A different meeting, which focused on people, was the commemoration event in Ioannina for the 80th anniversary of the deportation of the city's Jews on March 25, 1944 and the extermination in the Nazi camps of more than 1.800 Ioannina Jews. The Israeli Community of Ioannina and Epirus Memories organized last Monday at the General Archives-Historical Archive of Epirus (Sufari Sarai), the group exhibition "80 Years Later", which moved on multiple levels, catching the thread of memory through people's stories who perished, but also of those who survived.
Η photography exhibition presented by Artemis Alkalai with photos of Jews from Ioannina who survived the Holocaust and which were exhibited for the first time in the city, it attracted interest because, among other things, it showed the faces "returning" to their homes, the people who, with their lived lives, formed part of the collective identity of the city city as it was formed during the centuries of coexistence in Ioannina.
More: EVENTS FOR THE 80TH ANNIVERSARY OF THE EXPULSION OF THE JEWS OF YANNIOT
More: EVENTS FOR THE 80TH ANNIVERSARY OF THE EXPULSION OF THE JEWS OF IOANNINES
On 13.2.2024, the article by Margarita Pournara "Ioannina: With pride for the future, with respect for the past" by Margarita Pournara was published on the website of the Kathimerini newspaper, which includes the subsection "The heavy legacy of Elisaf" which is republished below.
Elisaph's heavy inheritance
The impressive mansion of the family of lawyer Nikis Lappa was the headquarters of the Greek elders during the period of the liberation of Ioannina from the Turks: "Ioannina was initially immersed in Puritanism and then in the atmosphere brought by the inhabitants of the villages. With Egnatia and Ionia, however, a crack was made in this old world. The same happened with the election of Moses Elisaf who had the substance and the radiance to transform the city. Unfortunately he didn't make it. Our misfortune was enormous." How a closed society elected the first Jewish mayor in Greece: "They voted for Gianniotis, a doctor who had for decades given proof of integrity and love to his hometown. Not the Jew," he told me.
More: ARTICLE BY M. POURNARA ON THE IOANNINA - "THE HEAVY LEGACY OF ELISAF"
The city does not forget the Yanniot Jews who perished in the Holocaust
The event for the Day of Remembrance of the Greek Jewish martyrs and heroes of the Holocaust, a day that has been declared by a decision of the Hellenic Parliament, January 27 of the year, was held jointly by the Region of Epirus, the municipality of Ioannito, the Israeli Community of the city and the Joseph and Esther Gani Foundation, in an event held on 5.2.2024.
But it was the event that, apart from the millions of absentees who perished in the hells of the concentration camps, including almost 1.800 souls of Yianniot Jews, the late mayor and for many years president of the Israeli Community of Ioannina, M. Elisaf, shined through his absence. A few days before the one-year anniversary of his death, Monday's event came as a powerful reminder of his own legacy, as in his own day Remembrance Day was an occasion to bring to the fore and make known all those aspects of Nazi atrocities.
The Jewish Community of Ioannina, participating in the international campaign "BRING THEM HOME NOW" for the immediate release of the Israeli hostages held by Hamas in the bowels of Gaza, illuminated the Synagogue on 15.1.2024, thus marking the 100 days of the hostages' captivity .