Article

Greece

And Its Jewish Survivors Who Became "Orphans of History" When you think of Greece you think of a country of antiquity bathed in special sunlight. It's a land with lingering blue waters and flowers that smile down from the balustrades and cool dark tile rooms. Yet its Jewish communities that flourished for hundreds of years came to a sudden halt when many became "orphans of history." It is full of many stories of those who survived, of those who perished and of those too weak to ask- but who is left to tell them? It is full of dreams of what once was- of Jewish medieval streets, of reunions that never took place, of a rabbi who expounded on the law before he too left for the camps on the divine purpose and plan of everything: "even a leaf does not move unless G-d wills it, and that G-d's providence reaches as far as the ant." Its dreams were held onto as members of its Jewish community struggled to survive the camps. The presence of the Jews in Greece goes back at least two-thousand years; we see its mention in Isaiah 24:15 as the "isles of the sea," which most probably refers to Jews who then inhabited the Greek isles. Many of the Jews of ancient times were exiled to Greece where they became known as Romaniot Jews. During these times they flourished, and each community was separate and distinct in its uniqueness. In 1500, large numbers of Spanish Jews arrived in Greece following the expulsion of Ferdinand and Isabella in 1492. In the fourteenth century, Hungarian Jews sought refuge in Greece from persecution following the Black Death. There were many Jewish communities in Greece, Salonika, Rhodes, Athens Corfu, Delbo and Larissa. At one time there were more than 84,000 Jews living in Greece, most of whom lived in Salonika. Salonika was a unique city. It was a centre of Torah learning and the response of its rabbis was accepted as the proper interpretation of the law throughout the Sephardic world. Rabbinical schools flourished and produced fascinating musings and commentaries, as well as great hymns. Rabbi Sholomo HaLevi Alkabetz, a sixteenth century Kabbalist, bequeathed the Jews of the Diaspora with the beautiful hymn "Lechah Dodi." The mystics of Safed, in fact, were in close contact with those of Salonika. The Castilian Spanish a strain of medieval Spanish known as Ladino was the common language of the Jews of the city. Salonika, the large port-city also known as Thessaloniki, was the capital of Macedonia and named for the sister of Alexander the Great. The city was built by Kassandros, the brother-in-law of the king. He requested from the Egyptian king, Ptolemy, to send him Jewish artisans. By the seventeenth century 30,000 Jews were living in the city. Thus it bore the title "Madre de Israel" (Mother of Israel) by the poet Samuel Usque. Under the Ottoman rule the city became a vibrant Jewish center, and even after its absorption into the Greek State in 1912, it remained one of the leading centers of European Jews. From the period between the sixteenth and seventeenth century, no surviving example of Greek (Romaniot) synagogues exists. In 1917 nearly the entire center of the city was destroyed by fire, including 32 synagogues. As a result, 50,000 Jews became homeless. The Hahambashi (chief rabbi) Jacob Meir, who later became the Chief Rabbi of Israel by the Sultan, encouraged the Jews to rebuild their lives once more. Since most of the city's population was Jewish, most businesses were closed on the Sabbath and Salonika on Friday evening took on a tender quiet flavor as the Jews of the city prepared to welcome the Sabbath. However, hard times would follow with the aftermath of the great fire on the fateful day of August 17th, 1917. The Jews were denied equal voting rights during the years 1922-32, and Salonika's mayor prohibited Jews from working in the port, Salonika's commercial hub. Jewish peddlers, pushcart operators, and fisherman could no longer work in the port area. They were fired from their jobs and replaced by refugee workers. In the years 1924-34 newspapers spread anti-Jewish propaganda. Jews had to close their stores on Sunday. Jews could no longer print Hebrew or Judeo-Spanish lettering on their store signs. Property was expropriated from Jews and the Jewish gravestones in Salonika were desecrated. It has been established that between the years 1918-1932 the Salonika Jewish community lost three-quarters of its communal property. In 1935 riots were fairly common and the Jews a natural object of abuse. This year saw the first emigration to Israel. On April 9, 1941, the first German panzer columns rolled into Salonika. Jewish adults were sent to forced labor camps, and their businesses were confiscated. Jewish literature and ritual objects from synagogues were sent to Germany. The great centuries-old Jewish cemetery, once located under the present-day precincts of the University of Thessaloniki, was completely bulldozed by the Germans. It was turned into a quarry and its tombstones were used for roads and for lining army latrines. Nothing remains, and throughout the city, bits and pieces that once marked the graves of great rabbis can still be seen. The Jews were isolated into three ghettos and forced to wear the yellow badge and to register their personal belongings. "It was the resurrection of the ghettos." In Ghetto - Baron de Hirsch, 10,000 Jews were crowded in an area capable of holding only three thousand. On July 11, 1942 the Germans ordered Jewish males between the ages of 18-45 to appear on Saturday morning in Freedom Square. Yitzchak Nehama in his testimony at the Eichmann trial testified: Nine thousand Jewish males showed up. They were then subjected throughout the day to public humiliation. German women on balconies surrounding the place took pictures. Whenever a Jew fainted or collapsed the women applauded. The German women who took the pictures were actresses of the military theater Kraft Durch Freude. Many Jewish men died on the spot. Later the Jewish community was allowed to ransom them back and in this manner the community's wealth was destroyed and its spine broken. On the 14th of March 1943, the first of 13 transports carried off 2,500 Jews by cattle cars to Auschwitz-Birkenau. Deportation occurred at a rate of three times a week- on Monday, Wednesday and Friday. Each group consisted of approximately 3,000 Jews. By the August 3rd of that year, 56,000 Jews had been transported, 900 were left in the city, and all but 3,000 died in the gas chambers. Only a small remnant returned. In Auschwitz, the beaten and tortured remembered Salonika, "I wanted to hug and kiss the pebbles, the sea, the sky, the sunset," writes a survivor. The death marches were also remembered; here the prisoners were transferred to other camps before the advancing allied armies were able to liberate them. "I remember," one survivor of a death march recalled, "one town where from the corner of my eye, I saw the flutter of a window blind and when I looked down, an apple lay on the ground at my feet - a person acting human in a sea of inhumanity." "The march seemed to go on forever, how many died in the whispering cold, I can only imagine." Liberation too would be remembered. The Nazis, before fleeing, had bolted and locked the doors of the barracks, and the living slept among the dead, spending their days staring at them. Until the day of freedom came and a light seeped from the frame of the barrack door, a survivor recalls, "I saw a face. I saw tears of disbelief- of shock. I saw their hands in tough salute. I weighed 50 pounds. I was in the arms of my liberator and he carried me, like a limp light little doll to a waiting truck just outside the barrack," which took her to a world of recovery. For the survivors, returning was not easy; it was a returning to emptiness where many could count as much as 80 of their family members killed. The survivors came to be known as the "Orphans of History" and Salonika's great Sephardic community came to an end. In many towns today there is hardly any evidence at all of the passage of the Jews, as in the case in Thebe, Patras and Serres. In others, the ruin of a quarter, a synagogue or a school are all that remain, but even these can evoke images of Jewish life in Greece as it was lived for centuries. In places such as Delos, whose Jewish community goes back as early as the first century B.C.E., one can see one of the oldest synagogues near the shoreline. Benches lined the northern half of the western wall. Dominating the arrangement was a fine marble throne and footstool which still exists and is referred as "The Throne of Moses." In Larrisa, located 220 miles north of Athens, there is a modern monument dedicated to the victims of the Holocaust located on the banks of the Pineois River. Here in Larissa, many of its leading members proudly bore the title Celeko ("most honored") in recognition of their philanthropic activity. The Beth Din of Larissa and its learned rabbis were widely respected. Thirty Jewish families resided on the island of Zante (Zakynthos) in 1522. By 1712, there were two synagogues: the Zakynthian and the Cretan. An earthquake in 1953 destroyed the Cretan was damaged the Zakynthian. During the German occupation, there were 270 Jews there, many of whom fled to the mountains. The Germans had ordered the Mayor of the Island Loukas Carrer and the Metropolite Orthodoxe Chryssostomos to present a list of the Jews of Zante. Due to their refusal all the Jews were saved. The Jews of Greece erected a monument to honor the memory of these two brave men. The island of Rhodes dated back to the first century C.E., and during the four centuries that followed, yeshivas and synagogues mushroomed. An Italian Rabbi visiting in 1467 wrote, "I have never seen a Jewish community where everyone- from the oldest to the youngest- is so smart and looks so noble." Some of the liturgical silver as well as the eighteenth century ivory used for decorating the spindles on which the Torah scroll is rolled, is today in the Jewish Museum of Greece in Athens. These religious objects were hidden by the Turkish Muslim community from the Nazis after the arrest of the community. Athens, the capital of modern Greece, is home to the central board of the Jewish community in Greece, with a Jewish population of about 6,000. There are today two active synagogues, a Jewish museum and two cemeteries. The "old" synagogue is still referred to by its older members as the Ioannioki Synagogue and the newer synagogue is called Beth Shalom, and was completed just before the Second World War. It was Elias Barzil, the Grand Rabbi of Athens, who was given an ultimatum by the aide to Eichmann to provide the names and addresses of the Jewish community within three days. Instead, on that Sunday morning, along with his wife and daughter were hidden in a mail truck and escaped to the hills of central Greece, and thus they survived. This ruse completely disrupted Eichmann's plans to destroy the community and saved the lives of hundreds, if not thousands of the Jews of Athens who followed the Rabbi's decision and fled to the mountains. Athens was liberated on October 12, 1944, and hundreds of blue and white Greek flags draped the balconies. The road leading to Athens was bedecked with carpets for the British jeeps as they passed en route to the city. Life is made up of memories, each different and distinct, like the Jewish communities of Greece. Its memories are of the young woman in the camps who tried to hear "the clatter of the old streets," and the sounds once again of her father's words; memories of "the little Jewish boy in the classroom who cried and cried" as the math teacher gave out an anti-Semitic diatribe and the hundred classmates who listened silently. Its memories are of those in the camps who were "given the watery broth which was ladled out as a meal once a day," and of the young girl who "dreamed of reunion" and cried desperate tears because at liberation she did not want to go to a place other than the one she had promised her mother in Auschwitz "otherwise they will think I am dead." Even though that reunion never took place, her wish will yet be granted, for as it is written in the Talmud in tractate Pesachim 88a: "R. Yochanan said: The reunion of the Exiles is as important as the day when heaven and earth were created…" Greece, a Jewish community, a place of dreams long ago… Copyright © Stanley Mann Michlalah Jerusalem College All Rights Reserved