Occupation & murder · Greece · 1941–1944
German occupation turned a major community into a target for deportation and destruction.
Explore GreecePublished by WTJPublication updated
1941–1944
Occupation & murder · Salonika loses its Jewish world
German occupation turned a major community into a target for deportation and destruction.
Different occupation zones
Greece came under German, Italian and Bulgarian occupation, and Jewish experiences differed across those zones. In German-occupied Salonika, persecution escalated sharply. Identifying the authority in control explains why a family’s danger could change when the occupation map changed.
The trains of 1943
German authorities deported Salonika’s Jews, predominantly to Auschwitz, in 1943. Registration, forced concentration and dispossession preceded the transports. A community with centuries of local life was stripped of rights and removed through an organized operation. Most of those deported were murdered.
A city’s absence has causes
The destruction was not an unexplained disappearance of a once-flourishing community. Nazi policy, occupation power and participation in persecution produced it. Resistance, hiding and assistance also existed, but could not prevent the devastating losses. The later city inherited both the absence and the responsibility to explain it.