On Saturday, March 29, 2025, the traveling exhibition "KARYA 1943. Forced Labor and the Holocaust" was inaugurated at the Folklore and Ethnographic Museum of Macedonia Thrace.
The exhibition, organized by the Center for Documentation of Nazi Forced Labor of the Topography of Terror Foundation in collaboration with the Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe, is under the auspices of the Minister of Culture, Lina Mendoni, and the German Minister of Culture and the Media, Claudia Roth.
Collaborating bodies are the Jewish Museum of Greece, the Jewish Museum of Thessaloniki and the Jewish Community of Thessaloniki.
It is dedicated to the issue of forced labor of Greek Jews during the German occupation. In 1943, hundreds of Jews from Thessaloniki were forced to build a small railway station in Karya in the Phthiotis region, a bypass line for Wehrmacht trains. Living conditions at the construction site were miserable and few survived.
This became known thanks to Andreas Assael, a researcher, collector, and son of a Jewish survivor from Thessaloniki. In 2002, Assael discovered a wartime photo album containing photographs of Jewish forced laborers in Karya.
At the opening, greetings were delivered by Mr. Fotis Kilipiris, Chairman of the Board of Directors of LEMM-Th and Professor at the International University of Greece, Ms. Olia Vasilaki, Regional Councilor of Central Macedonia and representative of the Regional Governor, Mr. Lazaros Seficha, Vice President of the Council of the Jewish Community of Thessaloniki, Dr. Xenia Eleftheriou, Scientific Director of the Jewish Museum of Thessaloniki, Mr. Uwe Neumarker, Director of the Memorial Foundation for the Murdered Jews of Europe, Mr. Andreas Assael, collector-researcher and the descendants of surviving prisoners of the Karya prison camp Jerome Cohen (son of prisoner Sam Cohen) and Albertos and Erika Sasson (grandson and great-granddaughter of Sam Nahmia).
The event was also attended by Mr. Konstantinos Gkoulekas, Deputy Minister of Macedonia Thrace, who delivered a brief greeting, as well as Mark Strohmenger, Consul of Germany in Thessaloniki.
The coordination of the speeches was carried out by Ms. Eleni Bintsi, Deputy Head of the Directorate of LEMMTH.
A smaller exhibition is being presented in parallel at the Jewish Museum of Thessaloniki, with exhibition material, information about the program, multimedia content and authentic finds from the Karya construction site.
The exhibition will be hosted at LEMM-Th and the National Museum of Thessaly from 29/3 to 30/06/2025