sciences and astronomy.^[6] The yeshivot of Salonika were frequented by Jews from throughout the Ottoman Empire and even further. There were students from Italy and Eastern Europe. After completing their studies, some students were appointed rabbis in the Jewish communities of the Empire and Europe, including cities such as Amsterdam and Venice.^[5] The success of its educational institutions was such that there was no illiteracy among the Jews of Salonika.^[6]

[edit] Economic activities

The Sephardic population settled mainly in the major urban centers of the Ottoman Empire, which included Salonika. Unlike other major cities of the Empire, the Jews controlled trading in Salonica. Their economic power became so great that the shipping and businesses stopped on Saturday (Shabbat) - the Jewish holy day. They traded with the rest of the Ottoman Empire, and the countries of Latin Venice and Genoa, and with all the Jewish communities scattered throughout the Mediterranean. One sign of the influence of Salonikan Jews on trading is in the 1556 boycott of the port of Ancona, Papal States, in response to the autodafé issued by Pope Paul IV against 25 marranoes.^[7]

Salonikan Jews were unique in their participation in all economic niches, not confining their business to a few sectors, as was the case where Jews were a minority. They were active in all levels of society, from porters to merchants. Salonika had a large number of Jewish fishermen, unmatched elsewhere, even in Israel.^[8].

The Jewish specialty was spinning wool. They imported technology from Spain where this craft was highly developed. Only the quality of the wool, better in Spain, differed in Salonica. The community made rapid decisions (haskamot) to require all congregations to regulate this industry. They forbade, under pain of excommunication (cherem), exporting wool and indigo less than three days' drive from the city.^[9] The Salonican sheets, blankets and carpets acquired a high profile and were exported throughout the empire from Istanbul to Alexandria through Smyrna. The industry spread to all localities close to the Thermaic Gulf. This same activity became a matter of state when Sultan Selim II decided to dress his Janissary troops with warm and waterproof woolen garments. He made arrangements to protect his supply. His Sublime Porte issued a firman in 1576 forcing sheep farmers to provide their wool exclusively to the Jews to guarantee the adequacy of their supply. Other provisions strictly regulated the types of woolen production, production standards and deadlines.^[9] Tons of woolen goods were transported by boat, camel and horse to Istanbul to cloak the janissaries against the approaching winter. Towards 1578, both sides agreed that the supply of cloth serve as sufficient payment by the State and replace the cash payment. This turned out to be disadvantageous for the Jews.^[9]

[edit] Decline

[edit] Economic decline

The increase in the number of Janissaries contributed to an increase in clothing orders putting Jews in a very difficult situation. Contributing to their problems were currency inflation concurrent with a state financial crisis.

Only 1,200 shipments were required initially. However, the orders surpassed 4,000 in 1620.^[10] Financially challenged, the factories began cheating on quality. This was discovered. Rabbi Judah Covo at the head of a Salonican delegation was summoned to explain this deterioration in Istanbul and was sentenced to hang. This left a profound impression in Salonica.^[10]. Thereafter, applications of the Empire were partially reduced and reorganized production ^[10].

These setbacks were heralds of a dark period for Salonican Jews. The flow of migrants from the Iberian Peninsula had gradually dried up. Jews favored such Western European cities as London, Amsterdam and Bordeaux.^[10] This phenomenon led to a progressive estrangement of the Ottoman Sephardim from the West. Although the Jews had brought many new European technologies, including that of printing, they became less and less competitive against other ethno-religious groups. The earlier well-known Jewish doctors and translators were gradually replaced by their Christian counterparts, mostly Armenians and Greeks. In the world of trading, the Jews were supplanted by Western Christians, who were protected by the western powers through their consular bodies.^[10] Salonika lost its pre-eminence following the phasing-out of Venice, its commercial partner, and the rising power of the port of Smyrna.^[10]

Moreover, the Jews, like other dhimmis, had to suffer the consequences of successive defeats of the Empire by the West. The city, strategically placed on a road traveled by armies, often saw retaliation by janissaries against "infidels."^[10] Throughout the 17th century, there was migration of Jews from Salonika to Istanbul, the Israel, and especially Smyrna. The Jewish community of Smyrna became composed of Salonikan émigrés.^[10] Plague, along with other epidemics such as cholera which arrived in Salonika in 1823, also contributed to the weakening of Salonika and its Jewish community.^[10].

Western products, which began to appear in the East in large quantities in the early to mid-1800s, was a severe blow to the Salonikan economy, including the Jewish textile industry. The state eventually even began supplying janissaries with "Provencal clothing , which sold in low-priced lots, in preference to Salonican wools, whose quality had continued to deteriorate.^[10] Short of cash, the Jews were forced into paying the grand vizier more than half of their taxes in the form of promissory notes. Textile production declined rapidly and then stopped completely with the abolition of the body of janissaries in 1826.^[10]

[edit] Deterioration of Judaism and arrival of Sabbatai Zevi

Main article: Sabbatai Zevi

Jewish Salonikans had long benefited from the contribution of each of the ideas and knowledge of the various waves of Sephardic immigration, but this human contribution more or less dried up by the 17th century, it sank into a pattern of significant decline.^[11] The yeshivot were always busy teaching, but its output was very formalistic. They published books on religion, but these had little original thought. A witness reported that "outside it is always endless matters of worship and commercial law that absorb their attention and bear the brunt of their studies and their research. Their works are generally a restatement of their predecessors' writings."^[11]

From the 15th century, a messianic current had developed in the Sephardic world; the Redemption, marking the end of the world, seemed imminent. This idea was fueled both by the economic decline of Salonica and the continued growth in Kabbalistic studies based on the Zohar booming in Salonican yeshivot. The end of time was announced successively in 1540 and 1568 and again in 1648 and 1666.

It is in this context that there arrived a young and brilliant Rabbi who had been expelled from the nearby Smyrna: Sabbatai Zevi. Banned from this city in 1651 after proclaiming to be the messiah,^[12] he came to Salonika, where his reputation as a scholar and Kabbalist grew very quickly.^[11] The greatest numbers to follow him were members of the Shalom Synagogue, often former marranos.^[11] After several years of caution, he again caused a scandal when, during a solemn banquet in the courtyard of the Shalom Synagogue, he pronounced the Tetragrammaton, ineffable in Jewish tradition, and introduced himself as the Messiah son of King David.^[11] The federal rabbinical council then drove him from the city, but Sabbatai Zevi went disseminate his doctrine in other cities around the Sephardic world. His passage divided, as it did everywhere, Thessaloniki's Jewish community, and this situation caused so much turmoil that Sabbatai Zevi was summoned and imprisoned by the sultan. There, rather than prove his supernatural powers, he relented under fire, and instead converted to the Islam. The dramatic turn of events was interpreted in various ways by his followers, the Sabbateans. Some saw this as a sign and converted themselves, while others rejected his doctrine and fully returned to Judaism. Some, though, remained publicly faithful to Judaism while continuing to secretly follow the teachings of Sabbatai Zevi.^[11] In Salonica, there were 300 families among the richest who decided in 1686 to embrace Islam before the rabbinical authorities could react, their conversion already having been happily accepted by the Ottoman authorities.^[11] Therefore, those that the Turks gave the surname "Donme," ("renegades") themselves divided into three groups: Izmirlis, Kuniosos and Yacoubi,^[13] formed a new component of the Salonikan ethno-relious mosaic. Although they chose conversion, they did not assimilate with the Turks, practicing strict endogamy, living in separate quarters, building their own mosques and maintaining a specific liturgy in the language.^[12] They participated greatly in the 19th century to the spread of modernist ideas.^[13] Then, as Turks, they emigrated from Salonika in response to the seizure of power by the Greeks.^[13]

[edit] Revival

The Jews from Salonika saw, from the second half of 19th century, a true rebirth. The regeneration of the Jews came from "Frankos," i.e. the French Jews who came at the time from Catholic countries and especially the Jews of Livorno, Italy. This marked a general opening of the Balkans to Western modernists who imported to the Ottoman world new techniques and ideas.

[edit] Industrialization

Salonica knew from the years 1880 a major industrialization process turned into the lung of an economic empire on the decline. Entrepreneurs at the root of this process were mostly Jews, unique case in the world since Ottoman in other large cities, industrialization was mainly due to other groups ethnico-religieux. The Allatini formed the spearhead of Jewish entrepreneurship, they set up several industries, establishing milling s and other food industries, brick, processing plants tobacco. Several traders supported the introduction of a large cloth industry, an activity previously practiced in a system of artisanal production.

This led to the industrialization proletarianization of many Saloniciens all faiths together which resulted in the emergence of a large Jewish working class. Contractors employed workforce irrespective of religion or ethnicity, contrary to what was being done elsewhere in the Ottoman Empire, which contributed to the emergence of non-ethnic movements workers although marked thereafter by questions national.

[edit] Haskala

The Haskala, the movement of thought inspired by the Jewish Enlightenment, the world Ottoman touched at the end of the after spread among Jewish populations of Western and Eastern Europe. They were the ones who parachevaient economic renewal Salonica who did messengers.

The scope of these maskilim and first contractor livournais Moses Allatini was education. In 1856, with the help of Rothschild he founded in the annexes to the talmud torah and so with the consent of rabbis that he had won with its goal by its major donations to charities l School Lippman a model institution headed by Professor Lippman, a rabbi progressive Strasbourg ^[14]. After five years of existence, the establishment closed its doors and Lippman again under pressure from rabbinat disagree with its innovative education methods. However, he had the time to train a large number of pupils who took over thereafter ^[14].

Dr. Allatini led by 1862 his brother Solomon Fernandez to found a school Italian thanks to a donation by the Kingdom of Italy ^[14]. Several attempts to implement the educational network of the Alliance Israélite Universelle failed under pressure from rabbis who did not allow a Jewish school can be held under the patronage of the French embassy. But the need for educational structures became so pressing that the proponents of its implementation were finally successful in 1874 thanks to the patronage of Allatini became a member of the central committee of the IAU in Paris ^[14]. The network of this institution then spread rapidly: in 1912, there were nine new schools IAU catering to the education of both boys and girls from kindergarten to high school while the rabbinical schools were in full decline. This had the effect of implementing sustainable French within the Jewish community of Salonika and indeed throughout the Jewish world oriental ^[14]. These schools were involved in the training manual intellectual, but also of her students allowing the formation of a generation in line with the developments of the modern world and able to enter the workforce of a company in the process of industrialization.

[edit] Political and social activism

The irruption of modernity was expressed also by the growing influence of new political ideas from Western Europe. The Jews do not remained indifferent to the political turmoil and became important players. The revolution Jeunes-Turcs 1908, which had its bases in Salonica proclaimed the constitutional monarchy and véhicula the concept of the Ottomanisme, proclaiming equality within the 'Empire of all millet s. Some Jews from Salonika were influential in the movement Young Turkish predominantly composed of Muslims but it is especially in the social field they were active. From that time, a wind of freedom breathed on Salonica, allowing the movement of workers to organize and engage in social struggles for the improvement of working conditions. An attempt at union of different nationalities within a single labor movement took place with the formation of the Socialist Workers' Federation led by Abraham Benaroya, a Jew from Bulgaria, which started the publication of a body quadrilingual,Journal of the workeraired in Greek, Turkish, Bulgarian and language. However, the Balkan context conducive to divisions, and affected the movement after the departure of Bulgarian element, the Federation was formed almost more than Jews.

The Zionist movement had to face competition from the Socialist Workers' Federation, very antisioniste. Unable to operate in the working class, Zionism in Salonica turned to the middle classes and intellectuals, fewer ^[15].

[edit] Arrival of Greeks

[edit] Salonika, Greek city

In 1912, following the First Balkan War, the Greeks took control of Salonika alongside Bulgarians and eventually integrated the city in their territory. The change of sovereignty was not well-received by the Jews, who feared that the annexation would lead to difficulties, a concern reinforced by the Bulgarian propaganda, Serbian, who wanted to join Austrian Jews to their cause.^[14] Some Jews fought then for the internationalization of the city under the protection of the great European powers, but their proposal received little feedback, Europe having accepted the fiat accompli ^[16]. The Greeks nevertheless took some measures to promote the integration of Jews^[14] such by leaving them to work on Sundays and allowing them to observe the Shabbat. The economy pulled benefit of the annexation that opened the doors to Salonica market in northern Greece and the Serbia with which the Hellas had spent an alliance; Installing the army of East following the outbreak of the World War I, then provoked a resurgence of economic activity. The Greek government saw a good eye development of Zionism and the establishment of a Jewish home in Palestine, which converging with the Greek desire to dismember the Ottoman Empire. The city received the visit of Zionist leaders, Ben Gurion, Ben Zvi and Jabotinsky who saw in the city Salonika Jewish model that should inspire their future state.^[14]

However, we can see a clear difference between the government's position and attitude of the local population. A witness, Jean Leune, correspondent for L'Illustration during the Balkan wars and then an army officer from the East, says:

“

Faced with the countless shops and stores run by the Jews, until teachers then the local commerce, merchants Greek move came on the sidewalk, while against the doors it became impossible to overcome. The new police smiled ... And Jews, boycotted them, one after another closed shop. [17]

”

[edit] Fire of 1917 and development of anti-Semitism

The grave Great Thessaloniki Fire of 1917 constituted a turning point. The Jewish community concentrated in the lower part of town was the most affected by the disaster; The fire destroyed the seat of the Grand Rabbinate and its archives as well as 16 of 33 synagogues in the city. Contrary to the reconstruction that had taken place after the fire of 1890, the Greeks decided to take a fresh urban development. Therefore they exproprièrent all residents by giving them nevertheless a right of first refusal on new housing reconstructed according to a new plan. But it is the Greeks who mostly populated the new neighborhoods, Jews often choosing a more eccentric ^[18].

Although the first anniversary of the celebration of Balfour Declaration has been celebrated in 1918 with a splendor unmatched in Europe, the decline had begun. The influx of tens of thousands of Greek refugees of Asia Minor and the departure of the Turks and Dönme Salonica response to the '[[Big Idea # The "Great Catastrophe" | Large catastrophe] ] "and the signing of running Treaty of Lausanne significantly changed the ethnic composition of Salonika. The Jews ceased to constitute an absolute majority and, on the eve of the Second World War, they accounted for just 40% of the population. At that Hellenization growing segment of the population reflected a less conciliatory policy towards Jews. So in 1922, the work was banned on Sunday which imposedde factoJews to work on Shabbat, posters in foreign languages were prohibited and stopped rabbinical courts may rule on cases economic right.^[6] As in other Eastern European countries such as Hungary and Romania, a significant current of anti-Semitism grew in inter in Salonica, but he 'never reached the level of violence in these two countries ^[19]. It was very much a concern of Greek arrivals of Asia Minor, mostly poor and which were in direct competition with Jews for housing and work ^[19]. The movement was relayed in the press by the daily Makedoniaandby the organizationultranationalist Ethniki EllasEnosis (National Union of Greece,EEA), both close to the Liberal Party (in power ) led by Venizelos ^[19]. The Jews were accused of not wanting to blend in the entire country; The development of communist and of Zionism in the community were observed with the utmost suspicion. The Greek government adopted an ambivalent attitude, a policy of appeasement but refusing to stand out clearly from these two vectors of anti-Semitism ^[19]. This crystallized in 1931, the year took place on pogrom Camp Campbell: a Jewish neighborhood was completely burned which left 500 families homeless, but does that caused the death of a Jew ^[20]. Dozens of tombs of Jewish cemetery in Salonika were desecrated on this occasion.

[edit] Under Metaxás

The seizure of power by the extreme right-wing dictator tends fascist ^[21] Ioannis Metaxas 1936 paradoxically resulted in a decline in anti-Semitic violence. It prohibits the organization EEA and the appearance of anti-Semitic remarks in the press ^[19] noua and also a good relationship with the grand-rabbin Salonica, Zvi Koretz ^[22]. This explains the development from the time of a major nationalist among Jews of Salonika, which were yet Greeks since 1913. Since then, including in hell of the camps, they never ceased to affirm their belonging to the Greek nation ^[21].

[edit] Emigration

A migration had begun to put in place early in the e, from the moment the government Young Turkish establishes the conscription all subjects ottomans, but it is especially after the annexation of Salonika by the Greeks that the movement grew. The poor economic conditions, the rise of anti-Semitism and to a lesser extent, the development of Zionism led Jews to leave, mainly Western Europe, [[South America] ] and Palestine. Thus, the Jewish population grew from 53,000 to 93,000 people on the eve of the war ^[23]. There were a few notable successes in this diaspora. Isaac Carasso, prepared Barcelona, founded the company Danone, Maurice Abravanel went to Switzerland with his family and then to the United States where he became a famous chef Conductor. One of the grandparents President french Nicolas Sarkozy emigrated to France at the time. In this country, in the interwar years, the Jewish population of Salonika was concentrated at the 9th arrondissement; The seat of their cult association was located [ [rue La Fayette]] ^[24]. In Palestine Mandate, the Recanati family founded one of the largest banks in the current state of Israel,Eretz YisraelDiscount Bank, which became the Israel Discount Bank ^[25].

[edit] Second World War

[edit] Battle of Greece

The October 28, 1940, the Italian forces decided to invade Greece following the refusal of the Greek dictator Ioánnis Metaxás to accept the ultimatum given by the Italians. S'ensuivit Battle of Greece, in which the Jews took part. 12,898 of them enlisted in the Greek army ^[26]; 4,000 participated in the campaigns of Albania and Macedonia; 513 fought with the Germans and, in total, 613 Jews were killed, including 174 from Salonika. The brigade 50 of Macedonia was nicknamed "Cohen Battalion" because of the large number of Jews it consisted ^[26]. After the defeat of Greece, many Jewish soldiers had their feet frozen returning home on foot.

[edit] Occupation

The Northern Greece, including Thessaloniki, was occupied by the Germans.

They entered the city on April 9, 1941. Germans gradually introduced anti-Semitic measures. Max Merten became the German civil administrator for the city. He continued to repeat that the Nuremberg laws would not apply to Salonika ^[22]. The Jewish Press was quickly banned, while two daily Greek pro-nazis,Nea EvropiandApoyevmanti, appeared. Some homes and community buildings were requisitioned by the occupying forces, including the Baron Hirsch Hospital. In late April, signs prohibiting Jews entry to cafes appeared. Jews were forced to turn in their radios.

The grand-rabbin of Salonica, Zvi Koretz, was arrested by the Gestapo on May 17, 1941 and sent to a concentration camp near Vienna, from where he returned in late January 1942 to resume his position as rabbi^[27]. In June 1941, commissioner Rosenberg arrived. He plundered Jewish archives, sending tons of documents to the Nazi Institute for Jewish Community Research in Frankfurt.

The Jews suffered from malnutrition from famine. The Nazi regime had not attached any importance to the Greek economy, food production, distribution, etc. It is estimated that in 1941-1942 sixty Jews of this city died every day from hunger.^[26]

For a year, no further antisemitic action was taken. That momentarily reprise gave the Jews a temporaty sense of security.

On a Shabbat in July 1942, all men of the community aged 18 to 45 years were rounded up in the Place de la Liberté. Throughout the afternoon, they were forced to do humiliating physical exercises at gunpoint. Four thousand of them were ordered to construct a road for the Germans, linking Thessaloniki to Kateríni and Larissa. This region was rife with malaria. ^[26].

In less than ten weeks, 12% of them died of exhaustion and disease. In the meantime, the Thessalonikan community, with the help of Athens, managed to gather two billion drachmas towards the sum of 3.5 billion requested by the Germans for ransomiong the forced laborers. The Germans agreed to release them for the lesser sum but, in return, demanded that the Greek authorities abandon the Jewish cemetery in Salonika containing 300,000 ^[28] to 500,000 ^[29] graves. Its size and location, they claimed, had long hampered urban growth.

The Jews transferred land in the periphery on which there were two graves. The municipal authorities, decrying the slow pace of the transfer, took matters into their own hands. Five hundred Greek workers paid by the municipality, began with the destruction of tombs ^[29]. The cemetery was soon transformed into a vast quarry where Greeks and Germans sought gravestones for use as construction materials ^[29]. Today this site is occupied by the Aristotle University ^[28] and other buildings.

It is estimated that from the beginning of the occupation to the end of deportations, 3,000-5,000 Jews managed to escape from Salonika, finding temporary refuge in the Italian zone. Of these, 800 had or obtained documents proving Italian citizenship and were throughout the period of Italian occupation actively protected by consular authority. 800 Jews fled to the Macedonian mountainside to the Greek Communist Resistance, the ELAS. Few Jews joined its royalist counterpart. ^[26].

[edit] "Destruction of the Jews of Salonika" ^[30]

Main article: The Holocaust

Salonica's 54,000 Sephardim were shipped to the Nazi extermination camps. Nearly 98% of the total Jewish population of this city died during the war. Only the Polish Jews experienced a greater level of destruction.^[26]

[edit] Deportation

To carry out this operation, the Nazi authorities dispatched two specialists in the field, Alois Brunner and Dieter Wisliceny, who arrived on February. 6, 1943.^[22] They immediately applied the Nuremberg laws in all their rigor, imposing the display of the yellow badge and drastically restricting the Jews' freedom of movement.^[22] Toward the end of February 1943, they were rounded up in in three ghettos (Kalamaria, Singrou and Vardar / Agia Paraskevi) and then transferred to a transit camp in the district of Baron Hirsch which was adjacent to a train station. There, the death trains were waiting. To accomplish their mission, the SS relied on a Jewish police created for the occasion, led by Vital Hasson, which was the source of numerous abuses against the rest of the Jews.^[22]

The first convoy departed on March 15. Each train carried 1000-4000 Jews across the whole of central Europe, mainly to Auschwitz. A convoy also left for Treblinka, and it is possible that deportation to Sobibor took place, since Salonican Jews were liberated from that camp. The Jewish population of Salonika was so large that the deportation took several months until it was completed, which occurred on August 7^[26] with the deportation of Chief Rabbi Tzvi Koretz along with other notables to the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp under relatively good conditions. In the same convoy were 367 Jews protected by their Spanish nationality, who had a unique destiny: they were transferred from Bergen-Belsen to Barcelona, and then Morocco, with some finally reaching the British Mandate of Palestine.^[26][31]

[edit] Factors explaining the effectiveness of the deportations

Several reasons have been advanced to explain the carnage in contrast to the case of Athens, where a large proportion of Jews managed to escape death. First, the attitude of Judenrat, and of its leader in the period prior to the deportations, the chief rabbi of Salonika, Zvi Koretz, has been heavily criticized. He was accused of having responded passively to the Nazis and downplayed the fears of Jews when their transfer to Poland was ordered. As an Austrian citizen and therefore a native German speaker, he was thought to be well informed ^[32]. There was a rumor that accused him of having knowingly collaborated with the occupiers ^[32]. A recent study, however tends to diminish his role in the deportations. ^[32]

Another factor was the solidarity shown by the families who refused to be separated. This desire undermined individual initiatives.

Jews had difficulty remaining in hiding because of their ignorance of the Greek language, which had only become the native language after Salonica came under Greek sovereignty in 1913.

Additionally, the large size of the Jewish population rendered impossible blending into the Greek Orthodox population as was the case in Athens.

There was also a latent anti-Semitism among some of the Greeks, in particular among those who had to flee Asia Minor during the population transfers between Greece and Turkey. When these immigrants arrived en masse in Salonica, they were excluded from the economic system. Some of these outcasts watched the Jewish population with hostility. The Jewish people were more economically integrated and therefore better off, which the immigrants equated with the former Ottoman power ^[27]. Nevertheless, the Yad Vashem has identified 265 Greek righteous among the nations, the same proportion as among the French population ^[27].

[edit] In the camps

At Birkenau, about 37,000 Saloniciens were gassed immediately, especially women, children and the elderly ^[26]. Nearly a quarter of all 400 experiments perpetrated on the Jews were on Greek Jews, especially those from Salonika. These experiments included émasculation, implementation of the cancer of the cervix on women. Most of the twins died atrocious crimes ^[26]. Other Saloniciens last work in the camps. In the years 1943-1944, they accounted for a significant proportion of the workforce Birkenau: there were about 11,000. Because of their unfamiliarity with the Yiddish, Saloniciens were sent in numbers to clean up the rubble of Warsaw Ghetto in August 1943 in order to build a camp. Among the 1,000 Saloniciens employees to the task, a small twenty managed to escape from the ghetto with sewage and join the Polish resistance,Armaya Ludova, which has organized the uprising ^[33][26].

Many Jews from Salonika were also integrated into the sonderkommandos. The October 7, 1944, they attacked with other Greek Jews an uprising planned in advance, taking stormed the crematoria and killing about twenty guards. A bomb was thrown into the furnace of the crematorium III, destroying the building. Before being massacred by the Germans, insurgents sang a song of Greek partisans and the Greek National Anthem ^[34].

In his book If this is a man, one of the most famous works of literature of the Holocaust, Primo Levi refers to a short description of the group "few survivors of the Jewish settlement Salonica, "those Greeks, motionless and silent as the Sphinx, crouched on the ground behind their pot of soup thick ^[35]. " These members of the community alive during 1944 made a strong impression on the author. He noted that "despite their low numbers their contribution to the overall appearance of the camp and the international jargon is spoken is of prime importance. "According to him, their ability to survive in the camps is partly explained by the fact that they are in the Lager" the national group's most coherent and from this point of view the most advanced. " Erika Perahia Zemour, director of the Museum of Jewish Presence of Salonica about analyzing these reports that the patriotic feeling described by an outside observer also apparent in the story of deportees saloniciens and finds its origins in the political philosémite [[Ioánnis Metaxás| Metaxás] ] pre ^[21].

[edit] Post-war

At the end of the Second World War, a violent civil war broke out in Greece. It lasted until 1949, between government forces Athens supported by the British resistance to the powerful Communist ELAS. Some of the Jews of Thessaloniki who had escaped deportation took part therein, either within government or in the opposition camp.^[36] Among those who had fought in the ELAS, many were victims, like other supporters, repression, which fell on the country after the government had regained control of the situation.^[36]

The few survivors of the camps, some chose not to return in Greece and emigrated to Western Europe, America or Palestine Mandate and others took the road back.^[36] They were all faced with great difficulties to survive as both Greece and Europe in the immediate post-war were in a chaotic state. They also suffered discrimination on the part of some Ashkenzi survivors who cast doubt on their Jewishness.^[36]

The return to Thessaloniki was a shock. Retunees were often the sole survivors of their families. They found their homes occupied by Greek families who had purchased them from the Germans.^[36] Initially, they were housed in the synagogues. A Jewish Committee (Komite Djudio) was formed to identify the number of survivors, and obtained from the Bank of Greece a list of 1,800 houses sold to Greeks.^[36] The buyers were reluctant to surrender their property to Jews, saying they had legally purchased the houses and that they too had suffered from the war.^[36] When the war ended, ELAS, which controlled the city, favored the return of Jewish property to their rightful owners,^[37] Four months later, when the government of Athens came to power in Thessaloniki with British support, restitution was gradually frozen. Not only was the government, composed of Venizelists, faced with a major housing crisis due to the influx of refugees caused by war, but also many people who had become enriched during the war were influential in the government with a view to having closer anticommunist ties to former supporters of the Nazi regime. ^[37] The Jewish Agency denounced the climate of anti-Semitism and pleaded for the cause of the Aliyah Jews ^[36]. Gradually, the international Joint emerged in order to rescue the Jews of Salonika. Some of the Jews saved from deportation by the Greeks chose to convert to orthodoxy. Some survivors of the camps, often the most isolated, made the same choice ^[36]. There were also many marriages among the post-war survivors.^[36] One survivor testified:

I returned to a Salonika destroyed. I was hoping to find my adopted brother, but rumor told that he had died of malaria in Lublin. I already knew that my parents had been burned on their first day at the extermination camp of Auschwitz. I was alone. Other prisoners who were with me had nobody either. These days, I am with a young man that I had known in Brussels. We do not separate from each other. We were both survivors of the camps. Shortly after, we married, two refugees who had nothing, there was not even a rabbi to give us the blessing. The director of one of the Jewish schools served as a rabbi and we married, and so I started a new life.^[36].

In the 1951 census, there were 1,783 survivors.

A monument to the tragedy of the deportation was erected in 1997. ^[38]. The successive directors of the Aristotle University have declined to erect a monument to remember any presence of the former Jewish cemetery beneath the foundations of the university despite the requests of professors ^[38].

In 1998, King Juan Carlos I of Spain went to Salonika, where he paid tribute to the Sephardic Jews ^[39]. The visit followed one he had undertaken at the synagogue Madrid 1992 to commemorate the expulsion of 1492 at which he made the criticism of the decree of expulsion.

Today 1,300 Jews live in Thessaloniki ^[40] making this the second largest Jewish community in Greece after Athens.

[edit] Culture

[edit] Language

Main article: Ladino language

Generally, Jews who emigrated adopted the language of their new country, but this was not true of the Sepharadim of the Ottoman Empire, who arrived en masse, and retained the use of their language. The Jews of Salonica thus are known to have used Spanish, the Judeo-Spanish (djudezmo), that is neither more nor less than Spanish, having evolved independently and they used in their current relationships. They prayed and studied in Hebrew and Aramaic and used, as all other Sephardic communities, what Haim Vidal Séphiha called the language "layer", Ladino, which consisted of a Hebrew translation of texts into a Spanish respecting the Hebrew order of the words and syntax.^[41] These two languages, djudezmo and Ladino, written in Hebrew characters, as well as Latin characters for the language. In addition to these languages that had evolved in exile, the Jews of Salonica sometimes spoke Turkish, the language of the Ottoman Empire written in Arabic characters. The haskala taught by the French Jews has, in turn, encouraged teaching the French language Alliance Israélite Universelle schools. Italian is also taught to a lesser extent. After Greeks took Salonika in 1912, Greek was taught at school and has been spoken by several generations of Jewish Salonicans. Today, it's the language that predominates among Thessalonian Jews.

Modern Salonican djudezmo now include phrases from various other immigrant groups including Italian. French phrases have also become popular to the point that Séphiha speaks of "judéo-fragnol." ^[41]

[edit] Cuisine

The sociologist Edgar Morin said that the core of every culture is its cuisine, and that this applies especially to the Jews of Salonika, the community from which he descends.^[42]

The cuisine of the Jews of Salonika was a variant of the Judeo-Spanish cuisine, which is itself influenced by the large ensemble of Mediterranean cuisine. It was influenced by the Jewish dietary rules of kashrut, which include prohibitions on the consumption of pork and mixtures of dairy and meat products, and religious holidays that require the preparation of special dishes. However, its key feature was its Iberian influence. Fish, abundant in this port city, was consumed in large quantities and in all forms: fried, baked ("al orno"), marinated or braised ("abafado"), and was often accompanied by complex sauces. Seen as a symbol of fertility, the fish was used during a marriage rite on the last day of wedding ceremonies called dia del peche ("day of fish"), in which was the bride stepped over a large dish of fish that was then consumed by the guests.^[42] Vegetables accompanied all the dishes, especially the onion; Garlic was on hand but was not used, since the Ashkenazic synagogues were major consumers of garlic, and were given the nickname "El kal del ajo," "the garlic synagogue." Greek yoghurt, widely consumed in the Balkans and Anatolia, was also highly appreciated, as well as cream. In anticipation of Shabbat, chamin was prepared. A Judeo-Spanish variant of the Ashkenazi cholent and the North African dafina, chamin was a meat stew with vegetables (wheat, chickpeas, white beans) that were let simmer until the Saturday midday meal. In preparation for Passover, housewives filled locked chests with sweets, figs and dates stuffed with almonds, marzipan and the popular chape blanche (white jam), which consisted of sugar water and lemon. Wine was reserved for religious rituals, but Sepharadim, like their Greek and Muslim neighbors, were major consumers of raki. They also favored sugary drinks made of prune, cherry and apricot syrup, which they drank at the end of the large festive meal.^[42]

[edit] Additional reading

[edit] See also

• Sephardi Jews
• History of Thessaloniki
• History of the Jews in Greece

[edit] Bibliography

• Le Monde sépharade(directed by Shmuel Trigano), éditions du Seuil, Paris, 2006. ISBN 9782020904391
• Salonika 1850-1918, the "city of the Jews" and the revival of the Balkans, (under the direction of Gilles Veinstein), editions Autrement- series Memories, Paris, 1992. ISBN 9782862603568
• By Mark Mazower,Salonica city of ghosts, Vintage books, New York, 2005. ISBN 9780375412981

[edit] External links

• Video:A community exterminated, the deportation of Jews from SalonikaConference Jean Carasso, founder of the Sephardic Letter, FSJU-Culture department-Paris, 2006.
• Jewish Museum of Thessaloniki
• Article of Jewish Encyclopedia

[edit] Notes and references

1. ^ ^{a b c d} Gilles Veinstein,Salonica 1850 - 1918, the "city of the Jews" and the revival of the Balkans, p.42-45.
2. ^ A. Vacalopoulos,A History of Thessaloniki, p.9
3. ^ ^{a b c} Bernard Lewis,Islam, Gallimard, 2005, p.563-567.
4. ^ List extracted from: Rena Molho,Salonika 1850-1918, the "city of the Jews" and the revival of the Balkans, p.67.
5. ^ ^{a b} Moshe Amar, the Sephardic world, Volume II, Seuil, 2006, p.284
6. ^ ^{a b c} Jacob Barnaï,The Jews Spain: story of a diaspora, 1492-1992, Liana Levi, 1998, p.394-408.
7. ^ Gilles Veinstein,Salonika 1850-1918, the "City of the Jews" and the revival of the Balkans, p.51.
8. ^ Haïm Bentov,Le Monde sépharade, p.720.
9. ^ ^{a b c} Gilles Veinstein,Salonika 1850-1918, the "city of the Jews" and the revival of the Balkans, p. 52-54.
10. ^ ^{a b c d e f g h i j k} Gilles Veinstein ,Salonika 1850-1918, the "city of the Jews" and the revival of the Balkans, p.54-58.
11. ^ ^{a b c d e f g} Gilles Veinstein,Salonika 1850-1918, the "city of the Jews" and the revival of the Balkans, p.58-62.
12. ^ ^{a b} Encyclopedic Dictionary of Judaism, Éditions du Cerf, Paris, 1993, article Sabbataï Tsevi
13. ^ ^{a b c} Francis Georgeon, Salonika 1850-1918, the "city of the Jews" and the revival of the Balkans, p.115-118.
14. ^ ^{a b c d e f g h} Rena Molho,Salonika 1850-1918, the" city of the Jews "and the revival of the Balkans, p.68-78.
15. '^ Esther Benbassa, "Zionism in the Ottoman Empire at the 'dawn of . In the twentieth century. , No. 24, October 1989, p. 74.
16. ^ Mark Mazower, Salonica city of ghosts, p.281.
17. ^ J. Leune,The Lord Ulysses. , Viking Press, 1923, p. 77-78 in Sophie Basch,Le Mirage Greek. , Hatier, 1995, p.333. ISBN 22180622698
18. ^ Régis Darques,Salonica to e, the city Ottoman to the Greek metropolis, p.150.
19. ^ ^{a b c d e} Aristotle A. Kallis,The Jewish Community of Salonica Under Siege: The Antisemitic Violence of the Summer of 1931, Oxford University Press, 2006
20. ^ See legend of the picture as published by the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum
21. ^ ^{a b c} Erika Perahia Zemour,Judaism lost and foundSalonica, Pardès No. 28, Paris , 2000, pp.153-154
22. ^ ^{a b c d e} Rena Molho, The policy of Germany against the Jews of Greece: the extermination of the Jewish community of Salonika (1941-1944), review of the history of the Holocaust published by the Center for Contemporary Jewish Documentation, Paris, 2006; n ° 185, p. 355-378
23. ^ Régis Darques,Salonica in the twentieth century, the Ottoman town to the metropolis Greek p.78-79.
24. ^ Annie Benveniste,The Bosphorus in the Roquette: Judeo-Spanish community in Paris, 1914-1940, L'Harmattan, Paris, 2000, p.81 .
25. ^ Biography de Leon Recanati on the site of the University of Tel Aviv
26. ^ ^{a b c d e f g h i j k} Yitschak Kerem,Le Monde sépharade, Volume I, p.924- 933
27. ^ ^{a b c} The historical and cultural context. The coexistence between Jews and Greeks. By Jean-conference Carasso
28. ^ ^{a b} web / thejews / pages / pages / necrop / necrop.htm Document Jewish Museum of Thessaloniki
29. ^ ^{a b c} (Spanish) Michael Molho, "El cementerio judío of Salónica" Sefarad, 9:1 (1949) p.124 -128
30. ^ History expression referring to the structure of Raoul Hilberg,Destruction of the European Jews, Fayard, 1988
31. ^ Greece_in_the_WW2.html Refujiados of Gresia i Rodes in Maroko durante la II Gerra Mundiala by Yitshak Gershon, Aki Yerushalayim, 1995, pp.42-45.
32. ^ ^{a b c} Minna Rozen,Jews and Greeks Remember Their Past: The Political Career of Tzevi Koretz (193343), Jewish Social Studies-Volume 12, Number 1, Fall 2005 ( New Series), pp. 111-166
33. ^ (Spanish) Testimony a survivor salonicien of the Holocaust on the site FundacionMemoria del holocausto
34. ^ Yitschak Kerem,Forgotten heroes: Greek Jewry in the holocaust, in Mr. Mor (ed.), Crisis and Reaction: The Hero in Jewish History, Omaha, Creighton University Press, 1995, p.229-238.
35. ^ Primo Levi,If he is a man, Julliard, 2007 , pp.121-122 (Chapter: Because of good and evil)
36. ^ ^{a b c d e f g h i j k} com / Languages / Spanish-Ladino / History / Retorno_del_Inferno.html Retorno del Inferno Braha Rivlin,Aki Yerushalayim, No. 49-50, 1995.
37. ^ ^{a b} Mark Mazower,Salonica city of ghosts, p .422-425.
38. ^ ^{a b} Mark Mazower,Salonica city of ghostsp.437-438.
39. ^ (Spanish)Article of El Mundo May 29, 1998.
40. ^ Régis Darques,Salonica to e, the city Ottoman to the Greek mainland, p .63.
41. ^ ^{a b} Haim Vidal Séphiha,Salonika 1850-1918, " city of the Jews "and the revival of the Balkans, p.79-95.
42. ^ ^{a b c} Méri Badi,Salonika 1850-1918, the "city of the Jews" and the revival of the Balkans, p.96-101.

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