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Encyclopaedia Judaica

Jews in Greece 08: Parted Greece 1940-1944

German, Italian, and Bulgarian zone - Germans take over the Italian zone - deportations - destruction of 85% of the Jewish population - resistance

from: Greece; In: Encyclopaedia Judaica 1971, vol. 7

presented by Michael Palomino (2008)

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<The Italian army attacked Greece on Oct. 28, 1940, and the Germans invaded on April 6, 1941. According to statistics of the *Salonika Jewish community, 12,898 Jews, among them 343 officers, served in the Greek army and several hundred Jews fell in battle. The entire country was occupied on June 2, 1941, and split up among the Axis (German, Italian, and Bulgarian) forces. Treatment of the Jews differed from one occupied zone to another.

German zone.

[Deportations of Salonikan Jewry - destruction of the Jewish community of Salonika]

Salonika was taken by German troops on April 9, 1941. Anti-Jewish measures were at once instituted, beginning on April 12 when Jewish-owned apartments were confiscated and the Jewish inhabitants ordered to vacate them within a few hours. Three days later, the members of the Jewish community council and other prominent Jews were arrested.

A "scientific" delegation arrived from Germany for the purpose of plundering the community of its valuable Hebrew books and manuscripts for transfer to the Nazi "Institute for Jewish Affairs" in Frankfort. Before long, the impoverishment of the community became overwhelming and the community council was unable to extend aid to all those who were in need.

Contagious diseases spread and the death rate rose steeply, especially among the children.

In July 1942 the men were sent on forced labor; a short while later, however, the community council made an agreement with the Germans [[and their collaborators]], whereby it undertook to pay them the sum of 2,500,000,000 old drachmas, due Dec. 15, 1942, in consideration of which the Germans would refrain from drafting Jews for forced labor.

At the end of 1942 Jewish-owned factories and groceries were confiscated and the well-known Jewish cemetery was destroyed.

On Feb. 6, 1943, racial restrictions were introduced; Jews were ordered to wear a yellow badge and confined to a ghetto, while special signs had to be posted above windows and establishments belonging to Jews. Jews were also prohibited from using public transport and had to be indoors by sundown. The transfer to the ghetto, set up in a specially designated area, had to be completed by March 25, 1943.

On February 25, the trade unions were ordered to expel their Jewish members; on March 1 the Jews had to declare all the capital in their possession, and 104 hostages were seized to ensure full compliance with this order.

At this time, a rumor spread that the Jewish population was about to be deported to *Poland. The recently established Jewish underground warned the Jews of the danger confronting them, but little heed was taken and only about 3,000 escaped to Athens. The first transport of Jewish deportees left Salonika for the gas chambers on March 15, 1943, followed by further transports of 3,000 Jews each at intervals of two to three days.

[[Gas chambers probably were not the cause of death, but tunnel system constructioning for the "Underground Reich" for underground weapon production, and add to this in the camps epidemics, hunger and cold. Death began even on the transport already. For all sorts of death see the Holocaust table]].

Thus, various sectors of the ghetto were systematically (col. 878)

cleared of their inhabitants. Five transports left in the last two weeks of March, nine in April, and two in May; in June 820 Jews were dispatched to Auschwitz, the transport consisting of members and employees of the community council and teachers.

On Aug. 2, 1943, skilled workers, "privileged" Jews, and a group of 367 Spanish citizens were sent to *Bergen-Belsen, where they remained until Feb. 7, 1944. On Aug. 7, 1,800 starving Jewish forced laborers were brought to Salonika and deported from there in the 19th and final transport from Salonika to the death camps [[many with tunnel systems]].

In all 46,091 Salonika Jews were deported - 45,650 to Auschwitz [[with was a stopover for the tunnel systems in Eastern Germany]] and 441 to Bergen-Belsen - 95% of whom were killed [[or - according to the latest research - buried alive in the tunnel systems at the end of the war, see the Holocaust table ]]. The renowned Salonika community, the great center of Sephardi Jewry, came to an end.

Other Districts under German Occupation.

[Further restrictions and deportations]

On Feb. 3, 1943, the chief rabbi of Salonika, Rabbi Zevi Koretz, was ordered to ensure adherence to the racial restrictions in the provincial towns under the jurisdiction of German headquarters in Salonika. These were the towns in East Thracia, near the Turkish border, as well as Veroia, Edessa, and Phlorina in central and eastern Macedonia.

On May 9, 2,194 Jews from these town were sent to Auschwitz [[probably to the tunnel systems in Eastern Germany]]. A few Jews were saved by the local population and the chief of police, e.g., in the town of Katherine. Prominent Greeks, among them the archbishop of Athens and labor leaders, tried to assist the Jews, and there were Greeks who offered shelter and helped the Jews escape to the mountains.

Italian zone.

[No persecution of the Jews under Italian rule - Germans take over the Italian zone on 3 Sept. 1943 - persecution of the Jews]

The Italian forces controlled Athens and the Peloponnesus. As long as the zone was held by the Italians, the Jews were not persecuted, the racial laws were disregarded, and efforts were made to sabotage the Italian racial policy.

After the Italian surrender (Sept. 3, 1943), however, the Germans occupied the entire country, and on Sept. 20, 1943, Eichmann's deputy, Dieter *Wisliceny, arrived in Athens with detailed plans for the destruction of the Jews. Elijah Barzilai, the rabbi of Athens, was ordered by Wisliceny to provide a list of all the members of the Jewish community. Instead of doing so, the rabbi warned the Jews of Athens and himself fled to a provincial town. This enabled a considerable number of Athenian Jews to escape.

On Oct. 7, 1943, Juergen *Stroop, the hoehere SS und Polizeifuehrer [["Higher SS and Police Leader"]] in Greece, published an order in the newspapers, dated October 3, for all Jews to register, on penalty of death. Archbishop Damaskinos gave instructions to all monasteries and convents in Athens and the provincial towns to shelter all Jews who knocked on their doors. On March 24, 1944, the Athens synagogue was surrounded by the Nazis [[and their collaborators]] and 300 Jews were arrested; another 500 Jews were routed out of hiding. They were first interned in a temporary camp at Haidar and later sent to their death in Auschwitz on April 2 [[probably to further tunnel systems for underground weapon production]], along with other Jews caught in Athens. The rest of Athenian Jewry hid with their Greek-Christian neighbors. The Jewish partisans supplied food to those in hiding in cellars and attics.

Bulgarian zone.

A large part of Thrace and Eastern Macedonia remained under Bulgarian occupation, including the towns of Kavalla, Serrai, Drama, Besanti, Komotine, and Alexandroupolis (Dedeagach). Over 4,000 Jews from Thrace and over 7,000 from Macedonia were deported by the Bulgarians (see *Bulgaria, Holocaust) to the gas chambers in Poland;

[[Gas chambers probably were not the cause of death, but tunnel system constructioning for the "Underground Reich" for underground weapon production, and add to this in the camps epidemics, hunger and cold. Death began even on the transport already. For all sorts of death see the Holocaust table]].

about 2,200 Jews survived.

The total number of Jews in Greece sent to death in the extermination camps is estimated at 65,000 - about 85% of the entire Jewish population [[of 1941]].

Jewish Resistance.

[Attacks against the occupation forces]

The conquest of Athens by the Germans on April 27, 1941, marked the end of open warfare. Over 300 Jewish soldiers and 1,000 other Jews joined Greek partisan units. The Jewish partisans sabotaged (col. 879)

German military centers and military factories, blew up German supply ships, and severed lines of communication. A group of 40 Jewish partisans took part in the blowing up of Gorgopotamo Bridge, causing a break in the rail link between northern and southern Greece.

[[There is no indication about revenge actions by the occupation forces for these attacks]].

At the beginning of 1943 partisan units made up entirely or primarily of Jews were set up in Salonika, Athens, and Thessaly, under the command of Greek or British officers. The Salonika partisan units gathered information on troop movements in Macedonia and transmitted it to partisan headquarters in Athens. In Thessaly the national resistance organization, set up by the Jews in the towns of Volos, Larissa, and Trikkala, was under the command of an aged rabbi, Moses Pesah, who roamed the mountains with a rifle in his hand. The courage and heroism displayed by the Jewish partisans earned them the praise of field marshal Wilson, the commanding officer of the Allied Forces in the Near East. Their main task was the establishment of contacts between the various parts of Greece and the Allied general headquarters in Cairo.

The Jewish partisans also succeeded in hiding hundreds of Jews in the mountains and remote villages. Others worked for the Germans under assumed names in such places as the port or Piraeus and carried out acts of sabotage.> (col. 880)

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