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, The Mainland, The Islands, The Auschwitz Uprising, The Sonderkommando and The Looting.
The few Jewish survivors that returned to Greece after their liberation from the death camps found their homes occupied by strangers and their properties taken. The community was practically extinct, most of the synagogues had been destroyed and the Jewish cemetery, the oldest and largest in the Balkans, was being used as a quarry.
The Greek government was of no help. Greek Prime Minister Logothetopoulos, who was later imprisoned for collaborating with the Germans, not only had failed to protect his Jewish citizens but, as he later confessed to a colleague, he was in favour of the deportations because Salonica and other Greek cities would then have plenty of vacant houses for the Greek Christian refugees from the Bulgarian-occupied zones of Thrace and Macedonia. His treachery was not shared by the rest of Greek society at the time; even the Greek Orthodox Church, historically no friend of the Jews, found an archbishop willing to make a moral stand and called on Logothetopoulos to stop actively helping the Nazis deport the Greek Jews, to no avail.
Even though it was Greek citizens that died in Auschwitz, their abandoned property was treated the same way as that of enemy aliens residing in Greece, Jewish properties were reverted to the State.
Amid the ruins, this remnant set themselves to build up their lives anew. Perhaps they may succeed in reconstituting a community, but it will be one like any other small Jewish congregation anywhere in the world. The community which once numbered nearly 50 per cent of the total city population of 173,000 is now insignificant, less than one per cent out of the present 250,000. Moreover, all that Salonican Jewry had stood for-that strange island of 15th-century Spain in a setting of 20th-century Greece-is gone forever. With it has gone, unnoticed and unlamented, the cultural environment which made the city for so long a center of interest for philologists, historians, folklorists, and lovers of the picturesque. It is not only a community that has been annihilated, but also a way of life. In the summer of 1946 I went to Greece on behalf of the British War Office to lecture to the troops, and had the horrible experience of visiting this charnel house of historic memories. In the synagogue, on Sabbath morning, there was barely a minyan. There was as yet no religious education for the children. There was hardly any provision for other fundamental religious requirements. Everywhere one could see traces of loot. I found a child in the street sitting on a synagogue chair carved with a Hebrew inscription; I was given a fragment of a Sefer Torah which had been cut up as soles for a pair of shoes; I saw carts in the cemetery removing Hebrew tombstones, on the instructions of the Director of Antiquities for the province, for the repair of one of the local ancient churches.Now one can barely see a shadow of the past. Here's what remains:
The villa of the Jewish-owned Allatini company, built by the architect Vitaliano Posseli in 1896, now the offices of the Thessaloniki Prefecture in Thessaloniki.
The Mordoh villa is now a municipal hall.
Built between 1911 and 1913 on plans and designs drawn by the Italian architect Pietro Arrigoni. This is the house that belonged to the Fernandes family. Today, it belongs to the City of Thessaloniki and houses the Municipal Art Gallery and the offices of the 5th Municipal District. The U.S. Consul in Istanbul, Burton Berry, in a letter to Washington:
Not content with attacking the living Jews of Salonika, the Germans found means and excuses to attack the dead also. One fine morning the Jewish community was invited to send representatives to a commission which had been set up to expropriate the Jewish cemetery. Jews living in Salonika were allowed to carry away the remains of their dear ones if they arrived in time. We want to draw attention to the fact that the Salonika cemetery was of the greatest historical value, dating from the first centuries of the Christian era. There were in this cemetery very ancient grave stones with very important inscriptions. Workers set about dismantling the tombs and disinterring the dead. The work of destroying the cemetery was done in such haste that very few Jews succeeded in finding the remains of their families and relatives. Recently buried dead were thrown to the dogs.
The cemetery had over 300,000 marble memorials. Thousands of these tombstones were reused on sidewalks, in church courtyards and other buildings including a public school bathroom and a swimming pool. The Aristotle University of Salonica now stands on that ground and there's not even a plaque on a building to remind anyone what once was.
In some ways, the Greeks' conduct after the Holocaust is worse than their conduct while it was happening.
Kind of like a post-war stamp of satisfied approval.
It certainly makes their relentless anti-Semitism in the modern era much more explicable.
This is really profoundly out of context.
How is it you mention Logothetopoulos, yet fail to mention parenthetically that he was the NAZI appointed quisling!?
whoever wrote this has their own prejudiced axe to grind, because the second graph is crafted to make it seem like it has something to do with the first.
"The few Jewish survivors that returned to Greece after their liberation....
The Greek government was of no help. Greek Prime Minister Logothetopoulos not only had failed to protect his Jewish citizens but, as he later confessed to a colleague, he was in favour of the deportations because Salonica and other Greek cities would then have plenty of vacant houses for the Greek Christian refugees from the Bulgarian-occupied zones of Thrace and Macedonia."
Of course he "failed to proect the Jews. He also failed to proetect the huge number of Christian Greeks murdered by the Nazis -- he was appointed BY THE GERMANS after the Greek army completely defeated Mussolini. The Germans were called in to coutner the first ever Axis defeat, and Greece, which was the only allied nation on the continent fighting the Germans (at the time the Russians were prety much on the same side as Hitler) was crushed with the full might of the German military machine.
Look at Joe Katzman's comment -- he thinks this is "after the Holocaust," and he is clearly implying he thinks this is the case.
As a Greek Jew part of who's family was sent to the camps (by Austrians under Waldhiem and by Bulgarian troops) I have to say this is a very skewed view of what happened.
Joe, get around in Europe, Greece is one of the least anti-Semitic countries on the continent. I know this first hand.
If you want context, let's forget about the prime minister and think about the Greek neighbours who looted, who didn't help and who wiped the memory of the victims after the Holocaust.
You're wrong in saying Greece is one of the least anti-Semitic countries in Europe. How many European countries has the Simon Wiesenthal Center issued a travel advisory about, recommending Jews stay away? That's pretty sad for Greece. Perhaps you're not exposed to this if you're Jewish and live in Greece (even though I don't know how you could miss it from the media) but when there are no Jews around, a seemingly innocent conversation about politics can quickly take a sinister turn when antisemitic conspiracy theories bubble out.
In addition, the Greek Orthodox Church has not absolved the Jewish people from "killing Jesus" and anti-Semitism is promoted from within the church as well: Loving God and Hating Jews
Here are some links that might give you more information:
1) Anti-Semitism in Greece - Embedded in Society
2) Anti-Semitism in Greece
3) Anti-Semitism in Greece
4) Anti-Semitism in Greece
Also, you tell Joe to get around Europe and see first hand. I am Greek, born and bred in Salonica, I have gotten around Europe, and I know this firsthand. I don't have a prejudiced axe to grind against my country, I just wish my society wasn't so antisemitic, and I'm not afraid to point it out.
Here's the personal experience of a Greek Canadian visiting Greece, Judenhass in Greece and you might have already read this interview with composer Mikis Theodorakis who is considered the most important musician in modern Greece: At the root of evil
If Logothetopoulos was indeed a Nazi appointee, that's highly relevant and should be pointed out clearly in the article. ZM, could you tweak this a bit? It did in fact mislead me as I read it, and may do so for others.
The rest of Zorkmidden's comments speak for themselves.
I've updated the paragraph to point out two things: that Logothetopoulos was a Nazi collaborator and later imprisoned for it and that there was resistance in war-time Greek society to giving up their Jews but they could not sway Logothetopoulos.
You forgot to add that after WWII the owners (or their descendants) of the villas above, got a LOT money from selling their properties to Greeks (including the Greek state and the municipality of Thessaloniki).