Language:
English
Year of publication:
2014
Titel der Quelle:
Yad Vashem Studies
Angaben zur Quelle:
42,1 (2014) 11-46
Keywords:
Holocaust, Jewish (1939-1945)
;
Jewish cemeteries
;
Thessalonikē (Greece)
Abstract:
The old Jewish cemetery of Thessaloniki was probably the largest necropolis in Europe, numbering nearly 500,000 graves. In December 1942, three months before the deportation of Jews began, the German occupiers launched a liquidation of this cemetery. The area of the cemetery, which, due to the city's expansion, was situated in the city center, had been coveted from the 1920s by Greek authorities who planned to use it for construction of buildings and a park. Thus, many historians believe that the initiative for the destruction of the cemetery came from the Greeks. Using new sources, corrects this view of the history of the cemetery's destruction. It was the German military authorities, namely Dr. Maximilian Merten, who, in October 1942, proposed a deal to Thessaloniki's Jewish community: they could give up the cemetery and pay two billion drachmas in cash in exchange for the exclusion of Jews from forced labor to which they had been violently mobilized in July 1942. Thereby, Merten improved the relationship of the Greek authorities and Christian population of Thessaloniki with the German occupiers and ensured their passivity during the deportation of the Jews in 1943. States that, following Jewish pleas, Merten agreed to leave part of the cemetery intact but that the Greek authorities gave the order to demolish everything. Marble stones and bricks from the cemetery were plundered by the municipality, by theaters, and, to a great extent, by the Church; the plundering continued even after the end of the war. Pp. 38-46 contain photographs.
Note:
In English and in Hebrew.
URL:
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