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of Kostas Koukoumakas, 8.12.2016
Anecdotal historical evidence for one of the biggest taboos in Thessaloniki's modern history is brought to light by the exhibition of the Macedonian Museum of Contemporary Art, entitled "Divided Memories 1940-1950. Between history and experience". In one of the sections of the report, which was inaugurated on 4.12.2016 by the Ministers of Foreign Affairs of Greece and Germany, valuable archives of the Jewish Museum of Thessaloniki are revealed regarding the most guilty secret: the looting of Jewish properties, the local dosiligos and the destruction of the Jewish cemetery during the German Occupation.
At the beginning of World War II the Jewish community in Thessaloniki numbered around 55.000 people – more than half the city's population. Of the 46.091 Thessalonian Jews who were taken to the Nazi concentration camps, only 1.950 returned alive. But apart from the cold impression of the black statistics, the matter is not at all easy for the management of the city's temper. Not even for the public one 
memory, although nearly eight decades have passed. Just two years ago, the mayor Yiannis Boutaris, at inauguration of the monument of the Jewish cemetery leveled in 1942, he had said: "The city was unreasonably slow to break its unjust and guilty silence, but now it can say that it is ashamed of this unjust and guilty silence."
In the MMST report and in the section edited by the historian Vangelis Hekimoglou, we read that before their violent displacement the Jews had been forced to redeem their cash with worthless Polish notes, while they were asked to declare their assets "for statistical reasons" . From the same historical records we learn that an agency had been set up to "manage" Jewish property, mainly the 1.800 Jewish shops. "The "leaders" of the distributions were a lawyer from Serres, appointed to a senior position in the General Administration by the government of Athens, and a banker, author of a work praising the National Socialist organization of agriculture" we read in the report of the MMST, the material of which will soon be accessible on the Internet.
More: THESSALONIKI TALK ABOUT THE GUILTY SECRET OF JEWISH PROPERTY GRIP
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On 20.11.2016, on the occasion of the death of Leonard Cohen, the following article by Christos Tsanakas entitled "The song had its own story about Auschwitz" was published in the "Kathimerini" newspaper.
It is not a myth that the common belief that at least some of the great works of art, those that give us timeless high aesthetic emotion and a wealth of positive emotions, that sharpen our imagination and stimulate our will to live, are born in the most adverse conditions of pain and anguish , are inspired by tragic events and nightmarish experiences, often recommending their creators' spiritual victory against a deeply devastating personal or collective loss. Nevertheless, despite the generally accepted causal connection of beauty and ugliness in art, it surprised everyone that one of the late Leonard Cohen's most soulful and heartfelt songs, the alluring "Dance me to the end of love," which due to its romantic atmosphere it was considered one of the leading love songs of the 20th century, it ultimately referred to the horror and brutality of Auschwitz. The real subject of the song is indeed the loss of loved ones who froze to death in the gas chambers, torture chambers or industrial construction sites of Nazi ethnic cleansing, and by extension the temporary loss of faith in the power of love as a salutary solution to humanity's problems, as a result of absolute shock of the melting of millions of innocent victims in the blast furnaces of the extermination camps. However, what is not widely known is the fact that the reason for the creation of the song in question is even more specific. It directly refers to an iconic personality of the Auschwitz II-Birkenau camp, a highly tragic figure, the prisoner who was branded on his hand with the "heavenly telephone number" (as the prisoners called it among themselves, making a black humor of solidarity) 121000097.
More: LEONARD COHEN'S CREATION REFERRED TO THE GREEK-JEWISH JACOB STROOMSA
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In Memoriam... In the early hours of March 25, 1944, approximately 1850 Jews from Yanni were arrested and taken to the Auschwitz-Birkenau extermination camp. Among them was the young Esther Gani (then Gabai) with her husband Jacob. Jews from many European countries were deported to this camp in Poland. Among them was Esther who was tortured physically and psychologically, lost members of her family and never saw her husband again, events that marked her and which she never mentioned again.
In Auschwitz, as in other Nazi concentration camps and ghettos, Jews were also sent who wanted to save with their painting the dramatic, tragic conditions of their living in the prison in order to make them known to the rest of the world. The Gani Foundation's 2017 Calendar is illustrated with works by prisoners.
View HERE shocking photos of works by Jewish prisoners.
More: RELEASE THE 2017 JOSEPH & ESTHER GANI FOUNDATION CALENDAR
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An interesting video, about Holocaust of Jews in North Africa, uploaded by the World Jewish Congress (WJC) on its You Tube channel. While references to the Holocaust are usually focused on Europe, this video recalls a lesser-known and forgotten page of history: The persecution and suffering of the Jews of Tunisia, Libya, Algeria, and Morocco during World War II. See here the video.
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By Stavros Zoumboulakis, Kathimerini 6.11.2016:
The Evian Conference took place on July 6-16, 1938 and had as its theme the reception and hospitality of the Jewish refugees who were forced to leave Nazi Germany and Austria, the Annexation (Anschluss) of which, on March 12, 1938, caused new refugee exit. The initiative for the convocation belongs to Roosevelt, as America, which granted 27.000 visas a year to European Jews, wanted to share with other countries the reception of refugees. Thirty-two countries and thirty-four non-governmental organizations, most of them Jewish, will take part.
The conference failed. All he decided was to set up a commission for refugees. No country agreed to accept the Jewish refugees, with various arguments: the economic crisis, unemployment, causing riots with the locals (Great Britain, for example, refuses to settle Jews in Palestine, which is then under a British Mandate, because doing so would annoy the Arabs and cause conflicts). All prefaces in sin. The countries participating in the conference condemn Nazi Germany, but none agrees to protect its victims. The sequel is known. After the failure of the conference the Nazi newspaper Völkischer Beobachter, organ of the Nazi party of Germany, solemnly wrote: "No one wants them" (Saul Friedländer, "Nazi Germany and the Jews", Polis, 2013, p. 282). Alas, he was telling the truth: no one wanted Jews in their home. Everyone suggested solutions for somewhere else. The Evian Conference is a disgrace. Fear of violence prevailed and the logic that everyone should protect their home. In the end, he didn't keep it either, as it turned out after a year.
