History of the Jews in Greece

Romaniote Jews have lived in the territory of today's Greece for more than 2000 years. Their historic language was Yevanic, a dialect of the Greek language, but Yevanic has no surviving speakers recorded; today's Greek Romaniotes speak Greek. Large communities were located in Ioannina, Thebes, Chalcis, Corfu, Arta, Corinth and on the islands of Lesbos, Chios, Samos, Rhodes, and Cyprus, among others. The Romaniotes are historically distinct from the Sephardim, some of whom settled in Greece after the 1492 expulsion of the Jews from Spain. All but a small number of the Romaniotes of Ioannina, the largest remaining Romaniote community not assimilated into Sephardic culture, were killed in the Holocaust. Ioannina today has 35 living Romaniotes.[11]

The majority of the Jews in Greece are Sephardim whose ancestors had left Spain, Portugal and Italy. They largely settled in cities such as Thessaloniki, the city which was to be named "Mother of Israel" in the years to come. The traditional language of Greek Sephardim was Ladino (Judeo Espaniol), and, until the Holocaust, the community "was a unique blend of Ottoman, Balkan and Hispanic influences",[12] well known for its level of education. The Foundation for the Advancement of Sephardic Studies and Culture calls Thessaloniki's Sephardic community "indisputably one of the most important ones in the world."[2]

The Macedonian empire under Alexander the Great conquered the former Kingdom of Judah in 332 BC, defeating the Persian empire which had held the territory since Cyrus' conquest of the Babylonians. After Alexander's death, the Wars of the Diadochi led to the territory changing rulership rapidly as Alexander's successors fought over control over the Persian territories. The region eventually came to be controlled by the Ptolemaic dynasty, and the area became increasingly Hellenistic. The Jews of Alexandria created a "unique fusion of Greek and Jewish culture",[16] while the Jews of Jerusalem were divided between conservative and pro-Hellene factions. Along with the influence of this Hellenistic fusion on the Jews who had found themselves part of a Greek empire, Karen Armstrong argues that the turbulence of the period between the death of Alexander and the 2nd century BCE led to a resurgence of Jewish messianism,[16] which would inspire revolutionary sentiment when Jerusalem became part of the Roman Empire.

Paul of Tarsus by El Greco.

Macedonia and the rest of Hellenistic Greece fell to the Roman Empire in 146 BC. The Jews living in Roman Greece had a different experience than those of Judaea Province. The New Testament describes Greek Jews as a separate community from the Jews of Judaea, and the Jews of Greece did not participate in the First Jewish-Roman War or later conflicts. The Jews of Thessaloniki, speaking a dialect of Greek, and living a Hellenized existence, were joined by a new Jewish colony in the 1st century AD. The Jews of Thessaloniki "enjoyed wide autonomy" in Roman times.[2]

Originally a persecutor of the early Jewish Christians until his conversion on the Road to Damascus, Paul of Tarsus, himself a Hellenized Jew from Tarsus, part of the post-Alexander the Great Greek Seleucid Empire, was instrumental in the founding of many Christian churches throughout Rome, including Asia Minor and Greece. Paul's second missionary journey included proselytizing at Thessaloniki's synagogue until driven out of the city by its Jewish community.

"Byzantine Emperor" Alexander the Great is offered gold and silver by the Rabbis.

After the collapse of the Western Roman Empire, elements of Roman civilisation continued on in the Byzantine Empire. The Jews of Greece began to come under increasing attention from Byzantium's leadership in Constantinople. Some Byzantine emperors were anxious to exploit the wealth of the Jews of Greece, and imposed special taxes on them, while others attempted forced conversions to Christianity. The latter pressure met with little success, as it was resisted by both the Jewish community and by the Greek Christian synods.[2]

The Sefer Yosippon was written down in the 10th century in the Byzantine south Italy by the Greek-speaking Jewish community there. Judah Leon ben Moses Mosconi, a Romaniote Jew from Achrida edited and expanded the Sefer Josippon later.[17][18]

Tobiah ben Eliezer (טוביה בן אליעזר), a Talmudist and poet of the 11th century, worked and lived in the city of Kastoria. He is the author of the Lekach Tov, a midrashic commentary on the Pentateuch and the Five Megillot and also of some poems.

The first settlement of Ashkenazi Jews in Greece occurred in 1376, heralding an Ashkenazi immigration from Hungary and Germany to avoid the persecution of Jews throughout the 15th century. Jewish immigrants from France and Venice also arrived in Greece, and created new Jewish communities in Thessaloniki.[2]

The Fourth Crusade degraded the position of the Jews in the new Frankish lands on Greek ground which were formerly parts of the Byzantine Empire. The Jews were at that time economically powerful though small in number, comprised a community of their own, separately from the Christians, and dealt in money lending.[19]

The White Tower of Thessaloniki, marking the southeastern edge of Jewish quarter of Thessaloniki, the Mother of Israel.

Interior of the Kahal Shalom Synagogue in Rhodes (city).

Greece was ruled by the Ottoman Empire from the mid-15th century, until the conclusion of first the Greek War of Independence ending in 1832, and then the First Balkan War in 1913. During this period, the centre of Jewish life in the Balkans was Salonica or Thessaloniki. The Sephardim of Thessaloniki were the exclusive tailors for the Ottoman Janissaries, and enjoyed economic prosperity through commercial trading in the Balkans.

After their expulsion from Spain, between fifteen and twenty thousand more Sephardim settled in Thessaloniki. According to the Jewish Virtual Library: "Greece became a haven of religious tolerance for Jews fleeing the Spanish Inquisition and other persecution in Europe. The Ottomans welcomed the Jews because they improved the economy. Jews occupied administrative posts and played an important role in intellectual and commercial life throughout the empire."[20] These immigrants established the city's first printing press, and the city became known as a centre for commerce and learning.[2] The exile of other Jewish communities swelled the city's Jewish population, until Jews were the majority population in 1519. Ottoman Jews were obliged to pay special "Jewish taxes" to the Ottoman authorities. These taxes included the Cizye, the İspençe, the Haraç, and the Rav akçesi ("rabbi tax"). Sometimes, local rulers would also levy taxes for themselves, in addition to the taxes sent to the central authorities in Constantinople.

In 1519, the Jews represented 56% of the population of Thessaloniki, and in 1613, their share was 68%.[21]

In the year 1523 the first printed edition of the Mahzor Romania was published in Venice, by Constantinopolitan Jews which contains the Minhag of the Jews from the Byzantine empire. This Minhag represents probably the oldest European Prayer rite. A polyglot edition of the Bible published in Constantinople in 1547 has the Hebrew text in the middle of the page, with a Judaeo-Spanish translation on one side and a Yevanic translation on the other.

Joseph Nasi a Portuguese Marrano Jew was appointed as the Duke of Archipelago for the years 1566–1579.

The middle of the 19th century, however, brought a change to Greek Jewish life. The Janissaries had been destroyed in 1826, and traditional commercial routes were being encroached upon by the Great Powers of Europe. The Sephardic population of Thessaloniki had risen to between twenty-five to thirty thousand members, leading to scarcity of resources, fires and hygiene problems. The end of the century saw great improvements, as the mercantile leadership of the Sephardic community, particularly the Allatini family, took advantage of new trade opportunities with the rest of Europe. According to historian Misha Glenny, Thessaloniki was the only city in the Empire where some Jews "employed violence against the Christian population as a means of consolidating their political and economic power",[22] as traders from the Jewish population closed their doors to traders from the Greek and Slav populations and physically intimidated their rivals. With the importation of modern anti-Semitism with immigrants from the West later in the century, moreover, some of Thessaloniki's Jews soon became the target of Greek and Armenian pogroms. Thessaloniki's Jewish community comprised more than half of the city's population until the early 1900s. As a result of the Jewish influence on the city, many non-Jewish inhabitants of Thessaloniki spoke Judeo-Spanish, the language of the Sephardic Jews, and the city virtually shut down on Saturday, the Jewish Sabbath, given it sometimes the name of 'Little Jerusalem."[23] Many sea-travellers reaching the port of Thessaloniki humorously recalled that Thessaloniki was a city where people worked only four days while resting three consecutive days. This was due to the three major religions the population adhered to and their respective resting days: Friday for Muslims, Saturday for Jews and Sunday for Christians.

Many Greek Jews including the ancestors of Shelley Berkley had to leave Salonica during the violent First Balkan War.

In general loyal to the Ottoman Empire, the Jews of southern Greece did not have a positive stance towards the Greek War of Independence; so often they became also targets by the revolutionaries.

The Ottoman rule in Thessaloniki ended much later, in 1912, as Greek soldiers entered the city in the last days of the First Balkan War. Thessaloniki's status had not been decided by the Balkan Alliance before the war, and Glenny writes that some amongst the city's majority Jewish population at first hoped that the city might be controlled by Bulgaria.[24] Bulgarian control would keep the city at the forefront of a national trade network, while Greek control might affect, for those of certain social classes and across ethnic groups, Thessaloniki's position as the destination of Balkan village trading. After the city was conquered by the Greeks in 1913, Thessaloniki Jews were accused of cooperating with the Turks and being traitors, and were subjected to pressure from the Greek army and local Greeks. As a result of the intense coverage of these pressures in the world press, the Venizelos government took a series of measures against antisemitic actions.[25] After liberation, however, the Greek government won the support of the city's Jewish community,[3] and Greece under Eleftherios Venizelos was one of the first countries to accept the Balfour Declaration.[13]

In 1934, a large number of Jews from Thessaloniki made aliyah to Mandatory Palestine, settling in Tel Aviv and Haifa. Those who could not get past British immigration restrictions simply came on tourist visas and disappeared into Tel Aviv's Greek community. Among them were some 500 dockworkers and their families, who settled in Haifa to work at its newly constructed port.[26]

Later, with the establishment in 1936 of the Metaxas regime, which was not typically hostile to Jews in general despite its fascist character, the stance of the Greek State towards the Jewish community was further improved.

Jewish soldier (right) at the Albanian front during the Greco-Italian War.

A forged identity card with Christian alias during the Occupation

A woman weeps during the deportation of the Jews of Ioannina on March 25, 1944. The deportation was enforced by the German army. Almost all of the people deported were murdered on or shortly after April 11, 1944, when the train carrying them reached Auschwitz-Birkenau.[27][28]

Holocaust memorial, Thessaloniki

Holocaust memorial at the Jewish cemetery, Rhodes

During World War II, Greece was conquered by Nazi Germany and occupied by the Axis powers. 12,898 Greek Jews fought in the Greek army, one of the best-known amongst them being Colonel Mordechai Frizis, in a force which first successfully repelled the Italian Army, but was later overwhelmed by German forces.[13] The Germans had been gathering intelligence on Salonica's Jewish community since 1937.[29] Some 60,000-70,000 Greek Jews, or at least 81% of the country's Jewish population, were murdered; especially in jurisdictions occupied by Nazi Germany and Bulgaria. Although the Germans [30] deported a great number of Greek Jews, some were successfully hidden by their Greek neighbours.

The losses were significant in places like Thessaloniki, Ioannina, Corfu or Rhodes, where most of the Jewish population were deported and killed. In contrast, larger percentages of Jews were able to survive, where the local population was helpful and hid the persecuted Jews, such as Athens, Larissa or Volos. Perhaps the most important rescue efforts took place in Athens, where some 1,200 Jews were given false identity cards following the efforts of Archbishop Damaskinos and police chief Angelos Ebert.[31]

On July 11, 1942, the Jews of Thessaloniki were rounded up in preparation for slave labour. The community paid a fee of 2 billion drachmas for their freedom. Yet 50,000 people were sent to Auschwitz, and most of their 60 synagogues and schools were destroyed, along with the old Jewish cemetery in the center of the city. Only 1,950 survived.[3][32] Many survivors later emigrated to Israel and the United States.[3] Today the Jewish population of Thessaloniki numbers roughly 1,000, and maintains two synagogues.[32]

In Corfu, after the fall of Italian fascism in 1943, the Nazis took control of the island. Corfu's mayor at the time, Kollas, was a known collaborator and various anti-Semitic laws were passed by the Nazis that now formed the occupation government of the island.[33] In early June 1944, while the Allies bombed Corfu as a diversion from the landing in Normandy, the Gestapo rounded up the Jews of the city, temporarily incarcerated them at the old fort (Palaio Frourio) and on the 10th of June sent them to Auschwitz where very few survived.[33][34] However, approximately two hundred out of a total population of 1,900 managed to flee.[35] Many among the local populace at the time provided shelter and refuge to those 200 Jews that managed to escape the Nazis.[33] As well, a prominent section of the old town is to this day called Evraiki (Εβραική) meaning Jewish suburb in recognition of the Jewish contribution and continued presence in Corfu city. An active Synagogue (Συναγωγή) is an integral part of Evraiki today with about 65 members.[35]

On March 4, 1943, Bulgarian soldiers with help from German soldiers took the Jews from Komotini and Kavala off the Karageorge passenger boat, massacred them and sunk the boat. The Bulgarians confiscated all of the Jewish properties and possessions.[36]

At Thessaloniki individual police officers rescued their Jewish friends and occasionally even their families, while in Athens the chief of police, Angelos Evert, and his men actively supported and rescued Jews.[37]

The 275 Jews of the island of Zakynthos, however, survived the Holocaust. When the island's mayor, Loukas Karrer, was presented with the German order to hand over a list of Jews, Metropolitan Bishop Chrysostomos of Zakynthos returned to the Germans with a list of two names; his own and the mayor's. The island's population hid every member of the Jewish community. In 1947, a large number of the Jews of Zakynthos made aliyah to Palestine (later Israel), while others moved to Athens.[38] When the island was almost levelled by the great earthquake of 1953, the first relief came from Israel, with a message that read "The Jews of Zakynthos have never forgotten their Mayor or their beloved Bishop and what they did for us."[4]

The city of Volos, which was in the Italian zone of occupation, had a Jewish population of 882, and many Thessaloniki Jews fleeing the Nazis sought sanctuary there. By March 1944, more than 1,000 Jews lived there. In September 1943, when the Nazis took over, head rabbi Moses Pesach worked with Archbishop Ioakeim and the EAM resistance movement to find sanctuary for the Jews in Mount Pelion. Due to their efforts, 74% of the city's Jews were saved. Of the more than 1,000 Jews, only 130 were deported to Auschwitz. The Jewish community remained in Volos after the war, but a series of earthquakes in 1955-57 forced many of the remaining Jews to leave, with most immigrating to Israel or the United States. Only 100 Jews remain in Volos today.[33]

Many Jews from Salonika were put on death-camp work detail, the Sonderkommandos. On 7 October 1944, during the uprising in Auschwitz, they attacked German forces with other Greek Jews, storming 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 the Greek partisan movement and the Greek national anthem.[39]

In his book If This Is a Man, one of the most famous works of literature of the Holocaust, Primo Levi describes the group thus: "those Greeks, motionless and silent as the Sphinx, crouched on the ground behind their thick pot of soup."[40] Those members of the community still alive during 1944 made a strong impression on the author. He noted: "Despite their low numbers their contribution to the overall appearance of the camp and the international jargon spoken is of prime importance." He described a strong patriotic sense among them, writing that their ability to survive in the camps was partly explained by the fact that "they are among the cohesive of the national groups, and from this point of view the most advanced."

Recognised for his contributions to the Greek cause early on in the war, Mordechai Frizis became one of the most honoured Greek officers of World War II in the postwar years, with a monument outside the national military academy in Athens.[41]

Of the 55,000 Thessaloniki Jews deported to extermination camps in 1943, fewer than 5,000 survived. Many of those who returned found their former homes occupied by Greek families. The Greek government did little to assist the surviving Jewish community with property restoration.[42][43]

Wikimedia Commons has media related to Deportation of Jews of Ioannina March 1944.

Misha Glenny wrote that Greek Jews had never "encountered anything remotely as sinister as north European anti-Semitism. The twentieth century had witnessed small amounts of anti-Jewish sentiment among Greeks... but it attracted an insignificant minority."[12] The danger of deportation to death camps was repeatedly met with disbelief by Greece's Jewish population.

A neo-fascist group, Golden Dawn, exists in Greece and in September 2015 Greek election won 18 seats in the Greek Parliament. Reportedly in 2005, it was officially disbanded, to no avail, by its leadership after conflicts with police and anti-fascists. The European Union Monitoring Centre on Racism and Xenophobia 2002–2003 report on anti-Semitism in Greece mentioned several incidents over the two-year period making note that there were no instances of physical or verbal assaults on Jews, along with examples of "good practices" for countering prejudice. The report concluded that "...in 2003 the Chairman of the Central Jewish Board in Greece stated that he did not consider the rise in antisemitism to be alarming."[55]

On 21 November 2003, Nikos Bistis, the Greek Deputy Minister of the Interior, declared January 27 to be Holocaust Remembrance Day in Greece, and committed to a "coalition of Greek Jews, Greek non-Jews, and Jews worldwide to fight antisemitism in Greece."[56]

The Greek government debt crisis, which started in 2009, has seen an increase in extremism of all kinds, which has included some cases of antisemitic vandalism. In 2010, the front of the Jewish Museum of Greece was defaced, for the first time ever.[57] On Rhodes, on 26 October 2012, vandals spray-painted the city's Holocaust monument with swastikas.[58] Partly to head off any new-found threat from extremism, thousands of Jewish and non-Jewish Greeks attended Thessaloniki's Holocaust Commemoration in March 2013.[59] The meeting was personally addressed by Greece's prime minister, Antonis Samaras, who delivered a speech to Monastir Synagogue (Thessaloniki).[60]

After a period, Alexandros Modiano, a Greek-Jewish politician, has been voted to official duties. Alexandros Modiano works in the City Council of Athens.[61]

Today the diplomatic relations between Greece and Israel are on a high level. The relations between the Jewish community and the state are also good.