Nationalist violence · Greece · 1931
The Campbell attack made claims about national loyalty a pretext for attacking Jewish residents.
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1931
Nationalist violence · A rumour sets a neighbourhood alight
The Campbell attack made claims about national loyalty a pretext for attacking Jewish residents.
The accusation of disloyalty
In 1931, accusations about Jewish disloyalty circulated in Salonika. Nationalist rhetoric portrayed a minority as an internal threat. Such stories did not simply criticize a named person’s conduct. They asked an audience to treat Jewish neighbours as collectively suspect.
The Campbell neighbourhood
Nationalist attackers assaulted the Jewish Campbell neighbourhood and set homes on fire. Families suffered because their community had been made a target. The event translated public agitation into local violence: people who lived in the city were attacked as if they had no rightful place there.
The motive had changed
This was nationalist anti-Jewish violence before the Nazi occupation. Older prejudice could be adapted to arguments about who counted as Greek and who supposedly endangered the nation. The attackers’ claim of collective disloyalty was an accusation, not evidence about the residents they attacked.