"The history of the Jews of Thessaloniki fills us with admiration and at the same time stimulates our conscience and calls us to be alert", said the President of the Republic, Katerina Sakellaropoulou, immediately after her visit to the Jewish Museum of Thessaloniki on 27.10.2020.
"Excitement, respect, sadness, maybe even some shame: with these feelings I followed the traces of the more than two thousand years of Jewish presence in Thessaloniki. With these feelings I toured the history of a community that enriched the city with culture, creativity, business demon, its vitality, but it was severely tested in the twentieth century, culminating in its almost complete annihilation in the Nazi camps," emphasized the President of the Republic.
"As I wandered through the halls of the Museum, the lyrics of Zoe Karellis, the great Thessalonian poet, kept coming back to my mind: "Of Israel the tribe with silent endurance/ rigid secret power, omnipresence/ there is strong and unyielding". The history of the Jews of Thessaloniki, which unfolds so excitingly in the halls of the Museum, fills us with admiration, and at the same time stimulates our conscience and calls us to be alert," he added.
Mrs. Sakellaropoulou was welcomed to the Jewish Museum of Thessaloniki by the president of the Central Jewish Council of Greece and the Israeli Community of Thessaloniki, Mr. David Saltiel, who accompanied her throughout the tour.
After the end of the visit, the President of KISE and I.K. Thessaloniki, in his statements to the press, emphasized that the President of the Republic "understands very well what the Greek Jews went through during the occupation, who were exterminated", while he then mentioned that he remembers her reading letters written by Jewish mothers and interrupting her speech by the emotion. "That means it was in the climate of what happened then to this family and what would happen next," Mr. Saltiel noted.
*Data from articles on his websites ATHENS NEWS AGENCY and NEWSIT
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VISIT OF THE PtD TO THE JEWISH MUSEUM OF THESSALONIKI