by Vangelis Stergiopoulos
For more than twenty centuries, Thessaloniki was a refuge for the persecuted Jews of Europe, resulting in the creation of a large Jewish community there, one of the most important in the world
It is assumed that the first Jews settled in Thessaloniki around 140 BC, coming from Alexandria, Egypt.
The members of the ancient Jewish community of Thessaloniki, the so-called Romaniotes, had adopted the Greek language while retaining several elements of Hebrew or Aramaic origin, as well as the Hebrew script.
During the Roman Times, the Jews of Thessaloniki enjoyed a regime of autonomy, which some Byzantine emperors attempted to overturn to a certain extent, imposing special taxation or even restrictive measures on the practice of Jewish worship.
In the 14th and 15th centuries, Ashkenazim Jews from Hungary and Germany, as well as Jews from Provence, Italy and Sicily, settled in Thessaloniki.
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A decisive event for the fate of the Jewish community of Thessaloniki, but also of the entire city, was the settlement of approximately 20.000 exiled Spanish Jews, the so-called Sephardim, which took place in 1492.
Their arrival marked the gradual transformation of the desolated state after its conquest by the Turks into a great economic and intellectual center with a pan-European reputation.
Just a few years later, Portuguese Jews also settled in Thessaloniki, while new waves of Jewish refugees from Provence, Poland, Italy, Hungary and North Africa followed in the 16th and early 17th centuries.
The center of each of the independent Jewish communities that were created in Thessaloniki was the synagogue.
The Jewish immigrants were mostly employed in craft activities, especially in weaving.
About 1680 the small independent Jewish communities of Thessaloniki were united into a single organization, governed by a trio of rabbis and a seven-member lay council.
The Jewish community of Thessaloniki gradually managed to play a leading role in the commercial and economic life of the city.
At the end of the 19th century, the Jews of Thessaloniki exceeded 70.000 and made up half of the city's population.
The great fire of 1917 dealt a crushing blow to the city's Jewish community, leaving tens of thousands of Jews homeless and destroying dozens of synagogues, schools and charitable institutions.
Many Jews emigrated abroad during the interwar period.
In the war of 1940-1941 the Jews fulfilled their duty towards the homeland, filling the ranks of the armed forces and fighting with self-sacrifice.
The enslavement of Greece to the Axis powers marked the beginning of the end for the Jewish community of Thessaloniki.
After imprisonments, humiliations, destructions and looting preceded, the Nazi conquerors put into action the plan of definitive extermination of the Jews of Thessaloniki.
Successive train routes transported the Thessalonian Jews to the Auschwitz and Birkenau extermination camps within a few weeks.
Out of a total of 46.091 Jews who were transported to the concentration camps, only 1.950 returned to Thessaloniki.
The themed "Jewish route" proposed by the Thessaloniki Tourism Organization gives travelers the opportunity to see monuments inextricably linked to the historical route and the daily life of the city.
SOURCE: in.gr website, 4.10.2020
*The photos included in this article are all taken from the website of the Thessaloniki Tourism Organization (thessaloniki.travel).