Content Warning: Discussion of heavy historical topics during World War II.
Jessica Cooperman, the Doris and Simon Konover Chair and director of Judaic Studies, hosted her first event at Storrs on Wednesday, Oct. 6. The talk, titled “Impact of the Holocaust on the Jews in Greece,” featured Carmen Cohen, the director of the Jewish community in Rhodes, Greece, as the key speaker.
Cohen started by saying that “history is full of tragedies and the history of Greece is no exception.” The Italian and Nazi occupation of Greece from 1941 to 1944 still hovers over Greek society to this day and the occupation left it in ruins afterwards. 5% of the Greek population died in combat, starvation, massacre and execution and 88 percent of the Greek Jewish population died in the Holocaust. The reasons for this large expulsion of the Greek Jewish population remain unclear; people argue that complicity from the government, inadequate Jewish leadership, Greek antisemitism or the conservative mindset of the Jewish community at the time may be to blame.
Cohen explained how there were two types of Jews who lived in Greece during World War II. The Romaniotes, who spoke Greek and descended from the Roman Empire, and the Sephardim, who spoke Spanish and descended from the Spanish Jews expelled from Spain in 1942. The city of Thessaloniki had the largest population of Sephardic Jews.
In 1941, there were 78,400 Jews in Greece. During the beginning of Italian occupation, relations between Greek Jews and Italian officers were friendly, even helping some Greek Jews move into the Italian occupation zone in order to escape hardships. Once Italian occupation ended in 1943 though, the Nazis started to implement the “final solution,” the plan to commit genocide of all the Jews in Europe. They started rounding up all the Jews into the former Italian occupation zone and sent them on trains to Auschwitz. Some died before they reached Poland, and top Greek government officials did little to stop it.
Some minor officials and priests did try their best to save some Jews from genocide. The Chief of Police in Athens gave fake IDs to some Athenian Jews, an archbishop gave some Jews baptism certificates and also denounced the Nazi’s intention of deporting the Jews of Greece. Around eight to 10 thousand Jews lived, thanks to these efforts and Greek citizens being unwilling to cooperate with Nazi officers. A Turkish consul in Rhodes saved the lives of a few Jews by giving them Turkish citizenship or by telling Nazi officers that they had ties to family in Turkey.
Cohen next moved onto the story of the deportation of Jews in Rhodes, Greece. A fairly unknown part of the Holocaust and the overall deportation of Jews in Greece.
Before 1944, the Germans got along well with the Jewish population in Rhodes, they didn’t interfere in their lives and some Rhodian survivors had “friendly” relations with them. Some Jews dared to escape the occupation but most stayed.
But in 1944 the Nazis ordered the Jews in Rhodes to either move into the city or three nearby villages for deportation. Men over 60 were asked to give their identity cards and work permits to Nazi officers, which most believed was a ploy to put them into forced labor. Women whose husbands had been taken by the Nazis were forced to either join their husbands or be shot. Given the choices, these women rounded up little personal belongings and joined their husbands for deportation to a concentration camp. The property and assets of Jewish families would be seized by the Nazis.
On July 20, 1944, the 2,500 Rhodian Jews were rounded up and sent on ships to mainland Greece, before changing transportation to go to Auschwitz. Some government officials and priests protested, but it was in vain.
The trip would start on July 23 and take eight days. It was a horrible affair for the Rhodian Jews, packed like sardines into cargo bays in hot, humid weather. Five people died on the journey and their bodies would be thrown overboard.
They eventually arrived at the Haidari concentration camp, a transit center to other concentration camps around Poland and Austria. Cohen shared a headline about Haidari, that read “Haidari Prison Outside Athens Ranks High Among Nazi Horrors Inmates had to Run, Never Walk, Were Beaten with or Without Cause, Taken Away in Truckloads for Secret Manslaughter.”
The journey to Auschwitz started on Aug. 3, 1944, and took 13 days by train. Few survived the trip to Auschwitz, and fewer survived the camp, those who survived both died soon after from exhaustion due to the poor conditions they suffered.
Their train was the last shipment of Greek Jews to Auschwitz. The first mayor of Free Rhodes, Gabriel Haritos, renamed the town square to “Square of Jewish Martyrs,” in remembrance of the Rhodian Jewish community, and was the official recognition of the Holocaust on behalf of a Greek authority. In 2002, a monument was erected in the square to remember the victims of the Holocaust. Recently, Greek president Katerina Sakellaropoulou, had this to say on Holocaust Remembrance Day: “it reveals the naked face of evil and puts our moral conscience to the test.”