by zorkmidden. This is the featured weekly post from Discarded Lies at Winds of Change.NET. The Terra Nostra series is about the Jewish Holocaust in Greece, righteous gentiles, tales of heroism and simple human will to survive, and the beauty of human souls even in a horrific tableau. It's also about contemporary Greek attitudes to Jews, Judaism, and Israel. Other posts in the Terra Nostra series on Winds of Change include Reina Gilberta, Liliane Fernandes, Loving God and Hating Jews, The Exodus From Spain, The Occupation, The Deportations, 'We were from a different level', Athens, Rabbi Barzilai, Rabbi Koretz, The Passover Trap and The Mainland
On June 6, 1944, the same day that the Allied forces landed in Normandy, the German army in Greece was busy rounding up every Jewish person they could find in every little corner of Greece.
In the island of Corfu, the whole Jewish community of 1,795 people was seized. The island's Greek mayor printed a proclamation declaring that the Jews had been rounded-up and that the economy of Corfu had 'rightfully reverted' to the Christian citizens. On the 9th of June (which the Corfu mayor declared a holiday) all the Corfu Jews were deported to Birkenau. Fifteen-hundred were gassed on arrival.
In other places a few people helped.
In the nearby island of Zante, the mayor Lukos Karrer and Archbishop Chrysostomos the local church leader not only alerted the Jewish community to the danger but sent 195 people to remote villages in the mountains. Another sixty-two people, all of them elderly, could not make the rough journey and were caught by the Gestapo and taken to the port. "If the deportation order is carried out," Archbishop Chrysostomos declared, "I will join the Jews and share their fate." When the boat arrived from Corfu to collect them, it was already packed with so many Jewish souls from Corfu that it didn't stop.
In Rhodes there were close to 2,000 Jews living on the island in a community which was at least 500 years old. Fifty people, as Turkish citizens, fell under the protection of the Turkish Consulate. The rest were deported. The deportations from Rhodes were the last ones conducted by the Germans in Greece.
The Jews of Rhodes and of the neighbouring island of Kos, were sent by boat to the Greek mainland. They were crammed into boats in the hot summer sun, without food and water. Twenty-three people died on the voyage to the mainland. After arrival in Athens, they were deported to Auschwitz-Birkenau. Only 151 Jews from Rhodes survived the Holocaust.
In Crete, 260 Jews from Chanea were arrested on May 20, 1944. They were executed and their bodies put aboard a ship together with 400 Greek hostages and 300 Italian soldiers. The ship was sunk to destroy the evidence. According to witnesses, the Chanea Jews were shot because they were involved in helping British Intelligence with their plan to abduct General Kreipe who commanded the German forces in Crete.
For more information on the Jewish community of Rhodes: Island of Roses: The Jews of Rhodes in Los Angeles
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