Η ευαισθησία των ευαίσθητων.

[sys3x]

Εντωμεταξύ σκεφτείτε (όσο και όσοι μπορείτε) να μην άλλαζαν τα κόζια το 1912 και η Θεσσαλονίκη (και η ευρύτερη περιοχή) να ήταν ακόμη στα χέρια Τούρκων όταν μπήκανε οι Γερμανοί.


Ναι τόσο βλάκες είστε.

[Cavaliere]

Ποιοι ήταν οι μεσεγγυούχοι
«Υπάρχουν μακρές λίστες μεσεγγυούχων με ονόματα υποκειμένων που πρέπει να “προσωποποιηθούν”, ώστε να δούμε τις αφετηρίες, τα κίνητρα και τις στοχεύσεις τους. Θα πρέπει να δούμε ποιοι από αυτούς συνιστούν τον πραγματικό κόσμο της συνεργασίας με τους ναζί, ποιοι πήραν τις μεγαλύτερες και ακριβότερες εβραϊκές περιουσίες», επισημαίνει ο επίκουρος καθηγητής του τμήματος Βαλκανικών Σλαβικών και Ανατολικών Σπουδών ΠΑΜΑΚ Στράτος ΔορδανάςΤο βίντεο σχετικής ομιλίας του κου Δορδανά στο συνέδριο «Η οικονομία της Κατοχής και η τύχη των εβραϊκών περιουσιών» στο Παν.Μακεδονίας το 2009. Χαρακτηριστική περίπτωση είναι ο Γεώργιος ΠούλοςΓεώργιος Πούλος, αρχηγός της εθνικιστικής οργάνωσης «Εθνική Ένωσις Ελλάς» κατά το μεσοπόλεμο, και ο πιο διακεκριμένος συνεργάτης των Γερμανών στην Κατοχή, ο οποίος έλαβε«Σιωπή για περιουσίες Εβραίων», kathimerini.gr από τα χέρια του στρατιωτικού διοικητή της Θεσσαλονίκης Μαξ Μέρτεν –ως “επιβράβευση” για τις “καλές υπηρεσίες” του– τα κλειδιά του κοσμηματοπωλείου των αδερφών Ισαάκ και Ρόμπερτ Μποτόν. Τα κοσμήματα πουλήθηκαν άμεσα και απέφεραν κέρδος 15.000 χρυσών λιρών, τις οποίες φημολογείται ότι ο Πούλος διοχέτευσε στον αντικομμουνιστικό αγώνα.

Στις λίστες των μεσεγγυούχων, εκτός από κραυγαλέες περιπτώσειςυπάρχουν και άτομα που είχαν καλές σχέσεις με τη γερμανική ή την ελληνική διοίκηση και πήραν ακίνητα-φιλέτα, άλλοι που βρέθηκαν με εβραϊκά καταστήματα στην πλειοψηφία τους κενά εμπορευμάτων (δηλαδή ήταν μεσεγγυούχοι από δεύτερο και τρίτο χέρι) αλλά και εσωτερικά εκτοπισμένοι από την Ανατολική Μακεδονία, που βρήκαν την ευκαιρία να συνεχίσουν τις εμπορικές τους δραστηριότητες στη Θεσσαλονίκη.

Τι γίνεται όμως με τις περιπτώσεις όσων δεν θεωρούνται «δωσίλογοι», σύμφωνα με την ερμηνεία που δίνει ο νόμος; Είναι «συνεργάτης» ο μεσεγγυούχος ο οποίος πήρε σπίτια, καταστήματα και εμπορεύματα χάρη στις καλές του σχέσεις με τη γερμανική ή την ελληνική διοίκηση; Είναι ένοχος όποιος αρπάζει τα υπάρχοντα του Εβραίου γείτονά του ή ξεθεμελιώνει ταφόπλακες από τα εβραϊκά μνήματα, ακολουθώντας απλά το παράδειγμα των ταγών της πόλης –του δήμου, της εκκλησίας, της αρχαιολογικής υπηρεσίας; Πόσο βαρύνει συλλογικά την πόλη η μαζική συμμετοχή των Ελλήνων χριστιανών στην εξαφάνιση κάθε ίχνους εβραϊκής παρουσίας;

«Το ζήτημα δεν είναι μόνο διαχειριστικό ή ζήτημα συμμετοχής στη διασπάθιση και καταλήστευση, είναι ένα ζήτημα που έχει ηθική και συναισθηματική διάσταση», απαντά ο κ. Δορδανάς. «Η απόσταση μεταξύ των δυο κοινοτήτων, Ελλήνων χριστιανών και Ελλήνων Εβραίων, εμφανίζεται από το 1912 και τα επόμενα χρόνια αναδύεται ολοένα και περισσότερο στο προσκήνιο. Κάτι που δεν έχει να κάνει με τη χωρητικότητα –αλλού οι Εβραίοι, αλλού οι χριστιανοί– αλλά και με το κατά πόσον οι χριστιανοί αισθάνονταν τους Εβραίους ως “άλλους”, ή ως συμπατριώτες. Όταν λοιπόν συμβαίνει η γερμανική εισβολή και δίνεται το έναυσμα, είτε υπογείως είτε συνειδητά, μια κατηγορία Ελλήνων “αρπάζει την ευκαιρία”. Η “ηθική απόσταση” έδωσε την ευκαιρία σε ανθρώπους να αισθανθούν ότι όλο αυτό [σ.σ. το δράμα] δεν ήταν δικό τους, δεν τους αφορούσε.

[Cavaliere]

Το αλβανικό έπος, µε την αθρόα συµµετοχή Εβραίων της Θεσσαλονίκης, ήταν καταλυτικό ώστε να αρχίσουν να θεωρούνται Ελληνες. Αυτό όµως δεν ήταν αρκετό ώστε στη Θεσσαλονίκη να τους προστατέψουν οι τοπικές αρχές. Ελληνες όχι απλώς µε την έννοια της εθνικής καταγωγής, αλλά µε εκείνη του πολίτη. Στον µεσοπόλεµο επίσηµη κρατική πολιτική ήταν να εξελληνιστεί η πόλη. Υπάρχουν συντεταγµένες δυνάµεις στη Θεσσαλονίκη για να χτίσουν την αφήγηση ότι είµαστε εδώ από τους αλεξανδρινούς και τους βυζαντινούς χρόνους, είµαστε µια συνέχεια. Ο Αθηναίος δεν έχει να αποδείξει κάτι σε κανέναν.

Λεόν Σαλτιέλ.

[Nero]

Mazower

Religious anti-Semitism and a sense of ethnic rivalry and competition coloured the atmosphere of the interwar city. But as we have seen, they only became a recipe for violence when politicians sought to use an anti-Jewish policy for their own electoral advantage. Stereotypes facilitated but did not cause the Campbell riot. Nor did stereotypes prevent the Greek authorities from recognizing and supporting Jewish life in various ways. Indeed, an anti-Venizelist administration made Yom Kippur a public holiday in Salonica—to the consternation of Nazi diplomats. Although the anti-Semites fulminated, there is no indication that this was an unpopular move among a majority of the city’s inhabitants for whom co-existence and increasing interaction were facts of life. The metropolitan, Gennadios, and the chief rabbi, Koretz, preserved cordial relations, and tried to ensure that their subordinates did too. Thus in the mid-1930s, the sources of communal tension were largely fading even as official anti-Semitism intensified in Germany, Poland and Romania. Left to themselves, Greeks and Jews might well have sorted out their differences. In the Second World War, hundreds of young Jewish men from the city fought in the ranks of the Greek army, and some of these went on to join the resistance. But they found themselves now up against an infinitely more deadly and highly organized form of anti-Semitism—not the petty discrimination of Greek officials, nor the mob violence of provincial right-wing louts, but the genocidal capabilities of the most advanced state in Europe.

...

This was confirmed when the quisling daily Nea Evropi published a series of articles on the history of the local Jewish community. The story they described was of Greek suffering at Jewish hands: since 1890, according to the author, Nikolaos Kammonas (from an old, respected Salonica family, he later became a founding member of Salonica’s branch of the Friends of Adolf Hitler), “the Jews managed with infernal perversity and venomous perfidy to secure their financial and racial empire on the corpse of Macedonian Hellenism.” Others joined in denouncing this “danger to our health.” One journalist described the Jews as “a sort of epidemic” and called on the authorities to remove traders near the Hirsch hospital, and “to force them to wash themselves, and their houses, and stop their bazaars.” Nor could anyone doubt the ultimate backing for such sentiments. On 9 November 1942, the Greek papers carried a speech by Hitler under the headline: “International Jewry will disappear from Europe.”11 All of this was being orchestrated locally by a new military propaganda office run by the Germans. Its Greek underlings included well-established journalists such as Alexandros Orologas, the owner of Apoyevmatini, and Nikolaos Fardis, whose inflammatory writings in Makedonia had played such an important part in the Campbell riot. In the 1920s, the same Fardis had been vociferous in calling for the destruction of remaining Ottoman buildings. What drew men like him to collaboration was not racialism so much as an extreme nationalism that allowed them to accept any measures necessary to weaken the role played by other ethnic groups in the life of the city.

evertheless, many Christians were urging Jews to go underground. Eleftheria Drosakis’s grandfather, himself a refugee from Smyrna, visited an old Jewish friend in the town ghetto—Christians could enter without hindrance—and offered to hide him. The postman told Erika Kounio’s father to give him his two children: they could stay with his mother outside Verria. Railway workers, sometimes for money and sometimes out of sheer compassion, hid Jews in goods wagons heading south. Leftists organized a network which spirited more than seventy out of the city, and offered help to many more.35

Yet going underground put the helpers at risk as well: Anastasios Maretis was imprisoned in the Pavlos Melas camp for hiding Jews and was interned in the Hirsch camp—this happened to several Christians—and beaten up. It is therefore not surprising that Christians hesitated to help Jewish friends. “The day before yesterday the chemist’s daughter came to see me and I pleaded with her to tell her father that I want to visit him and to rest there for a while,” wrote Neama on 8 March. “He refused. Today she came again and gave me a small jar of marmalade and a small tsoureki [bread] and asked me to forgive him for his refusal.” Leon Hayouel “tried to remain in Salonica but was unable to.” “To flee to the mountains,” recalled Leon Perahia, “I had to find a contact with the men in the mountains … Obviously I didn’t bother with the star. I went to Kalamaria where most of my comrades were hanging out. For three days I came and went until I found the right guy.”36

Opportunities to get away did sometimes present themselves which were rejected for fear of splitting up the family. Most of the actual and potential escapees were relatively young, mobile and usually single: they spoke fluent Greek and had many Christian friends and workmates, whereas the older people spoke Greek, if at all, with a heavy and easily recognizable accent. Young people turned down chances to escape when their parents decreed the family should stay together. Others chose to stay, because they felt that abandoning their older and younger relatives was irresponsible. Sam Profetas was urged by his boss to head for Athens, and told he could get him false papers. Then he heard that the Germans had rounded up the inhabitants of Regi Vardar, where his mother and sisters lived, and taken them to the Hirsch camp. “Thank you for your suggestion,” Profetas told him. “But you must bear in mind that we Jews have two religions: first comes the family, and after that God. I can’t leave my mother who has struggled hard all her life to bring me up.” And he presented himself voluntarily at the camp entrance.37

Yet hundreds of Jews did escape—on foot, by boat and by rail, into the villages of the Chalkidiki peninsula, the mountains of western Macedonia, the Greek islands, Turkey and above all Athens, which remained still under Italian occupation. They were helped by scores of individuals, as well as the burgeoning left-wing resistance movement—still in its infancy in the Macedonian hinterland—and even by the Italian consular authorities in the city, who negotiated strenuously with the SS to issue as many passports as they could. In the early hours of July 15—after all but the final 2000 Jews had already been deported to Auschwitz—the Italian consulate managed to transfer a train with 320 Jews under its protection to Athens. In Salonica there were left only the “privileged” Jewish elite, several hundred Jews with Spanish papers, and more than 1,000 men who had been building roads for a military contractor in central Greece. These men made up the last transport.

ON THE STREETS, many Greeks showed their revulsion at the German measures from the moment Jews were forced to wear the yellow star. Yacoel noted the relief Jews felt when they observed “the decent conduct of the Christian population” and their “many expressions of compassion and sympathy.” He tells a revealing story from 25 February, the first day the star had to be displayed:

The writer’s housemaid, a young Jewish girl, whose speech and external appearance could in no way betray her religion, went out on the balcony above the street for a household chore, without having worn the distinguishing Jewish sign. While there, she observed a scene involving a Jewish woman wearing the Jewish sign going down the street, timidly passing a Christian woman going up the street. The Christian, probably seeing that sign for the first time, addressed a comforting word to the Jewess. Perceiving then the writer’s housemaid on the balcony smiling and assuming her to be a Christian, she raised her head and chided her for her behaviour, saying: “Why are you laughing, child? You ought to feel compassion for them over their plight. They are people just like us. Can you be sure that perhaps tomorrow it won’t be our turn?”39

Solidarity was shown by many friends and neighbours when the Jews were forced out of their houses and confined to the ghettoes. They went to make their farewells, promised to look after property and valuables—though this too would become a risky matter—and exchanged gifts and tears. “Everyone was out and crying,” recalled one. “The Christians were sad we were leaving our homes; we sat with the Greek women who wept as we left.”40 As long lines of hundreds of people, all ages, pushing carts and carrying heavily laden rucksacks, trekked through the centre of town to the Hirsch camp, many Christians gathered on the pavements to see them go. Leon Perachia noticed the sad faces of those watching as he went past. Another recalled that “we walked down Leoforos Stratou and Egnatia. On the way there were many people, Christians, and they looked on helplessly. Some cried.”41

“By the station, my path was interrupted by a river of Jews coming down from the camp to the train,” recollected Eleftheria Drosakis, then a young girl from a refugee family. Living near the station, she witnessed several such forced marches, and would rush out hoping to see the friends she used to play with. “And my joy was great when I didn’t see one of them, because we hoped they would escape.” On the other side of the city, among the Pontic refugees in the suburb of Kalamaria, someone greeted the apparently endless line of Jews trailing past with the comment “They deserve it for having crucified our Lord.” But Georgios Andreades, then only seven, asked himself what the poor people he saw before him—“for me the sight was a painful one”—had to do with Christ’s crucifixion.42

Whereas individuals displayed their unhappiness at what was happening, there was little sign of this on the part of the city’s professional associations and organizations. The one exception was the Greek ex-servicemen’s association which reacted angrily when disabled Jewish war veterans were made to take part in the forced registration in July 1942. On several occasions after this, the leaders of the Christian association of war wounded tried to intervene on behalf of their Jewish comrades. Eventually the Germans threatened to execute them if they went ahead with planned demonstrations. They were the only ones to take protest so far. Yacoel, the community’s lawyer, could not hide his disappointment with the frostily detached attitude of men he had long known and had assumed would feel differently. As he wrote in his 1943 memoirs, written shortly before his own deportation and death, the city’s professional classes, in particular, the major merchants and businessmen, showed “a total lack of comradely solidarity.” Following the forced dismissal of Jews from Salonica’s guilds and associations, Yacoel called on “the president of the largest and most outstanding economic organization of the city”—presumably a reference to the Chamber of Commerce. Despite the man’s many and strong ties to Jewish firms—so strong indeed that he spoke Judeo-Spanish—he remained “cold and passive” and refused to do anything.

In this respect, Salonica was very different from Athens. There Archbishop Damaskinos condemned the deportations in no uncertain terms in formal letters sent to the prime minister and Gunther von Altenburg, the Reich plenipotentiary for Greece. His many fellow-signatories in this remarkable protest included the representatives of all the chief professional and public institutions of the capital. Athens business associations proposed that Salonican Jews should, if necessary, be concentrated internally rather than sent out of the country. By contrast, the Metropolitan of Salonica, Gennadios, appears to have confined himself to a private protest. When a handful of city notables visited Simonides to try to forestall the deportations the governor-general simply referred them to the Germans, who expressed their astonishment that the Greeks did not understand the favour that was being done them. Thereafter, the silence from Salonica’s professional classes was deafening. From the university professors and students, the businessmen and lawyers’ associations, there was barely a whisper. The municipality enquired of the governor-general when it should advertise vacancies for the jobs previously filled by Jews, and renamed the few streets in the city which commemorated Jewish figures. Simonides himself, far from protesting the deportations, raised no objections, failed to report what was happening to his own government in Athens and provided gendarmes and other civil servants to assist Eichmann’s men. “The rumour circulated insistently in Salonica,” writes Michael Molho, “especially among the Jews, that the Government was not entirely opposed to the idea of deporting the Jewish element, and this because the Government thought thus to attain a double end, that of assuring the racial homogeneity of the population, and of facilitating the settlement of the refugees from Thrace and Macedonia who had flooded into the city.”43

This lack of reaction could not be put down to the impossibility of protest itself. In 1942 there had been strikes and demonstrations against civil mobilization, and these were renewed in April 1943—in the middle of the deportations. There were further labour protests in August and September 1943 mounted by students, union workers, and war veterans against food shortages and profiteers. But the biggest public protest of all came in July 1943 when the Germans decided to expand the Bulgarian occupation zone in northern Greece, allowing a Bulgarian division into the vicinity of the city. In fact, the prime concern of Simonides, Archbishop Gennadios and a range of political figures from across the spectrum in 1943 was to prevent the gains of 1912–13 being rolled back and seeing the Bulgarian army enter Salonica. To stop this happening, they formed a semi-official National Macedonian Council to persuade the Germans to keep faith with the Greek administration. They believed Max Merten, the chief Wehrmacht administrator in the city, was sympathetic, and an advocate for the Greek side in discussions with his pro-Bulgarian military superiors. No senior Greek political figure in the city was thus prepared to forfeit his support and waste valuable political capital by speaking out on behalf of the Jews, not least since Merten had already made it clear to everyone that this was a matter decided at higher levels in Berlin and out of his hands.44

Something less than 5 per cent of Salonica’s Jewish population escaped deportation compared with perhaps 50 per cent in the Greek capital a year later. This was partly because the Jews of the Macedonian capital were far more numerous, more obtrusive and less assimilated than in Athens; helping a few thousand mostly Greek-speaking Jews in a city of nearly half a million was considerably easier than helping 50,000 Sefardim in a city half the size. Timing explains a lot too: much more was known by 1944, not least because of what had happened earlier. Perhaps more could have escaped from Salonica had families been willing to split up, or if Chief Rabbi Koretz had been a different personality, and obstructed German wishes—as the Chief Rabbi of Athens did: by 1944 the resistance was fully operational and better able to help than it had been the previous year. But a crucial part was also played by the different priorities and sentiments of the elites in Greece’s two main cities. According to the German records, approximately 45,000 people reached Auschwitz from Salonica. Within a few hours of arriving, most of them had been killed in gas chambers.45

[foscilis]

Εντωμεταξύ σκεφτείτε (όσο και όσοι μπορείτε) να μην άλλαζαν τα κόζια το 1912 και η Θεσσαλονίκη (και η ευρύτερη περιοχή) να ήταν ακόμη στα χέρια Τούρκων όταν μπήκανε οι Γερμανοί.

όπως ήταν η Ανδριανούπολη όταν μπήκαν οι Γερμανοί;

[Nero]

Mazower

Spoiler

Religious anti-Semitism and a sense of ethnic rivalry and competition coloured the atmosphere of the interwar city. But as we have seen, they only became a recipe for violence when politicians sought to use an anti-Jewish policy for their own electoral advantage. Stereotypes facilitated but did not cause the Campbell riot. Nor did stereotypes prevent the Greek authorities from recognizing and supporting Jewish life in various ways. Indeed, an anti-Venizelist administration made Yom Kippur a public holiday in Salonica—to the consternation of Nazi diplomats. Although the anti-Semites fulminated, there is no indication that this was an unpopular move among a majority of the city’s inhabitants for whom co-existence and increasing interaction were facts of life. The metropolitan, Gennadios, and the chief rabbi, Koretz, preserved cordial relations, and tried to ensure that their subordinates did too. Thus in the mid-1930s, the sources of communal tension were largely fading even as official anti-Semitism intensified in Germany, Poland and Romania. Left to themselves, Greeks and Jews might well have sorted out their differences. In the Second World War, hundreds of young Jewish men from the city fought in the ranks of the Greek army, and some of these went on to join the resistance. But they found themselves now up against an infinitely more deadly and highly organized form of anti-Semitism—not the petty discrimination of Greek officials, nor the mob violence of provincial right-wing louts, but the genocidal capabilities of the most advanced state in Europe.

...

This was confirmed when the quisling daily Nea Evropi published a series of articles on the history of the local Jewish community. The story they described was of Greek suffering at Jewish hands: since 1890, according to the author, Nikolaos Kammonas (from an old, respected Salonica family, he later became a founding member of Salonica’s branch of the Friends of Adolf Hitler), “the Jews managed with infernal perversity and venomous perfidy to secure their financial and racial empire on the corpse of Macedonian Hellenism.” Others joined in denouncing this “danger to our health.” One journalist described the Jews as “a sort of epidemic” and called on the authorities to remove traders near the Hirsch hospital, and “to force them to wash themselves, and their houses, and stop their bazaars.” Nor could anyone doubt the ultimate backing for such sentiments. On 9 November 1942, the Greek papers carried a speech by Hitler under the headline: “International Jewry will disappear from Europe.”11 All of this was being orchestrated locally by a new military propaganda office run by the Germans. Its Greek underlings included well-established journalists such as Alexandros Orologas, the owner of Apoyevmatini, and Nikolaos Fardis, whose inflammatory writings in Makedonia had played such an important part in the Campbell riot. In the 1920s, the same Fardis had been vociferous in calling for the destruction of remaining Ottoman buildings. What drew men like him to collaboration was not racialism so much as an extreme nationalism that allowed them to accept any measures necessary to weaken the role played by other ethnic groups in the life of the city.

evertheless, many Christians were urging Jews to go underground. Eleftheria Drosakis’s grandfather, himself a refugee from Smyrna, visited an old Jewish friend in the town ghetto—Christians could enter without hindrance—and offered to hide him. The postman told Erika Kounio’s father to give him his two children: they could stay with his mother outside Verria. Railway workers, sometimes for money and sometimes out of sheer compassion, hid Jews in goods wagons heading south. Leftists organized a network which spirited more than seventy out of the city, and offered help to many more.35

Yet going underground put the helpers at risk as well: Anastasios Maretis was imprisoned in the Pavlos Melas camp for hiding Jews and was interned in the Hirsch camp—this happened to several Christians—and beaten up. It is therefore not surprising that Christians hesitated to help Jewish friends. “The day before yesterday the chemist’s daughter came to see me and I pleaded with her to tell her father that I want to visit him and to rest there for a while,” wrote Neama on 8 March. “He refused. Today she came again and gave me a small jar of marmalade and a small tsoureki [bread] and asked me to forgive him for his refusal.” Leon Hayouel “tried to remain in Salonica but was unable to.” “To flee to the mountains,” recalled Leon Perahia, “I had to find a contact with the men in the mountains … Obviously I didn’t bother with the star. I went to Kalamaria where most of my comrades were hanging out. For three days I came and went until I found the right guy.”36

Opportunities to get away did sometimes present themselves which were rejected for fear of splitting up the family. Most of the actual and potential escapees were relatively young, mobile and usually single: they spoke fluent Greek and had many Christian friends and workmates, whereas the older people spoke Greek, if at all, with a heavy and easily recognizable accent. Young people turned down chances to escape when their parents decreed the family should stay together. Others chose to stay, because they felt that abandoning their older and younger relatives was irresponsible. Sam Profetas was urged by his boss to head for Athens, and told he could get him false papers. Then he heard that the Germans had rounded up the inhabitants of Regi Vardar, where his mother and sisters lived, and taken them to the Hirsch camp. “Thank you for your suggestion,” Profetas told him. “But you must bear in mind that we Jews have two religions: first comes the family, and after that God. I can’t leave my mother who has struggled hard all her life to bring me up.” And he presented himself voluntarily at the camp entrance.37

Yet hundreds of Jews did escape—on foot, by boat and by rail, into the villages of the Chalkidiki peninsula, the mountains of western Macedonia, the Greek islands, Turkey and above all Athens, which remained still under Italian occupation. They were helped by scores of individuals, as well as the burgeoning left-wing resistance movement—still in its infancy in the Macedonian hinterland—and even by the Italian consular authorities in the city, who negotiated strenuously with the SS to issue as many passports as they could. In the early hours of July 15—after all but the final 2000 Jews had already been deported to Auschwitz—the Italian consulate managed to transfer a train with 320 Jews under its protection to Athens. In Salonica there were left only the “privileged” Jewish elite, several hundred Jews with Spanish papers, and more than 1,000 men who had been building roads for a military contractor in central Greece. These men made up the last transport.

ON THE STREETS, many Greeks showed their revulsion at the German measures from the moment Jews were forced to wear the yellow star. Yacoel noted the relief Jews felt when they observed “the decent conduct of the Christian population” and their “many expressions of compassion and sympathy.” He tells a revealing story from 25 February, the first day the star had to be displayed:

The writer’s housemaid, a young Jewish girl, whose speech and external appearance could in no way betray her religion, went out on the balcony above the street for a household chore, without having worn the distinguishing Jewish sign. While there, she observed a scene involving a Jewish woman wearing the Jewish sign going down the street, timidly passing a Christian woman going up the street. The Christian, probably seeing that sign for the first time, addressed a comforting word to the Jewess. Perceiving then the writer’s housemaid on the balcony smiling and assuming her to be a Christian, she raised her head and chided her for her behaviour, saying: “Why are you laughing, child? You ought to feel compassion for them over their plight. They are people just like us. Can you be sure that perhaps tomorrow it won’t be our turn?”39

Solidarity was shown by many friends and neighbours when the Jews were forced out of their houses and confined to the ghettoes. They went to make their farewells, promised to look after property and valuables—though this too would become a risky matter—and exchanged gifts and tears. “Everyone was out and crying,” recalled one. “The Christians were sad we were leaving our homes; we sat with the Greek women who wept as we left.”40 As long lines of hundreds of people, all ages, pushing carts and carrying heavily laden rucksacks, trekked through the centre of town to the Hirsch camp, many Christians gathered on the pavements to see them go. Leon Perachia noticed the sad faces of those watching as he went past. Another recalled that “we walked down Leoforos Stratou and Egnatia. On the way there were many people, Christians, and they looked on helplessly. Some cried.”41

“By the station, my path was interrupted by a river of Jews coming down from the camp to the train,” recollected Eleftheria Drosakis, then a young girl from a refugee family. Living near the station, she witnessed several such forced marches, and would rush out hoping to see the friends she used to play with. “And my joy was great when I didn’t see one of them, because we hoped they would escape.” On the other side of the city, among the Pontic refugees in the suburb of Kalamaria, someone greeted the apparently endless line of Jews trailing past with the comment “They deserve it for having crucified our Lord.” But Georgios Andreades, then only seven, asked himself what the poor people he saw before him—“for me the sight was a painful one”—had to do with Christ’s crucifixion.42

Whereas individuals displayed their unhappiness at what was happening, there was little sign of this on the part of the city’s professional associations and organizations. The one exception was the Greek ex-servicemen’s association which reacted angrily when disabled Jewish war veterans were made to take part in the forced registration in July 1942. On several occasions after this, the leaders of the Christian association of war wounded tried to intervene on behalf of their Jewish comrades. Eventually the Germans threatened to execute them if they went ahead with planned demonstrations. They were the only ones to take protest so far. Yacoel, the community’s lawyer, could not hide his disappointment with the frostily detached attitude of men he had long known and had assumed would feel differently. As he wrote in his 1943 memoirs, written shortly before his own deportation and death, the city’s professional classes, in particular, the major merchants and businessmen, showed “a total lack of comradely solidarity.” Following the forced dismissal of Jews from Salonica’s guilds and associations, Yacoel called on “the president of the largest and most outstanding economic organization of the city”—presumably a reference to the Chamber of Commerce. Despite the man’s many and strong ties to Jewish firms—so strong indeed that he spoke Judeo-Spanish—he remained “cold and passive” and refused to do anything.

In this respect, Salonica was very different from Athens. There Archbishop Damaskinos condemned the deportations in no uncertain terms in formal letters sent to the prime minister and Gunther von Altenburg, the Reich plenipotentiary for Greece. His many fellow-signatories in this remarkable protest included the representatives of all the chief professional and public institutions of the capital. Athens business associations proposed that Salonican Jews should, if necessary, be concentrated internally rather than sent out of the country. By contrast, the Metropolitan of Salonica, Gennadios, appears to have confined himself to a private protest. When a handful of city notables visited Simonides to try to forestall the deportations the governor-general simply referred them to the Germans, who expressed their astonishment that the Greeks did not understand the favour that was being done them. Thereafter, the silence from Salonica’s professional classes was deafening. From the university professors and students, the businessmen and lawyers’ associations, there was barely a whisper. The municipality enquired of the governor-general when it should advertise vacancies for the jobs previously filled by Jews, and renamed the few streets in the city which commemorated Jewish figures. Simonides himself, far from protesting the deportations, raised no objections, failed to report what was happening to his own government in Athens and provided gendarmes and other civil servants to assist Eichmann’s men. “The rumour circulated insistently in Salonica,” writes Michael Molho, “especially among the Jews, that the Government was not entirely opposed to the idea of deporting the Jewish element, and this because the Government thought thus to attain a double end, that of assuring the racial homogeneity of the population, and of facilitating the settlement of the refugees from Thrace and Macedonia who had flooded into the city.”43

This lack of reaction could not be put down to the impossibility of protest itself. In 1942 there had been strikes and demonstrations against civil mobilization, and these were renewed in April 1943—in the middle of the deportations. There were further labour protests in August and September 1943 mounted by students, union workers, and war veterans against food shortages and profiteers. But the biggest public protest of all came in July 1943 when the Germans decided to expand the Bulgarian occupation zone in northern Greece, allowing a Bulgarian division into the vicinity of the city. In fact, the prime concern of Simonides, Archbishop Gennadios and a range of political figures from across the spectrum in 1943 was to prevent the gains of 1912–13 being rolled back and seeing the Bulgarian army enter Salonica. To stop this happening, they formed a semi-official National Macedonian Council to persuade the Germans to keep faith with the Greek administration. They believed Max Merten, the chief Wehrmacht administrator in the city, was sympathetic, and an advocate for the Greek side in discussions with his pro-Bulgarian military superiors. No senior Greek political figure in the city was thus prepared to forfeit his support and waste valuable political capital by speaking out on behalf of the Jews, not least since Merten had already made it clear to everyone that this was a matter decided at higher levels in Berlin and out of his hands.44

Something less than 5 per cent of Salonica’s Jewish population escaped deportation compared with perhaps 50 per cent in the Greek capital a year later. This was partly because the Jews of the Macedonian capital were far more numerous, more obtrusive and less assimilated than in Athens; helping a few thousand mostly Greek-speaking Jews in a city of nearly half a million was considerably easier than helping 50,000 Sefardim in a city half the size. Timing explains a lot too: much more was known by 1944, not least because of what had happened earlier. Perhaps more could have escaped from Salonica had families been willing to split up, or if Chief Rabbi Koretz had been a different personality, and obstructed German wishes—as the Chief Rabbi of Athens did: by 1944 the resistance was fully operational and better able to help than it had been the previous year. But a crucial part was also played by the different priorities and sentiments of the elites in Greece’s two main cities. According to the German records, approximately 45,000 people reached Auschwitz from Salonica. Within a few hours of arriving, most of them had been killed in gas chambers.45

Εμένα πάντως που δεν ξέρω πολλά, μου φαίνεται ότι η αλήθεια είναι κάπως πιο περίπλοκη απο άσπρο μαύρο αλλά δεν μιλάει για κανένα μαζικό αντισημιτικό κίνημα που θέριεψε με ευκαιρία τη γερμανική εισβολή. Το αντίθετο βασικά

αν έγινε ευκαιρία να κλείσουν ορισμένοι λογαριασμοί ή να γεμίσουν μερικοί τις τσέπες τους, δεν φαίνεται να συνέβη σε μεγαλύτερο βαθμό απ'ότι αλλού. Το σημείο για τον τύπο απο την ποντιακή συνοικία με προβλημάτισε λίγο αλλά οκ...

[Cavaliere]

[Nero]

In December 1942 came the strongest indication to date that even the municipal authorities themselves might find the plight of the Jews impossible to resist. The Jewish cemetery, which occupied a very large area outside the eastern walls, had been the object of controversy between the community and the municipality for decades. It had obstructed the implementation of the interwar town plan from its inception, for it lay squarely where Hébrard had envisaged green recreational spaces at the heart of the new modern city, and where others, more practically, wanted to build a new university campus. The university, which had started out in the old Villa Allatini, had been penned for most of the interwar period into the old Ottoman Idadié building on the cemetery’s edge. Negotiations between the Greek authorities and the Jewish community had progressed slowly. But in 1937 they had agreed that in return for ceding the western part, the rest would be planted with trees, while new Jewish graveyards would be constructed elsewhere. In 1940 further burials were forbidden in the old cemetery, though in fact they continued to take place because no action was taken to build new ones.14

Now, however, the municipal authorities saw the chance to resolve the cemetery issue for good, and they raised it with the Germans. Negotiating the release of Jewish forced labourers that October—they were eventually ransomed by the community, which paid the Germans a large sum—Merten mentioned to his Jewish interlocutor, the lawyer Yomtov Yacoel, that he had received many suggestions from Greeks that the expropriation of the cemetery should form part of their negotiations. Although this idea was instantly rejected by the Jewish side, it resurfaced a few days later. On 17 October, Vasilis Simonides, the governor-general of Macedonia, informed the Jewish community that it should transfer the existing cemetery and construct two new ones on the city’s outskirts: any delay would lead to the cemetery’s immediate demolition. When the chief rabbi asked for the work to be postponed until after the winter, the municipality ordered the demolition to begin.

Thus in the first week of December, instructed by the chief municipal engineer, five hundred workers destroyed thousands of tombs, some dating back to the fifteenth century, and piled up the marble slabs and bricks. Relatives of those buried there hurried to collect the remains of their dead before it was too late. “My parents and I rushed to the cemetery,” recalled a survivor:

The sight of it was devastating. People were running between the tombs begging the destroyers to spare those of their relatives; with tears they collected the remains. In my family vault there were the remains of my brother, aged twenty, who died during a journey to Rome. His body was brought back from abroad and put in two coffins, one in metal and the other in wood. When the second coffin was opened my poor brother appeared in his smocking and his pointed shoes as though he had been put there yesterday. My mother fainted.15

The cemetery covered a vast area of nearly thirty-five hectares (in comparison, the Jewish cemetery in Prague is about one hectare) and contained hundreds of thousands of graves. German military authorities requisitioned some of the marble for road-building and to construct a swimming-pool. Greek organizations and individuals carted off more: indeed even a few years ago, tombstones could still be seen stacked in the city’s churchyards or set in the walls and roads of the Upper Town. “A few weeks sufficed for this army of workers to achieve the task of destruction for which it had been engaged,” wrote an eyewitness. “The vast necropole … now presented the spectacle of a violently bombed city, or one destroyed in a volcanic eruption.” One of the oldest and largest Jewish cemeteries in Europe had been uprooted; the Germans had given the green light, but the initiative had not come from them. After the war, the Greek authorities took the view that the land had been definitively expropriated, and today the university campus stands on the spot.16

[Cavaliere]

74% των Εβραίων του Βόλου διασώθηκαν, κυρίως στο Πήλιο.

[Sid Vicious]

Τι άλλο θα σκαρφιστεί ο πρεζέμπορας της τρούμπας για να χτυπήσει την Θεσσαλονίκη και τον ΠΑΟΚ, σε λίγο θα γράψει στις φυλλάδες του για τους σατανικούς Θεσσαλονικείς που φταίνε για την παγκόσμια κλιματική αλλαγή. Τους έχει αποτρελάνει εντελώς Σαββίδαρε, ο Θεός να τους κόβει χρόνια να στα προσθέτει σαν μέρες, ΠΑΟΚ μέχρι να σβήσει ο ήλιος λέμε.

[Nero]

74% των Εβραίων του Βόλου διασώθηκαν, κυρίως στο Πήλιο.

Something less than 5 per cent of Salonica’s Jewish population escaped deportation compared with perhaps 50 per cent in the Greek capital a year later. This was partly because the Jews of the Macedonian capital were far more numerous, more obtrusive and less assimilated than in Athens; helping a few thousand mostly Greek-speaking Jews in a city of nearly half a million was considerably easier than helping 50,000 Sefardim in a city half the size. Timing explains a lot too: much more was known by 1944, not least because of what had happened earlier. Perhaps more could have escaped from Salonica had families been willing to split up, or if Chief Rabbi Koretz had been a different personality, and obstructed German wishes—as the Chief Rabbi of Athens did: by 1944 the resistance was fully operational and better able to help than it had been the previous year. But a crucial part was also played by the different priorities and sentiments of the elites in Greece’s two main cities. According to the German records, approximately 45,000 people reached Auschwitz from Salonica. Within a few hours of arriving, most of them had been killed in gas chambers.45

[Cavaliere]

Ένας από τους θρησκευτικούς ηγέτες που αντιστάθηκαν στις εκτοπίσεις των Εβραίων προς τα στρατόπεδα ήταν ο Μητροπολίτης Θεσσαλονίκης Γεννάδιος, ο οποίος επανειλημμένα ανέλαβε πρωτοβουλίες για την παρεμπόδισή τους. Ο Γεννάδιος κατέβαλε προσπάθειες να διασωθούν οι εκχριστιανισθέντες Εβραίοι της Θεσσαλονίκης και όσοι διέθεταν πλαστές βεβαιώσεις βάπτισης.
Λογάριαζε χωρίς τους ξενοδόχους ο Παναγιώτατος.
Σημαντική, επίσης, ήταν η συνεισφορά του Γενικού Προξένου της Ιταλίας Γκουέλφο Ζαμπόνι (Guelfo Zamboni), ο οποίος εφοδίασε με πλαστά πιστοποιητικά ιθαγένειας περίπου 300 Εβραίους της Θεσσαλονίκης, επιτρέποντάς τους έτσι να καταφύγουν στην ιταλική ζώνη κατοχής στην Αθήνα
Καλά που είχε και Ιταλό.
Μετά την κατάρρευση του φασιστικού καθεστώτος στην Ιταλία το 1943, η Κέρκυρα πέρασε στον έλεγχο της ναζιστικής Γερμανίας. Ο τότε δήμαρχος συνεργάστηκε με τις αρχές κατοχής και συνέβαλε στην υιοθέτηση και εφαρμογή διαφόρων αντισημιτικών νόμων υπό την κατεύθυνση της ναζιστικής διακυβέρνησης.[23] Στις αρχές τού Ιουνίου 1944, ενώ οι Σύμμαχοι βομβάρδιζαν την Κέρκυρα με σκοπό τον αντιπερισπασμό για την απόβαση στη Νορμανδία, η Γκεστάπο περικύκλωσε τους Εβραίους τής πόλεως, τους έθεσε υπό προσωρινή κράτηση στο Παλαιό Φρούριο και στις 10 Ιουνίου τους εκτόπισε στο Άουσβιτς, από όπου ελάχιστοι επιβίωσαν. Εντούτοις, περίπου διακόσιοι από τους 2.000 Εβραίους τού νησιού, οι οποίοι διέφυγαν την περικύκλωση, βρήκαν καταφύγιο στους χριστιανούς γείτονές τους και κρύφτηκαν εκεί. Είναι αξιοσημείωτο ότι μέχρι σήμερα μία από τις κύριες συνοικίες τής παλαιάς πόλης ονομάζεται Εβραϊκή σε αναγνώριση της συμμετοχής και συνεχούς παρουσίας των Εβραίων στην πόλη τής Κέρκυρας. Η Συναγωγή τής συνοικίας αυτής παραμένει ενεργός και λειτουργεί με περίπου 65 μέλη.[24]

Οι 275 Εβραίοι τής Ζακύνθου, ωστόσο, επέζησαν από το Ολοκαύτωμα. Όταν οι γερμανικές αρχές κατοχής διέταξαν γραπτώς τον δήμαρχο να τους παραδώσει κατάλογο με τα ονόματα των Εβραίων του νησιού, ο μητροπολίτης Χρυσόστομος επέστρεψε τη διαταγή στους Γερμανούς με δύο ονόματα: το δικό του και του δημάρχου. Ο πληθυσμός τού νησιού προσέφερε καταφύγιο σε κάθε μέλος τής εβραϊκής κοινότητας. Αρκετά χρόνια αργότερα, το 1953, όταν το νησί υπέστη καταστροφές από σεισμό, η πρώτη χορηγία βοήθειας ήλθε από το κράτος τού Ισραήλ συνοδευόμενη από το εξής μήνυμα: «Οι Εβραίοι τής Ζακύνθου δεν λησμόνησαν ποτέ τον Δήμαρχο και τον αγαπητό τους Επίσκοπο, καθώς και όσα έκαναν για εμάς»

[Cavaliere]

74% των Εβραίων του Βόλου διασώθηκαν, κυρίως στο Πήλιο.

Something less than 5 per cent of Salonica’s Jewish population escaped deportation compared with perhaps 50 per cent in the Greek capital a year later. This was partly because the Jews of the Macedonian capital were far more numerous, more obtrusive and less assimilated than in Athens; helping a few thousand mostly Greek-speaking Jews in a city of nearly half a million was considerably easier than helping 50,000 Sefardim in a city half the size. Timing explains a lot too: much more was known by 1944, not least because of what had happened earlier. Perhaps more could have escaped from Salonica had families been willing to split up, or if Chief Rabbi Koretz had been a different personality, and obstructed German wishes—as the Chief Rabbi of Athens did: by 1944 the resistance was fully operational and better able to help than it had been the previous year. But a crucial part was also played by the different priorities and sentiments of the elites in Greece’s two main cities. According to the German records, approximately 45,000 people reached Auschwitz from Salonica. Within a few hours of arriving, most of them had been killed in gas chambers.45

Κάπου θυμάμαι τον Βασίλη Βασιλικό, να αναφέρεται στη συνάντηση με τον γιο του Koretz. Ξέρεις την περίπτωση;

[ΑΙΝΕΙΑΝ06]

Εγώ λέω να αντικαταστήσουμε τη λέξη Εβραίος με τη λέξη ΠΑΟΚτζής και τη λέξη ολοκαύτωμα με τη λέξη "οφσάιντ". Μάλιστα τώρα που το σκέφτομαι πάνω-κάτω τα ίδια άτομα αφορά και για τους ίδιους λόγους.

Κρίνουμε τα εγκλήματα εναντίον ενός λαού στον Ιστορία ανάλογα με τα προσωπικά μας συναισθήματα συμπάθειας η μίσους προς αυτόν τον λαό;

όχι. Απλώς το Ολοκαύτωμα είναι διαφορετικό. Τι να κάνουμε.

Το να το βλέπεις πρωτίστως ως κάτι που εξασφάλισε "στους Εβραίους" την "πολυπόθητη" ιδιότητα του θύματος είναι μια πολύ καλή ένδειξη ότι είσαι αντισημιτικό καθίκι (ή και σκέτα καθίκι), όπως και το να προσπαθείς να "ισοφαρίσεις" εξισώνοντας οτιδήποτε (καταδικαστέο το δίχως άλλο) υπέστησαν οι "δικοί σου".

Εδώ ο άλλος στην ΕΦΣΥΝ το εξίσωσε με το... να σου παίρνουν το σπίτι επειδή δεν πλήρωσες το δάνειο. Είναι καθίκι ή όχι;

Απλά ΔΕΝ είναι κάτι το διαφορετικό από τα υπόλοιπα φρικτά εγκλήματα και γενοκτονίες που έχουν γίνει στο διάβα της ιστορίας από διάφορους σφαγείς !!
Και ..ούτε οι Εβραίοι σαν λαός είναι ο ..περιούσιος λαός του Θεού που χτίζουν περισσότερου σεβασμού τα θύματα τους από τα θύματα των άλλων λαών ...

Αποφεύγω προσωπικούς χαρακτηρισμούς και επιθέσεις

[Cavaliere]

Εντωμεταξύ σκεφτείτε (όσο και όσοι μπορείτε) να μην άλλαζαν τα κόζια το 1912 και η Θεσσαλονίκη (και η ευρύτερη περιοχή) να ήταν ακόμη στα χέρια Τούρκων όταν μπήκανε οι Γερμανοί.

όπως ήταν η Ανδριανούπολη όταν μπήκαν οι Γερμανοί;

Δικάζεις σκληρά. Δείξε οίκτο.