• The names, addresses and professions, of all the members of the Athenian Jewish community
• The names of all foreign Jews, with details about their origin and nationality
• The names and addresses of all Italian Jews living in Athens
• The names of all Salonica Jews living in Athens
• The names of all people who had assisted Jews to escape to Palestine
• The names of the members of a new council to be formed under Barzilai’s presidency
• The new council was to create a Jewish police force for carrying out the Nazi demands
• Create new identity cards for all of the Jews of Athens

Barzilai left Wisliceny’s office, shaken and in a state of great anxiety and fear. All through the day appeals were made to Greek authorities, but most of them fell on deaf ears.

On the 22nd of September, the Jewish community leaders made a desperate appeal to Prime Minister Constantine Rallis. The Prime Minister tried to alleviate their fears by saying that the Jews of Salonica had been guilty of subversive activities. He also implied that the Salonica Jews had been a foreign element in Greek life, referring to the nationalistic distinction between Old Greece - south of Thessaly and liberated from the Turks shortly after 1821 - and Northern Greece which was under Turkish and Bulgarian occupation until 1913.

So basically what the Greek Prime Minister said was that the Jews of the north had gotten what they deserved.

The Rabbi asked Wisliceny for extended time to compose a list and form a council. After convening with the community leaders, he destroyed the community records and he advised people to flee or go into hiding. A few days later, the Rabbi himself fled the capital and joined the resistance in Thessaly, north of Athens. Wisliceny's list of demands never came to pass.

In Thessaly, in a village close to the Greek partisan headquarters, Rabbi Barzilai encouraged Greek Jews who could do so to join the resistance. He worked with the Greek partisans to arrange for more than 600 Greek Jews to be smuggled across the Aegean sea to the safety of neutral Turkey. In return, the Jewish Labour Federation in Palestine smuggled boots and money, by sea, to the Greek resistance.

Archbishop Damaskinos also showed courage and compassion. Damaskinos suspected what had taken place in the north. His advice was that the Jewish community of Athens should dissolve itself and flee, because there was no way it could be protected adequately. He instructed the Greek clergy to issue false baptismal papers to anyone who needed them in the Jewish community.

And in another gesture of righteousness, Athens chief of police, Apostolos Evert, had his forces issue fake papers to Jews, giving them Christian identities. Evert and Archbishop Damaskinos saved 1,200 Jewish lives.