DAILY, 8.9.2020, by Nikos Vatopoulos. I can still remember the sound of his palm dragging as he cleaned the pine needles on the marble. Mair Maisis was our man. Motionless, overflowing with power, with primal flame, he was already waiting at the gate of the Jewish Cemetery of Chalkida. "Find Mr. Mais, if you are interested in a guided tour of the oldest Jewish cemetery in Europe," the journalist Mr. Victor Eliezer advised me, who found out about my presence in Chalkida via the Internet. I was brought to Chalkida by the invitation of the bio-mechanical festival for the presentation of Nikitas Siniosoglou's book "NATO Avenue" (published by Kichli). Within this cultural horizon and with my mind on the trail of old Chalkida, a whole world emerged: the city's Jewish community and its ancient Roman cemetery.
With Nikitas Siniosoglou as a travel companion, with our cameras ready and with great curiosity and eagerness, we set off for the cemetery. It is a ten-minute walk from the beach front, that is, it is in the central part of the city, in the area of Agiannis, a large area, with Mair Mais as the key holder, the man who would show us around. I wonder how many in Greece know and how many are taught about the case of Chalkida which has a recorded Jewish presence since 586 BC, trading with the Phoenicians and the Jews of the East, who were "spinners, dyers and powerful merchants"?
No description does justice to the presence and displacement of Mair Mais. Tall, strong with a stentorian voice, this man, who was also the president of the Jewish community of Chalkida (1978-1980, 1990-2001), highlighted, together with other enlightened people, with passion and persistence the oldest Jewish cemetery in Europe. But he is the one who takes care of it like his home. There, his ancestors rest. As we talked, he unconsciously and naturally cleared the graves of his grandparents of pine needles. The earth bears the traces of his footsteps, he recognizes every clod of soil, every old trunk, he converses with a secret world, but visible to him. The Jewish Cemetery of Chalkida subdues you with a strange mystique. Ancient tomb tradition reveals links with Talmudists and Kabbalists, "and their long, spiritual tradition." In one of his books ("The history of the Jewish community of Chalkida from 586 BC to 2001 AD. The Cemetery", 2018), Mair Maisis analyzes it all. He talks about the cycles of displacement and persecution from the 13th to the 15th century, and how Chalkida evolved into a small Jerusalem and a small Tsfat (a town in northern Israel and a spiritual center for the study of Jewish mysticism).
"Stumbling among the ancient Jewish graves, you feel an unexpected warmth, even though you've never seen such a cemetery before and the Kabbalistic symbols sound so far away," says Nikitas Siniosglou, who is a born planet and that of places. Like most Jewish cemeteries in Greece, the one in Chalkida was threatened with shrinking, with expropriation, with transfer, as apartment buildings lived it, as memories fade. Indifference to historical displacement and to living History is a daily experience.
In another case, that is, if one could see things realistically and with historical awareness, Chalkida would have been presented internationally. Mair Maisis has guided several visitors from other countries, but not as many as one would expect given the gravity of the space. At the entrance to the cemetery, flowery and cool like a yard in a nice neighborhood, the door to the small museum opens. Ancient tombstones in Hebrew script, all translated and studied, have been organized into a narrative narrative. All from the hands of this man.
Enclosed garden
The museum's cottage also has its own history. Originally the keeper's residence, it was built in 1897 with funding from the banker, collector and politician Ferdinand Rothschild (1839-1898). Rothschild is one of the benefactors of the Jewish Community of Chalkida (as the relevant column states). He was aware of the importance of Chalkida as early as 1887 and when the great earthquake of 1894 (from the Atalanti fault) hit the city, he offered large sums for the earthquake victims. At the same time, he undertook the fencing of the cemetery. Today, the Jewish Cemetery of Chalkida gives the impression of an enclosed garden of the sleeping, strewn with pine needles and scented with eucalyptus oil. Old pines define the place. Scattered towering eucalypts with elephant trunks and a root system, ferocious and visible in places, raise ancient gravestones of ancestors.
Like stepped sarcophagi, the pre-eternal tombs in Chalkida present this rare type with small crypts and domes. You hear the stories from Mair Mais, that not so many years ago, the clusters of these ancient tombs were covered with dirt. They came to light gradually, tooth and nail, an apocalypse and a vindication. I hear the mute whisper of Nikitas Siniosoglou next to me: "The other person's cemetery becomes your own crossroads, as you ask yourself: Do we come from a common tradition obscured by our later roots? Or is the truth always doomed to seem familiar and withdraw at the same time, and we are nothing more than its guests, strays?" I wonder too. In Chalkida, silent stories have the upper hand.
Simos, aged 23, and Menti, aged 18, martyrs of the city in 1944
Approaching the Jewish Cemetery of Chalkida on foot, you first encounter the Memorial to the Victims of the Holocaust. The bronze sculptural composition, the work of the Chalkidian sculptors Antonis and Georgios Karahalios, is part of a wider monumental complex that was unveiled in 2000, when the president of the Jewish Community of Chalkida was Mair Maisis and the president of the Central Jewish Council was the late Moses Konstantinis. The monument is flanked on either side by two heroic figures. On the left is the bust of Colonel Mordochaios Frizis, who fell heroically on December 5, 1940, and on the right, the bust of Metropolitan Grigorios (1891-1971), who with words and deeds opposed the Germans by taking a stand in favor of the Jewish residents of the city. He kept in the holy metropolis the Holy Scrolls of the Bible and other utensils of the synagogue, which were returned at the end of the war.
In 1945, a prayer was held in the synagogue for those saved from the crematoria. The synagogue was full of people, Metropolitan Grigorios also spoke. On that day, Mair Maisis was 12 years old. He remembers her and writes: "...everything was so strongly imprinted in my memory that day, especially when, at some point, we all knelt down and for the first time I saw the pained expression on the faces of everyone, the packed synagogue, sobbing, in front of the Ark of the Torah and to express their gratitude to the Lord for their rescue and in memory of their lost persons". The large family of Mair Mais was saved, but with many hardships and deprivations. The stories he tells himself about what the family went through when they were forced to hide in the mountains are shocking.
But the words that stick in the memory are when he talks about Simos and Mentis in front of their graves. Simos was his friend. He was taken to the detachment along with other Jews, but was not killed. At the time of the mass burial and while he was being laid in the ground, he whispered to the Greek undertaker that he was alive and to let him go. He handed him over and the Germans executed Simos on the spot. Menti's story is also shocking. She was surrendered, raped, tortured and the Nazis dismembered her and threw her in the square of Steni village. Mair Maisis talks about these stories as if they happened yesterday...
Source: DAILY, 8.9.2020, by Nikos Vatopoulos. Photos: Nikos Vatopoulos.