THE HOLOCAUST IN GREECE

                                       

 

 

Sunday marks the tragic anniversary of the departure, in 1943, of the first train taking members of Thessaloniki’s Jewish community to the Auschwitz death camp.

 

Another 17 trains followed, deporting around 55.000 in total of our Jewish compatriots to a tragic death.  Fortunately, 2.000 survived the Nazi death camps to which they were dispatched. A lot has been written about how they survived the ghastly conditions of the concentration camps, particularly at Auschwitz-Birkenau.  Only a small number are still alive today, the serial number tattooed on their left forearm serving as a constant reminder of the horrors of Holocaust.

 

On Sunday, amid Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, with the roar of heavy artillery pounding in Eastern Europe and the risk of full-scale war on European soil looms, Thessaloniki will hold a so-called “silent march” to the city’s old railway station, near the waterfront where convoys of Jews were forcefully rounded up by the Nazi soldiers and sent off to the notorious death camps.

 

It will be an emotional demonstration against the extermination of the children of Thessaloniki back then as well as the crimes unfolding today in Ukraine, in whose capital, Kyiv, the Nazis murdered 33.000 Jews at the Babi Yar ravine during World War II. 

 

This year’s memorial will be led by the President of Greece, Mrs. Katerina Sakellaropoulou, who will proclaim the “never gain” vow along with those who have chosen to forget.  It took more than half a century and a bunch of courageous folks to take the stereotype and prejudice before the city of Thessaloniki and the Greek state finally paid homage to its own people.

 

In 2006, the Holocaust Memorial was moved from Thessaloniki’s eastern district to Eleftheria (Freedom) Square, It is here that the Germans rounded up and humiliated the city’s brave Jewish population before their deportation. 

 

There have been plans of constructing the Holocaust Museum in Thessaloniki in the western part of the city that was first unveiled by Mayor Yiannis Boutaris in 2013,  the museum was originally scheduled for completion in 2020.  It was only in 2014 that the city extended a formal apology to its Jewish community through the lips of Boutaris.

 

“the City of Thessaloniki took an unjustifiable long time to break the silence, “ Boutaris said.  “Today it can say it is ashamed of those in Thessaloniki who collaborated with the Germans, those who embezzled fortunes, and those who betrayed the Jews who tried to escape,” he said.

 

President Sakellaropoulou’s presence in the front line of the silent march will confirm that the country has turned the page on this terrible chapter of its history,

 

It is will tears flowing from my eyes for the tragic massacre of my Jewish compatriots during World War II and the extreme shame I am feeling for my treacherous compatriots during the same war, that I am writing this new post.