At dawn on May 20, 1944, the Jews of Crete were arrested by the German army of occupation (Wehrmacht). Most of them lived in the Jewish quarter, that is, in the blocks between Kondylaki, Skoufon, Porto and Zambeliou streets, in the Old Town of Chania. But there were also Jewish residents outside of Ebraiki, in Halepa, the Courts, Splantzia and in other neighborhoods. They were also arrested and, together with the convoy of vehicles from the Old Town, were taken to the prisons of Agia. They were held there in inhumane conditions, as described by their (non-Jewish/Christian) friends who tried to contact them. Many had nothing to wear other than the clothes they were in at the time of their arrest.
From Agyia they were transported to Heraklion by trucks, where they were initially kept in the Stoa Makassi, inside the Venetian Walls of the city. They were then forced to board the Nazi-flagged commandeered ship Tanais, which also contained local resistance fighters and Italian prisoners of war. The ship was bound for Piraeus, from where the Jews of Crete would probably be taken by train to Auschwitz, following the course of the arrested Jews from the rest of Greece, while the rest of the Cretans, along with the Italians, would end up in other Nazi concentration camps .
THE CHRONICLE OF THE WRECK
For several years, the details of Tanais's final hours and the fate of the people on board were unclear. What was known was that the boat had sunk and that everyone had drowned. The latest information recently released from the archives of the Foreign Office in London gives us more details: The Tanais sailed from the port of Heraklion shortly after sunset on June 8, 1944, with a crew of 12. At 02:31 AM, the ship was sighted by the British submarine HMS Vivid sailing south of Santorini escorted by German patrol boats (among them was the sailing ship Hera). At 03:12 am the British submarine fired four torpedoes at the ship, with two finding their target. Tanais sank in less than 15 minutes. None of the captives were saved. The exact number of prisoners is not known, with reports varying between 500 and 1000 people. In a German document, however, handed over to Das Historische Marinearchiv, 492 souls are mentioned. Again according to Dimitrios Mavrideros, then director of the "Heraldic and Genealogical Society of Greece", the Jews of Crete who drowned in the holds of the ship were around 300 people, the Christian resistance 48 and the Italian anti-fascists 112. The last elements of the historical ongoing investigation show that the number of Jews on board was 262 people. The only survivors from Tanais were the crew members, that is the Germans as well as the Greeks who worked inside the ship. After the end of the war, in fact, a naval court was held in Athens for the tragedy of Tanais, in which only one of the Greeks who were part of the ship's crew, together with the Germans, was present. The rest did not appear, probably for fear of being accused and convicted as Nazi collaborators.
THE EXTINCTION OF THE JEWS
In the above tragic way, the historical Jewish community of Crete was almost completely exterminated, after many centuries of continuous presence on the island (since the Hellenistic era). The few members of it who were saved were those who, before the fateful day of the arrest, in May 1944, had escaped to Athens and were hiding in Christian houses, while we also have evidence of escape and survival in the city of Chania.
TESTIMONY OF THE FACTS
Modern historical research has some valuable testimonies, written and oral, about the events of that time. Typical is, for example, the story of Katina Syngelakis, a woman from Chania, who lived in the Jewish quarter of Chania, probably on Skoufon Street, behind the Etz Hayim Synagogue, and was one of the witnesses to the arrest of the Jews of Crete by the Germans:
"We finished the lesson and returned together to our favorite neighborhood, chatting on the way to school, the competitions we would have, and our lessons. Later that afternoon my two girlfriends (Jews from Chania, probably Sarah and Judith Kunio), both orphans, came to my house. The brotherly love we had for each other will stay with me forever. They were both in a really good mood that night and we had a lot of laughs. Around 9pm they left and we all went quietly to bed. At dawn we were roused from our beds by shrill voices and loud knocks. At first we all thought it was some military landing that had taken place, but then we were saddened to discover the horrifying reality. A battalion of the occupying forces had surrounded our little neighborhood and with a terrible and violent noise they were rousing all the Jews from their houses. They were allowed to take with them only the bare necessities of clothing and food, which would last them eight days.
What moments of terror and agony! They (the Jews) were forced to leave, to leave their homes, their jobs, their shops and their dear friends. They lost in ten minutes everything they had achieved through hard work and sweat. They were all hard working people and now suddenly they were marching towards the harbor carrying some meager possessions on their backs, leaving like prisoners. The "brave" soldiers leading them were shouting with enthusiasm for their victory over a civilian population of about 300 people.
In just a few minutes they had all gathered in the streets. Instead of celebrating the Sabbath holiday in their small synagogue (EtzHayim), they were being pushed out of their neighborhood by vicious soldiers. I cannot describe to you the tragic spectacle of our farewell. We had lived together for so many years. This would probably be the last time we would see them, and the sadness was all the more intense because their lives were now going to get harder. They all left and we, their neighbors, were not allowed to help them in any way. My friend, the one who had been such a good student at school, was now touching me with a plea from the crowd:
Katina, please, my books! Say goodbye to school, to my girlfriends there – say goodbye to me!'"
THE NEXT DAY OF THE TRAGEDY
The "day after" the tragedy in Chania was like the day after in many places that experienced this historic (and absurd) moment. Either in Greece or in the rest of Europe.
The situation is as follows: in the early hours of that day, suddenly and within a few minutes, an event of violent abandonment and evacuation of Chanio houses by their inhabitants took place. Adults and children, with a rudimentary bag in hand with only the "necessities", and all filled with terror from the violent awakening and the sense of the impending unknown - flight to where? The coexistence of people and families at the neighborhood level has been going on for centuries. All local Cretans, whether Christians or Jews, composed (together with other population groups) the typical image of the Mediterranean neighborhood, of the Mediterranean urban space, for many centuries, until the abrupt and definitive interruption of this day in the 2nd world war.
When a population is targeted and disappeared under a regime of violence, what happens at the institutional level is to record a reduced number of inhabitants. But what happens at the level of everyday life is very different: houses are emptied of their people within minutes. The material part remains intact. Some doors are left ajar, the beds unmade from the sudden awakening. The household is left as in a moment when the screen image freezes.
This entire material world, marked by the souls of the people who made it and experienced it, but no longer having those souls in it, is now predictably vulnerable and in the process of immediate transformation. The landscape changes, in some houses immediately, in others gradually. In such moments the whole gamut of human psychology of neighbors and local residents unfolds: from shock, sadness, and nostalgia, to insecurity, envy, or jealousy. The feeling that my "next door" is gone produces a lot of confusion, question marks, and fear, but also a secret desire "to go in and see what happened." When these are overcome, practices of "looting" often appear among the local populations historically (removal/grabbing of abandoned property, and other assets), or arbitrary occupation of the foreign residence and settlement in it. The fate of Jewish property is known in Europe, recorded in the literature, and is now also taught in Greek universities.
"LOUD" ABSENCES
But what deserves more emphasis here, escapes from the "Jewish". The next day, every day that belongs to such a condition, contains all the scenarios: the neighbor, who secretly watched the arrest from the window, since they were forbidden to open the door (and therefore to say goodbye, if they wanted to) , faced the absence of the "neighboring" people in a similar way as he experienced their presence. Either by keeping the distance, or with moods of devotion to the shared experience of the past with the Other, or with moods of possessiveness and the disappearance of this memory.
Many and many Chaniotes cried, secretly and openly, for the loss of their neighbor, classmate, colleague at work, friends, loved ones... narration).
Many and many, like in most other parts of the planet, removed and appropriated things from the Other's property (Some houses were literally emptied).
Others lived on this property knowingly. Others lived in the now empty, uninhabited houses of the neighborhood, without knowing the fact (They settled there later coming from the Cretan countryside, from the villages - they were granted the buildings).
THE CHANGES IN THE NEIGHBORHOOD
Culturally and demographically, the neighborhood changed radically. The city as a whole, not so much – the Jews were a small group of the population now, compared to previous centuries. However, at the neighborhood level (and here we are talking about the neighborhoods of the Venetian-Ottoman port of Chania mainly) we had a complete change of scenery, if not from the following days, but certainly during the entire post-war period.
Even the Synagogue building had a similar fate. In the following years it was occupied and inhabited by various people (poverty prevailed in the neighborhood at the time), it became dirty, covered with layers of soil, it became a place for productive animals, while until recent years the clothes lines of the families who lived inside were visible.
The story is gone.
The silence of the post-war years is chilling, but certainly historically explained. It is explained by fear, by ideology, and by various historical necessities. Along this path, people learn to forget, but also decide to forget. But it makes no sense to cultivate the guilt for this past, but the fruitful relationship with it. Shared experience, and its memory, have the amazing ability to transform dogma and fear into positive forces for coexistence.
PRESERVING THE MEMORY
In memory of the tragic loss of the Jewish community of Chania in June 1944, a memorial service is held every year in the grounds of the Etz Hayim Synagogue, in the Old City, during which the list of the names of the victims is read. It is preceded by a memorial service and a memorial prayer for all the victims of the tragedy, at the monument of the victims of Tanais in Koum Kapi (Sand Gate), in the presence of the bishop of Kydonia and Apokoronos, the Rabbi of Athens and the representative of the Catholic church. In 2024 commemorations are to be held to mark the 80th anniversary of the sinking of the Tanais.
Article by VASILIKI GIAKOUMAKI, social anthropologist, University of Thessaly and Etz Hayim Synagogue of Chania & ANIAS TSUKMANTEL, historian/administrative director, Chania Etz Hayim Synagogue.
SOURCE: CHANIOTIC NEWS, 23.8.2022