The Holocaust in Greece

For the sizeable Jewish community living in Greece during the 1940s, German occupation of Greece posed a distinct threat. The Nazis and their collaborators murdered around ninety percent of the Jewish population through the course of the war. This new account presents cutting edge research on four elements of the Holocaust in Greece: the level of antisemitism and question of collaboration; the fate of Jewish property before, during, and after their deportation; how the few surviving Jews were treated following their return to Greece, especially in terms of justice and restitution; and the ways in which Jewish communities rebuilt themselves both in Greece and abroad. Taken together, these elements point to who was to blame for the disaster that befell Jewish communities in Greece, and show that the occupation authorities alone could not have carried out these actions to such magnitude without the active participation of Greek Christians.

Introduction: the Holocaust in Greece Giorgos Antoniou and A. Dirk Moses; Part I. Perpetrators, Collaborators, and Victims: 1. German occupation and the Holocaust in Greece: a survey Iason Chandrinos and Anna Maria Droumpouki; 2. 'The Bulgarians were the worst!' Reconsidering the Holocaust in Salonika within a regional history of mass violence Mark Levene; 3. The deportation of the Jews of Rhodes, 1944: an integrated history Anthony Mcelligott; 4. Greek collaboration in the Holocaust and the course of the war Andrew Apostolou; 5. A city against its citizens? Thessaloniki and the Jews Leon Saltiel; 6. Bystanders, rescuers and collaborators: a microhistory of the Christian-Jewish relations, 1943–44 Giorgos Antoniou; 7. 'We lived as Greeks and we died as Greeks': Salonican Jews at Auschwitz and the meanings of nationhood Paris Papamichos Chronakis; Part II. The Question of Property: 8. The scale of Jewish property theft in Nazi-occupied Thessaloniki Maria Kavala; 9. The Jewish community of Thessaloniki and the Christian collaborators: 'those that are leaving and what they are leaving behind' Stratos Dordanas; 10. Expropriating the space of the other: property spoliations of Thessalonikean Jews in the 1940s Kostis Kornetis; Part III. The Aftermath: Survival, Restitution, Memory: 11. 'New men vs. old Jews': Greek Jewry in the wake of the Shoah (1945–47) Philip Carabott and Maria Vassilikou; 12. 'You are your brother's keeper': rebuilding the Jewish community of Salonica from afar Devin Naar; 13. Being a Holocaust survivor in Greece: narratives of the post-war period, 1944–53 Katerina Krάlovά; 14. Bodies visible and invisible: the erasure of the Jewish cemetery in the life of modern Thessaloniki Carla Hesse and Thomas Laqueur; Epilogue: 15. Grey zones K. E. Fleming.

Giorgos Antoniou is Assistant Professor of Jewish Studies of the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, Greece. He has been a Research Fellow of the Foundation for the Memory of the Shoah in Paris (2005–07) and a visiting lecturer at Yale University (2007–08). His research interests include the legacy and memory of conflicts in post-conflict societies; the Holocaust in Greece; the study of collective memory and wars; and public history.
A. Dirk Moses is Professor of Modern History at the University of Sydney. Between 2011 and 2016, he was Professor of Global and Colonial History at the European University Institute in Florence, Italy. He has authored many publications on intellectual history, memory, and genocide, including the prize-winning German Intellectuals and the Nazi Past (Cambridge, 2007). He is senior editor of the Journal of Genocide Research.