By Sofia Papadopoulou
This year's (14th) event was dedicated to the Jewish students of Thessaloniki during World War II and the Holocaust in memory of David Tiano, an employee of the American consulate since 1920, who was arrested and executed by the Nazi occupying forces in February 1942.
This year's lecture in memory of David Tiano by Angeliki Gavriiloglou and Christos Chatziioannidis, members of the team (together with Christos Panourgias) of the research program of the Chair of Jewish Studies of the AUTH and the Jewish Museum of Thessaloniki, had as its subject the "Mapping Memory: The Jewish Students of Thessaloniki in World War II and the Holocaust" (Mapping the Memory: Jewish students of Salonica in WWII and the Holocaust).
The aim of the research, as the rapporteurs said, is "to keep alive the memory of the thousands of children who perished in the concentration camps".
The charge d'affaires of the American embassy in Greece spoke about the importance of preserving the historical memory of the Holocaust, but also the role that the Holocaust Museum that is to be built in Thessaloniki is expected to play in this direction. David Burger.
"When completed, it will be the only museum in the world that 'tells' the story of the fate of Sephardi Jews in the Holocaust. This museum will teach tolerance and diversity in the context of its action, values that are more important now than ever before ", he said characteristically.
In his greeting at the event, Mr. Berger underlined the presence of Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis at the anniversary events in Auschwitz, pointing out that "he was the first Greek prime minister to visit Auschwitz in memory of all the Greek Jews who perished there", but also the adoption, by Greece, of the definitions of anti-Semitism and Holocaust denial of the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA), of which our country assumes the presidency in 2021.
The chargé d'affaires of the American embassy in Athens also spoke about the cooperation that has developed between the United States and Greece in this field. In this context, he noted that the archives of Nazi atrocities in Greece, in the period 1940-1945, will be able to be examined by researchers in the framework of the updated memorandum of understanding signed between the Hellenic Ministry of Defense and the United States Holocaust Museum, during the visit of Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis to the USA, in which the competent minister Nikos Panagiotopoulos also participated.
He also made special mention of the cooperation between the US and Greece in a joint effort to recover the personal belongings of the Jewish refugees who were on board the ship "Athena", which was wrecked off Astypalaia in 1946, in order to include them in the permanent collection of the US Holocaust Museum.
"These important partnerships strengthen both people-to-people ties and our shared commitment to religious freedom and tolerance," noted Mr. Berger, noting support from both the US Embassy in Athens and the US Consulate in Thessaloniki in the teaching of the Holocaust in Greece.
For his part, the president of the Central Jewish Council of Greece and the Jewish Community of Thessaloniki (IKTH) David Saltiel, after underlining the importance of preserving the memory in regards to the history and past of IKT and the important role of both the Jewish Museum of Thessaloniki and the Chair of Jewish Studies of AUTH in this regard, he emphasized: "In the face of the rise of racism and intolerance, the relativization of the Holocaust and the deliberate distortion of history we cannot remain indifferent. Every initiative that contributes in this direction [...] is important for us and for everyone. We persist and will continue to persist against all those who by their actions try to impose something different".
The event was attended by, among others, the consul general of the USA in Thessaloniki Gregory Flegger, the former mayor of Thessaloniki Yiannis Boutaris, members of the Israeli Community of Thessaloniki and a large number of people.