A silent, but practical apology to the 50.000 Jews of Thessaloniki, who were absent from the celebrations of the liberation of the city from the Nazis, on October 30, 1944, was expressed on Sunday 3.11.2019 with a performative march and reading of texts and poems.
Citizens of Thessaloniki responded to the call of organizations that co-organised the event entitled maximum absence/guilty silence/silent apology and participated in the march in honor of the dead-absent, silently as an expression of inner personal apology.
The march started from Eleftherias Square, with the presentation of photos from the Black Saturday of July 1942, the beginning of the displacement and extermination of the Jews of Thessaloniki.
Then, crossing Nikis Avenue, the participants in the Silent Apology Procession stopped at Agia Sophia Square where George Ioannou's description of the day of the liberation of Thessaloniki was read. Via Egnatia Odos, the march ended at the AUTH campus, at the Jewish Cemetery monument, where poems were read and songs performed.
"The idea arose from a contradiction, it is not a celebration for the liberation of Thessaloniki from the Nazis, nor a memorial march for the Holocaust. It is the relationship between the two, which is condensed the moment the city is liberated and there is a big celebration on October 30, from which 50.000 Jewish fellow citizens are missing, as described by Giorgos Ioannou", said the professor emeritus of the University of Thessaly, Philippos Oriopoulos , who conceived the idea and submitted the proposal for its implementation to the city authorities.
"This absence is not discussed, it remains until the 80s a mute element, a kind of trauma in the city, which does not want to discuss it, and a kind of drama, inside it", said Mr. Oriopoulos and emphasized: "The March of Silent Apology is a kind of poetic response to this event and in a way it is a performative process with a beginning, middle and end that create a narrative structure of this ritual".
"We are not one of the co-organizers of the event, we are invited like everyone else, but that does not diminish the value of the effort and the people who have come to say for themselves that they remember, that they know and that they will not allow a Holocaust to be repeated," said the president of the Israeli Community of Thessaloniki, David Saltiel.
"The world, the ordinary citizen, must know and remember the genocide, the Holocaust of our Jewish fellow citizens, Greeks, and they perished because they were Jews. With this course, we ensure that such events will not be allowed again," he said, adding that the genocide of the Pontians should finally be recognized, as is now being done with the genocide of the Armenians.
“It's very positive that other entities are remembering what happened and trying to make sure it's not forgotten. This is the important thing, many people are involved which is great and very important for the future. It's good for future generations to learn the horrible history so it doesn't repeat itself," said Gregory Flegger, US consul in Thessaloniki.
The anniversary of the liberation of Thessaloniki from the Nazis was combined with the expression of a practical apology to our fellow Thessalonians of Jewish origin, who were not with us during the liberation and never returned, about 50.000 met a horrible death in the concentration camps of the Nazi regime, emphasized President of the Department of Political Sciences of AUTH, Aris Stylianou.
At the Monument of the Old Jewish Cemetery, poems by Rachel Angel Nagler, Jorge Luis Borges (dedicated to the Jews of Thessaloniki), Manolis Anagnostakis and Markos Meskos were read by KTHBE actors Christina Sotiriadou and Christos Papadopoulos. Singer and composer Savina Giannatou sang a Sephardic song and a funeral hymn (dedicated to the general dead of the Nazi occupation).
The participants were given black and white postcards, which on one side depict the Jewish cemetery and on the other side Paul Celan's poem "Fugue of Death".
The event was organized by the Departments of Theater and Cinema of the School of Fine Arts of AUTH, the Departments of Architectural Engineering and Political Sciences of AUTH, the Department of Balkan, Slavic and Oriental Studies and the Culture, Borders and Gender Study Laboratory of the University of Macedonia ( PAMAK), the State Theater of Northern Greece (KTHBE), the Thessaloniki Film Festival (FKTH), the Metropolitan Organization of Museums of Visual Arts of Thessaloniki (MOMus) and the Informal Studio of neopoietics.
SOURCE: ATHENS - MACEDONIAN NEWS AGENCY, 3.11.2019
SEE HERE VIDEO WITH STATEMENTS OF THE PRESIDENT OF KISE & HERE VIDEO FROM THE PROCESS