Introduction

In Greece, there were 59,185 Jewish victims during the Holocaust. Approximately 81% of Greek Jews were killed during World War II, while 8,000-10,000 survived. From 1941-1944, 60,000-70,000 Greek Jews were killed, most at the Birkenau-Auschwitz concentration camp. About 5,000 Jews remained in Greece following World War II, in Athens and Salonika, or Thessaloniki.

Salonika, called “La Madre de Israel”, the Mother of Israel, had a pre-war Jewish population of 56,000, the largest settlement of Sephardic Jews, over 96% of which were killed during the Holocaust.

Jewish Settlement in Greece

The Greek Jewish community was one of the oldest in Europe and dated back to the early Hellenistic period when Greek-speaking Jews resided in Rhodes, Corinth, Athens, Thebes, Salonika, Veria, Sparta, Crete, and Delos. During the Roman and Byzantine periods, these Greek Jews were called Romaniot or Romaniote and were mostly urban. In the 12th through 14th centuries, the Romaniot settled in Ioannina, known as the “capital” of Romaniote Jewry, Corfu, Patra, Lirissa, Zakynthos, and Halkidha. Following the expulsion of the Jewish populations from Spain and Portugal, Beyazit II allowed them to settle in the Balkans. There was a large influx of Sephardim into Greece, particularly in Salonika, Rhodes, Kos, and Veria. Rhodes was known as “La Piccola Gerusalemi”, or the Little Jerusalem and contained the Juderia neighborhood. In Kastoria, there were Jewish fur traders. In Corfu there was a Jewish quarter and the Kahal Shalom synagogue.

Chameria: Greek Jews deported from Ioaninna to Auschwitz-Birkenau, March 25, 1943. Albanian Muslim militia participated in the round-up of the Jews in Ioaninna.

After two centuries, the Sephardic Jews outnumbered the Greek-speaking Romaniot Jews. The Sephardic Jews brought the Iberian Jewish culture of Spain and Portugal, Ladinismo, to Greece. They also spoke Ladino, a Spanish-Judeo language that incorporated Spanish, Portuguese, Hebrew, Arabic, and Turkish. Ladino became the official language of the Balkan and Greek Jewish communities. The Greek-speaking Romaniots also differed in their religious customs from the Sephardim and constructed separate synagogues.

The Muslim Ottoman Turks sent administrators and officials into the occupied Balkan regions, such as Serbia, Montenegro, Bosnia-Hercegovina, Albania, Bulgaria, and Greece. These Turkish administrators and officials from Anatolia brought their families and established Muslim communities where they were set up. After the Ottoman Turks conquered Salonika, Turkish Muslim settlements were established there to fill the houses of Greeks who were either killed, deported, or forced to flee.

In the 1830s, Ashkenazi Jews settled in Athens. During the late 19th and early 20th centuries, Salonika contained one of the largest Jewish communities in the world. Jews made up approximately half of the population. Greek Jews were in the shipping, sailing, and chandlery trades. There was also a population of Jews who had converted to Islam known as Donme (“renegades” or “apostates”, from Turkish donmek, “to turn”) or Ma’min. These were Jewish followers of Sabbatai Zvi, born in Smyrna, who was regarded by his followers as the Jewish messiah in the 1670s, who had converted to Islam, but had covertly retained some Jewish religious practices and rituals. The Ottoman Turkish grand vizier banished Zvi to Ulcinj in Montenegro.

The Holocaust in Greece

On October 28, 1940 Italy invaded Greece with 150,000 troops from bases in Albania after issuing an ultimatum to Greece to allow the Italian occupation of strategic sites in Greece. Greek Prime Minister Ioannis Metaxas rejected the Italian ultimatum with a reply of “ochi” or “no”. The Italian military objective was to attack Greece through Epirus. The Italian Army, along with two Albanian Volunteer Battalions which included Albanians from Chameria or Epirus in Greece, then invaded Greece but were driven back and forced to retreat. Greek troops counterattacked and were able to advance into southern Albania, seizing Korce and taking thousands of prisoners. Benito Mussolini regrouped his forces and attacked with 17 divisions in March, 1941, but was unable to dislodge the Greek troops from Albania.

Deportation of Greek Jews from Thrace, 1943.

Germany invaded Greece on April 6, 1941, known as Operation Marita, when Germany invaded Yugoslavia during Operation Punishment. Greece and Yugoslavia had sought to maintain their neutrality but were forced into armed conflict with Germany and the Axis powers when the latter issued ultimatums to both countries. Adolf Hitler sought to secure the southern flank in preparation for his upcoming invasion of the Soviet Union, Operation Barbarossa. Yugoslavia was invaded and occupied by Axis troops. German troops took Athens on April 21. Crete was taken by an airborne assault by the end of May when German troops were parachuted on the British-held island. The Germans established three occupation zones in Greece: German, Italian, and Bulgarian.

The three zones of Axis occupation in Greece were as follows: The Italian Zone consisted of Epirus, the Dodecanese Islands, the Ionian Islands, mainland Greek territory: Central and Southern Greece from the Platona line south, the Peloponnesos, and the capital Athens. The German Zone consisted of western and Central Macedonia, a strip of land at the eastern edge of Greek Thrace along Turkish border, including Dhidhimotikon, Souflion, and Orestias, Crete, the major Aegean Islands, Thessaloniki. The Bulgarian Zone consisted of Thrace and eastern Macedonia.

Heinrich Himmler, center, with Sepp Dietrich, right, in Greece in 1941.

The German army took Salonika on April 8. The Jewish population was targeted from the beginning. The first implementation of the Final Solution was in Salonika, known as the Malkhah Israel, “the Queen of Israel”. The German occupation forces revived anti-Jewish publications and encouraged anti-Jewish activities. On April 15, the Council of the Jewish Community was arrested including the Chief Rabbi Zvi Koretz. The Germans constituted a new Council with the president Saby Saltiel.

Following the Axis occupation of Greece, a famine resulted in 1941 and 1942 because of the British naval blockade and due to the seizure of crops by German forces. Thousands died of starvation during the famine.

General George Tsolakoglu was subsequently made Prime Minister. In March, 1943, Jews were deported from Bulgarian-occupied Macedonia and Thrace. From March to May, 1943, Jews were deported from German-occupied Salonika and adjacent territory. The deportations from the Italian Zone began after the surrender of Italy in September, 1943, in March, April, and during the summer of 1944 when it was occupied by German forces.

Macedonia and Thrace

The first deportations of Jews occurred in Macedonia and Thrace, in the Bulgarian zone of occupation. German official Theodor Dannecker proposed that 20,000 Jews from the Bulgarian zone be deported to Germany. In February, 1943, Peter Gabrovski, the internal affairs minister of Bulgaria, agreed to this number proposed by Dannecker. The deportations were organized by Yaroslav Kalitsin, head of the administrative section of the Bulgarian Commissariat for Jewish Affairs or the Komisarstvo za Evreiskite Vuprosi. Jews were assembled at three concentration points: Gorna Dzhumaya, Dupnitsa, and Radomir.

German troops raise the Nazi swastika over the Acropolis, 1941.

The deportations began at 4:00 a.m. on March 4, 1943. The Jews of Thrace, Macedonia, and eastern Serbia under Bulgarian occupation, were arrested and assembled at transit camps which consisted of former tobacco warehouses/ About 200 Jews survived by being drafted in forced labor battalions or by escaping to the Italian zone. This group was taken to Bulgaria proper from where 4,100 Jews were sent by train and boats to Vienna, from where they were transported to Treblinka. At Treblinka, they were sent to the gas chambers. There was widespread popular opposition to the Final Solution in Bulgaria. There is considerable debate about how much responsibility Bulgarian officials bear. The initiative and implementation of this deportation order was by German officials, particularly Danneker. Moreover, it was restricted to areas not part of Bulgaria before the war, i.e., Macedonia, Thrace, and eastern Serbia.

In the Italian zone, the Final Solution was not enforced.

In the German zone of occupation, anti-Jewish measures were enforced immediately. The deportations to the death camps did not begin until 1943. There was a gradual and incremental buildup to the Final Solution.

Salonika

In 1941, Salonika or Thessalonika, part of the German occupation zone, had a population of 56,000 Jews, making it the largest Sephardic community in the world. In June, 1941, the Jewish Affairs Commission (Judenangelegenbeiten) or Einsatzstab Rosenberg or Rosenberg Commando arrived in Salonika and seized and confiscated the Jewish libraries and archives in Salonika and Athens. Private libraries, manuscripts, liturgical art, rabbinical, and Beth Din libraries were seized. These materials were then sent to the Institute for Jewish Studies in Frankfurt.

The city was part of the German zone of occupation where the Final Solution was enforced. Dieter Wisliceny and Alois Brunner were put in charge of the deportations in Greece. The deportations were organized with the assistance of the Jedenrat or Jewish Council headed by Chief Rabbi Zvi Koretz, who appointed the president of the council in December, 1942.

Greek Jews from Thrace deported to Auschwitz, March, 1943.

In the summer of 1942, persecutions of Jews began to be accelerated. On July 11, 1943, all Jewish men between the ages of 18 and 45, consisting of 9,000 men, were conscripted for forced labor, in the Organization Todt labor battalions. They were assembled in Liberty Square for hours in the heat and humiliated by being forced to perform exercises. Many died from exhaustion. The Salonika Jewish community sought to ransom them but was unsuccessful. What resulted was that the Jewish cemetery in Salonika was destroyed. Jews were also forced to wear the “Yellow Star”.

In February, 1942, the Nuremberg Race Laws were applied to the German zone in Greece through the efforts of Maximilian Merton, the adviser to the German military occupation administration. The Jewish population of Salonika was concentrated in three districts: 1) the 151 quarter, 2) the Hagia Paraskevi district, and, 3) the Baron de Hirsch transit camp. On March 15, 1943, the deportations began. In March and April, Salonika Jews were transported from the Hirsch camp to Auschwitz by rail. The first transport consisted of 2,500 Jews loaded on 40 freight cars. Every three days, railroad cars containing 2,000 Salonika Jews would be transported to Auschwitz.  There were transports or convoys on March 17, 19, 23, and 27. In April, convoys left on April 3, 5, 7, 10, 13, 16, 20, 22, and 28.  Two transports left on May 3 and May 9. A total of 48,000 Jews would be deported to the concentration camps, of whom 37,000 were sent to the gas chambers upon arrival while 11,000 were selected for forced labor. In Salonika, 96% of the Jewish population would be killed. After the war, 1,200 Jews remained in the city.

From April 30 to May 8, 1943, the German forces arrested the Jews in Orestias, Florina, Veroia, Souflion, and Dhidhimotikon. They were then transported to Salonika from where they were sent to Auschwitz on May 9. They were transported by ships. Most of them were sent to the gas chambers when they arrived. They were part of the 17th shipment from Salonika. The last Jews to be deported from Salonika were sent to Bergen-Belsen in August, 1943. This transport included members of the Jewish Council or Judenrat, consisting of 74 members. The trains used in the transports were supplied by the German Wehrmacht. The military jurisdiction fell to Army Group E under the command of Luftwaffe General Alexander Lohr, who had commanded the German air assault and bombing of Belgrade in 1941.

Albanian Muslim Role in Greek Holocaust

Mark Mazower documented in Inside Hitler’s Greece that Cham or Chameria Albanians, Albanian Muslims who lived in the Epirus region of Greece, had collobarated with Nazi occupation forces and had taken an active role in the Holocaust in Greece. The Cham Albanians were predominantly Muslim, although a minority was Orthodox Christian. The Chameria Albanians collaborated with both Italian and German occupation forces. Several hundred Albanians from Epirus had collaborated with the Axis occupation forces. These Albanians were part of the Balli Kombetar (National Front) ultra-nationalist movement and the XILIA or Albanian National Committee which sought to create a Greater Albania by including Albanian-populated areas of Greece in a unified Greater Albania. In April, 1944,  Albanian Cham Muslims participated in the round-up and expulsions of 2,000 Greek Romaniot Jews  from Ioannina to the Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp complex. Chamerian Albanians had also burned down Greek Orthodox villages, had committed atrocities against and murders of Orthodox Greek Christians around Paramythia, and had expelled Orthodox Greeks. The Epirus region was subdivided into four prefectures: Thesprotia, Preveza, Arta and Ioannina The Balli Kombetar demanded that all of Epirus up to Preveza should be incorporated into Albania.

Members of the Balli Kombetar (BK, National Front). The Chameria BK rounded up Greek Jews who were transported to Auschwitz.

Mark Mazower described the role of Albanian Muslim Chams during the Axis occupation in After the War Was Over

“[W]hen the Italians finally took control of mainland Greece in 1941, they found Cham activists willing to call for unification of the region with Albania. Several hundred were conscripted into the anti-communist Bal Komitare [Balli Kombetar] to act as local gendarmes. From the autumn of 1943, these armed bands took part alongside the Wehrmacht in burning Greek villages.”

The Italian fascist government placed Chameria under de facto Albanian control and under Albanian administration from 1941 to 1943. Albanian Zhemil Bey Dino was appointed the High Commissioner of Thesprotia by the Italian government. Dino had been an ambassador in the Italian fascist regime. Albanian militias were also created and recruited by the Italian forces as a proxy force to maintain the occupation. The Albanian militias were organized by the fascist and Nazi Balli Kombetar and worked for the Italian and German occupation forces. The Italian government sought to annex Chameria to Albania and to recognize the annexation de jure, as it had done with Kosovo, which was annexed outright to Albania in 1941. German opposition, however, prevented Mussolini from annexing Chameria to Albania outright, but Italy was able to maintain Chameria as a de facto part of Albania, with an Albanian administration and under the control of Albanian militias. These Albanian forces participated in the German round-up and expulsion of Greek Jews, who subsequently died in concentration camps.

Members of the Balli Kombetar (BK, National Front). The Chameria BK rounded up Greek Jews who were transported to Auschwitz.

Albanian Muslims in the Epirus region of Greece, known as Chameria in the Greater Albania lexikon,  played a role in the Holocaust in Greece during World War II.

Athens

There had been Jewish settlement in Athens since the 3rd century B.C. The pre-war Jewish population was 3,500. The city was located in the Italian occupation zone where the Final Solution was not enforced. As a consequence, Jewish refugees from Salonika settled in the city. On March 25, 1944, when the area fell under German occupation, German forces arrested 1,690 Jews who were sent to Auschwitz-Birkenau. In Athens, however, 66% of the Jews survived. The Greek police chief of the city, Angelos Evert, and the Orthodox Archbishop, Damaskenos, issued false baptismal records and false ID cards to Jews in Athens and Piraeus. Many Jews were hidden in Orthodox Christian homes. There were 3,000 Jews in Athens after the war.

Ioannina

There was a Jewish presence in Iaonnina or Yannina since 70 A.D. In the 15 and 16th centuries, Sephardic Jews settled in the city. Under Italian occupation, the Jews were not threatened. But when the German forces took control of Ioannina, they arrested the president of the Jewish community of the city, Moses Koffinas. On March 25, 1944, the entire Jewish population of 1,860 was deported to Auschwitz.

Kastoria

Kastoria had a pre-war Jewish population of 900, primarily Sephardic Jews. There is a record of Jewish settlement in the city before the 15th century. The city was a major fur and leather processing center on a trading route much traversed during the Ottoman Empire period. The city is located in the mountains between Ioannina and Salonika. Jews were employed in the fur and leather trade. On March 25, 1944, 763 Jews were rounded up and held at a school building awaiting deportation. They were without food and water. German soldiers are alleged to have raped Jewish schoolgirls held there. This group was then transported to Salonika and then to Auschwitz. Only 35 Jews survived. Only one Jewish family remained in the city after the war.

Corfu

The island of Corfu in the Ionian Sea had a population of 2,000 Jews before the war, consisting of Romaniotes, Sephardim, and Italian-speaking Jews. There was the Kahal Shalom synagogue and a Jewish ghetto created when the island was ruled by Venice in the 14th century. German forces assumed control of the island after the surrender of Italy in 1943. The Germans began the implementation of the Final Solution on the island. The Jewish population of the island was rounded up by German Wehrmacht, police, and SS units. On June 10, 1944, 1,800 Jews were deported to Auschwitz, 200 Jews having been hidden in Orthodox Christian homes. When they arrived at Auschwitz in July, 1944, 435 of the men chosen for the Special Detachment (Sonderkommando) opted to be killed immediately rather than help the Germans in the extermination process. After the war, 80 Jews remained on Corfu.

Rhodes

Jews lived on the Aegean Sea island of Rhodes since 300 B.C. In the 16th century, the Dodecanese island became a predominantly Sephardic community. The Kalal synagogue was built in 1675 and there was a Jewish quarter known as “Juderia”. Rhodes was part of Italy during World War II. There were 2,000 Jews who lived on Rhodes. Under Italian control, they were not harmed. But when German forces occupied the island in 1943, the Final Solution was enforced.

On July 20, 1944, 1,700 Jews on the island of Rhodes were sent by boat to the Greek mainland by boat. Because there was no food or water, 23 died during the trip. They were then held at the Haidary transit camp from where they were transported to Auschwitz where 1,000 were killed and 700 selected for forced labor. They were deported from the Greek port city of Piraeus. There were 151 survivors. After the war, 35 Jews remained on the island.

Volos

Volos is a port city on the Aegean Sea. There has been Jewish settlement since the 14th century. There were 882 Jews before the war. On March 25, 1944, German forces sought to deport the Jewish population. Efforts by the EAM resistance group, Orthodox archbishop Ioakim, and Rabbi Pessah prevented the deportations. The German occupation forces deported 130 Jews to Auschwitz.

Canea

On May 21, 1944, the 260 Jews on Canea were arrested and subsequently deported. They were transported by boat. They all died when the boat sank under mysterious circumstances.

Kos

On the Dodecanese island of Kos, there is a Jewish cemetery and tombstone dating from the 17th century. All of the 90 Jewish inhabitants were killed by German forces.

Zakynthos

On the island of Zakynthos, all 275 Jews were saved through the intervention of Orthodox Bishop Chrysostomos and the Mayor Loukas Carrer.

Aushwitz-Birkenau

Based on data at the Auschwitz-Birkenau camp, 54,533 Greek Jews were deported to the concentration and death camp during the war, of whom 41,775 were sent to the gas chambers while 12,757, consisting of 8,025 men and 4,732 women, were assigned various duties in the camp. These duties included forced labor, the camp orchestra, the crematoria in 1943-44, medical experimentation on sterilization and experiments with twins. Some were assigned duty with the Sonderkommando, or Special Detachment.

In August, 1943, 300 Salonika Jews were sent to the Warsaw Ghetto as part of a labor battalion. In October, a second group consisting of Salonika Jews was sent. By July, most of the Salonika Jews were transported to the Dachau concentration camp, but others remained in Poland.

On August 2, 1944, there were 292 Greek Jews at the Auschwitz I main camp, 929 at the Auschwitz II or Birkenau camp, and 517 at Auschwitz III or the Buna-Monowitz camp. There were 731 Jewish women from Greece at Auschwitz. Most of the Salonika Jews selected for forced labor died from typhus, dysentery, the extreme cold temperature, suicide, and from starvation. Those that survived were part of the death marches that began on January 17, 1945 to Bergen-Belsen, Stutthof, and Mauthausen. Of the 54,000 Greek Jews deported to the concentration camps, less than 2,000 survived the war.

Members of the Balli Kombetar (BK, National Front). The Chameria BK rounded up Greek Jews who were transported to Auschwitz.

There were examples of resistance by Greek Jews at Auschwitz. In 1944, a group of 400 Salonika Jews refused their assignment in the Sonderkommando or Special Detachment because it would entail killing Hungarian Jews. They were sent to the gas chambers as punishment.  In the summer of 1944, Albert Errera from Larissa, wounded a guard and escaped across the Vistula River. He was subsequently caught and then tortured, until he died. On October 5-7, 1944, 135 Greek Jews, who had been former Greek Army officers, launched a camp uprising. Greek Jews also claimed that they blew up Crematorium III at Auschwitz, and according to accounts, died singing the Greek national anthem.

In September, 1943, Jurgen Stroop, who had put down the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising,  was appointed Higher SS and Political leader of Greece and promoted to SS Gruppenfuehrer. Stroop assisted Wisliceny in rounding up 800 Athenian Jews who were arrested and transported to Auschwitz. On March 24 and 25, 1944, the 352 Jews from Arta, 90 from Chalcis, 272 from Preveza, 130 from Volos, 225 from Larissa, 763 from Kastoria, 1,860 from Ioannina, 50 from Trikkala, and 12 families from Patras were arrested. Oberleutnant Kurt Waldheim was an intelligence officer in the German Army at the time and saw service in Greece. He was photographed in 1943 with a group of 15 German officers at the Hotel Grande Bretagne in Athens.

Resistance and Rescue

Italian officials in the Italian consulate in Salonika helped Jews to flee to the Italian zone of occupation. The Italian consul Guelfo Zamboni, voice-consul Cavalliere Rosenberg, Mark Mosseri, and Valerie Torres issued fake consular documents to Salonika Jews which allowed them to settle in Athens. Orthodox Archbishop Damaskenos, Salonikan lawyers, Orthodox religious leaders, educators, made appeals and efforts to stop the deportations. The Ioannis Rallis government protested over the deportations, as did Professor Nikolaos Louvaris, the education minister, who resisted the deportations. Constantine Logothetopoulos, the head of the government in 1943, wrote a letter of protest to the German plenipotentiary in Athens, Gunther Altenberg, on March 23.

Over 600 Greek Orthodox priests and clergy were arrested and themselves deported because they protected Greek Jews. The Greek Orthodox Church, under the metropolitan of Athens, Archbishop Damaskenos launched a resistance campaign that consisted of formal protests, encyclicals that called upon Orthodox clergy to protect Jews, and issued fake baptismal certificates to Jews. Over 250 Jewish children were hidden by Orthodox clergy. The Athens police also resisted the deportations by issuing fake ID documents to Jews.

There was also a guerrilla resistance movement in Greece. Active military resistance did not begin until 1942, led by the non-Communist, republican or royalist partisan forces, known as National Republican Greek League, Ellenikos Dimokratikos Ethnikos Stratos, or EDES, led by Napoleon Zervas. A second group was the Ethniki kai Koinoniki  Apeletherosis, National and Social Liberation, or EKKA led by Colonel Dimitrios Psarros. The other resistance group was the nationalist, communist guerrillas known as the National Liberation Front, Ethnikon Apeletherotikon Metopon, or EAM, formed in September, 1941. Its military wing was the Popular Greek Liberation Army, Ellenikos Laikos Apelethorotikos Stratos or ELAS, established in December, 1941, led by Athanasios Klaras, known as Aris Velouchiotis.. The Greek Communist leader, Nikos Zakhariadis, was imprisoned at the Dachau concentration camp by German occupation forces.

Conclusion

The prewar Jewish population of Greece and the island of Rhodes, then part of Italy, was 77,178. During the Holocaust, approximately 81% of the Jewish population of Greece was killed. Salonika had the largest Sephardic community in the word with a population of 56,000, 96% of whom were killed during the Holocaust. From Salonika, 2,000 Jews survived, 1,000 of whom returned after the war while 1,000 emigrated. The majority of the Jewish populations in Thessaly, consisting of Volos, Larissa, and Trikkala, survived the Holocaust. By contrast, there were no Greek survivors from Thrace. After World War II, Greece had a population of 5,000 Jews, most of whom lived in Athens, the capital, and in Salonika.

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