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Of Pagona Lapsati
The Jewish Museum has been operating since 2001. The aim of its creation was to preserve the memory of the Jews of Thessaloniki and to collect relics that testify to their long-standing presence in the city. On the occasion of the opening of the new wing, which took place last week, Evangelos Hekimoglou, curator of the Museum, talks to us about the new phase the museum is entering after its expansion, about its reconnection with the old Jewish neighborhood, but also its importance to Jews throughout the world.
What is the relationship of the Jewish Museum with the area where it is located?
The museum is housed in the "Jedid Khan" shopping arcade on Agios Minas Street, which is the northern end of the Top Hane Jewish Quarter. Over the past 120 years, the area has seen many changes of commercial use, housing everything from fish shops, printing houses, newspaper and bank offices to garment factories and merchants with a perennial Jewish presence. After the 1980s, businesses moved to other parts of the city and the place declined. The museum, in combination with the operation of the bookstore of the Educational Foundation of the National Bank, as well as the recent pedestrianization of Agios Minas, contributed catalytically to the neighborhood regaining life.
More: INTERVIEW OF EVANGELOS HEKIMOGLOU, DIRECTOR OF THE THESSALONIKI JEWISH MUSEUM
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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.
More: SILENT MEMORIAL MARCH FOR THE JEWS OF THESSALONIKI WHO LOST IN THE HOLOCAUST
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On 27.10.2019, the President of the Republic Mr. Prokopios Pavlopoulos inaugurated the new wing of the Jewish Museum of Thessaloniki.
Present at the event were - among others - the Deputy Minister of the Interior (Macedonia-Thrace) Theodoros Karaoglou, the regional governor of Central Macedonia Apostolos Tzitzikostas, the mayor of Thessaloniki, Konstantinos Zervas, the deputies of the ND, Stavros Kalafatis, Kostas Giulekas, Stratos Simopoulos, the MPs of SYRIZA, Sokratis Famellos and Alexandros Triantafyllidis, the ambassador of Israel to Greece, Yossi Amrani, the Rector of AUTH Nikolaos Papaioannou, representatives of the other diplomatic authorities, religious, military, academic authorities and bodies.
More: OPENING OF THE NEW WING OF THE THESSALONIKI JEWISH MUSEUM
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On 5.9.2019, the following interesting article was published in the Jerusalem Post about the Israelite Community of Thessaloniki and the summer camp - Permanent Educational Seminary of Israel Scouts of Greece (DESIE) of the Community.
ARTICLE FOR THE SUMMER CAMP OF THE JEWISH COMMUNITY OF THESSALONIKI
August 28 might have been the end. It might not have been noted on your calendar last week, but this summer I discovered that the date is etched deep into the consciousness of Greek Jewry. That was the day in 1943 on which the final remnants of the more than 53,000 Jews living in Thessaloniki (Salonika) on the eve of World War II were deported to Auschwitz-Birkenau. The vast majority died even before reaching the camp. Most of the rest were gassed upon arrival. The fate of the additional 27,000 Greek Jews, dispersed among 30 locales, was hardly any better. Some 87% of the total of 80,000 were slaughtered during the Holocaust.Against all odds, however, this wasn't to be the final chapter of this proud and resilient community, one of the oldest in the annals of Jewish history. I know because I experienced what the survivors wanted to be otherwise, in a camp of a very different nature than that in which so many were eradicated.
More: JERUSALEM POST ARTICLE ABOUT THE SUMMER CAMP OF I.K. THESSALONIKI
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DAILY 19.8.2019, by Stavros Tsima: One of the most emblematic buildings in the center of Thessaloniki, with reference to the German Occupation, was bought by a group of Israeli businessmen to become a luxury hotel. It is about the historical hotel "Vienna", on 2-4 Egnatia Street, in the area of Vardari (today's Democracy Square), which was ordered by the German authorities, who installed parts of their services on its premises. Its owner reported to "K" that interrogations were being carried out by the Germans in the basement of the building and on his roof he found an anti-aircraft machine gun and German sirens warning of attacks by allied planes. The deal for "Vienna", which currently houses a private college, has already been signed while Israeli interest in the purchase of another building, also with a heavy Holocaust-related historical charge, the neoclassical of the former Ionian Bank (now Alpha ) in Eleftheria Square, which during the Occupation housed the "heart" of German power in Thessaloniki, the Wehrmacht garrison.