With particular emotion, they took place in 23.3.2025 by the Municipality of Kastoria, the events for the Remembrance Day of the Jewish Community of Kastoria. The events included a symbolic Remembrance March from Omonia Square to the Holocaust Memorial, where a memorial service was held by the wise Rabbi of the Jewish Community of Thessaloniki, Dr. Yitzhak Dayan, and our fellow citizen, Isaac Cohen.
Starting from Omonia Square, the symbolic March of Remembrance began towards the Holocaust Memorial of the Jewish community of Kastoria, the point where the Nazi occupation troops on March 24, 1944 gathered 1.000 of our Jewish fellow citizens and led them to the Auschwitz-Birkenau camp, from which only 35 returned.
A memorial service followed, with the choir of the I.K. Thessaloniki reciting Psalms of David, and then greetings were given by the Mayor of Kastoria, Yiannis Korentsidis, the representative of KISE Hanna Pinto, Clifton Roussos, the child of Kastoria survivors from Auschwitz, the representative of the Research Foundation for the Promotion and Promotion of the Jewish Community of Kastoria ERA, museologist Nissim Mevorach, and the scientific manager of the Jewish Museum of Thessaloniki, curator of the periodic exhibition on the Jewish Community of Kastoria, Dr. Xenia Eleftheriou.
The event concluded with the laying of wreaths at the Monument.
March 24, 1944 was a horrific day for the Jews of Kastoria, leading to the annihilation of a thriving community in our city. We stand with absolute respect for the innocent victims of Nazi atrocities, the Jewish martyrs who perished in the concentration camps, and the Jewish heroes who managed to survive and return to their homeland, facing new realities.
The history of the Jews includes many dark moments, culminating in the Nazi Holocaust. Moments that were captured in books, in films, in songs, but above all translated into painful memories. The main enemy of collective, but also individual memory, is its forgetfulness. It can kill memory and with it the historical past.
It is our duty to keep the collective memory alive and to shout loudly “Never Again”!