The research program "Post-war transformation of Thessaloniki and the fate of Jewish properties" is included in the framework of the 1st Call for Research Projects ELIDEK for the Support of Postdoctoral Researchers/Trials. It started to be implemented in November 2018 with Dr. Leon Saltiel. Since November 2019, Dr. Andreas Bouroutis.
The project aims to examine the fate of Jewish properties in post-war Thessaloniki. As is known, Thessaloniki before the Second World War had a thriving Jewish community consisting of approximately 50.000 people. In 1941, Greece was under triple occupation (Germany, Italy, Bulgaria) and Thessaloniki under German occupation. In February 1943, the persecution of the Jews began with a series of anti-Jewish orders (yellow star, curfew, residence in certain areas - ghetto) and in March the deportation to the Auschwitz - Birkenau death camp began. A total of 19 Jews were deported in a total of 46.061 expeditions; less than 2.000 returned alive.
In March 1943 all Jewish property came under the jurisdiction of a new agency created by the Greek dosilogous regime at the behest of the Germans, the YDIP (Service for the Administration of Israeli Properties). The agency was responsible for allocating all Jewish property to new trustees called trustees.
The new service undertook to appoint teams of appraisers - experts, usually of two or three people, of the properties to be escrow with a specific procedure, which included on-site recording of the goods and fixed assets of each business, assessment of their value, pre-war and occupation - inflationary , sealing of the store – business and delivery of the keys to the service. The schedule included handing over the keys along with the necessary protocols and a new inventory to the new rent-paying managers.
With the appearance of legality of the YDIP, a systematic attempt was made to appropriate Jewish movable property. To a large extent, the properties were given to collaborators of the Germans and the Dosilogian regime, while only a small percentage was given to refugees from the Bulgarian-occupied areas or to people who were in real need. The movable assets of the Jews (merchandise of shops - businesses, furniture from homes) were looted, yielding huge sums to the Germans themselves, such as the military adviser of the Thessaloniki-Aegean Military Command Maximilian Merten and to their associates, Greeks and non-Greeks.
After the liberation and the end of the Second World War, the extent of the looting began to become apparent.
The decimated Jewish community tried to regroup and support those returning from the death camps or those emerging from the places they had been hiding. In most, if not all, cases they found their homes occupied. The process of rebuilding the Jewish community in Thessaloniki was a long and arduous process.
It was not until 1949, after 4 years of systematic efforts, that OPAIE, the Organization for the Treatment and Rehabilitation of Greek Jews, was created. The new organization undertook the difficult task of finding and ascertaining the fate of Jewish real estate properties that had been exploited.
The research program
The research program "Post-war transformation of Thessaloniki and the fate of Jewish properties" is being developed under the auspices and funding of the Hellenic Research and Innovation Foundation (ELIDEK) and the General Secretariat for Research and Technology (GRET). The host of the program is the chair of Jewish Studies and the deanery of the Faculty of Philosophy of the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki. The program management and control body is the Research Committee (ELKE), AUTH.
Despite the fact that 75 years have passed since the official end of the Second World War, it has not been ascertained to a large extent what finally happened to the Jewish properties in Thessaloniki. The ongoing research program aims, through the study of the OPAIE archive, public service archives (Mortgage Office), archival collections (Macedonian Historical Archive, Jewish Museum of Thessaloniki), and the gathering of testimonies, to establish what exactly happened to the Jewish properties and Jewish securities.
With the core of Venizelou (Vassileos Konstantinou) and Miaoulis streets, in the center and east of the center respectively, the research program will present the changes in the commercial and residential map of Thessaloniki from the period of Liberation and the Interwar period, until the post-war period.
The presence of Jewish professionals in Venizelou Street, Vasileos Konstantinou in the pre-war period, was dynamic and continuous. Even today, Venizelou is one of the most commercial streets in the city.
Miaouli Street, in the old area called Kalamaria in the first decades of the 20th century, together with the neighboring Misrahi Street, today's Fleming, constituted a nucleus of a strong Jewish presence that coexisted with Christians. A common point of reference, the great Jewish institutions of the neighborhood, such as the Hirsch Hospital, today's Hippocrates hospital.
After the war, residential development and compensation completely changed the image of the street, while the Jewish presence is now minimal.
The results of the program will be presented at open events, both within the university community and to the wider public, in collaboration with institutions such as the Municipality of Thessaloniki and the Israelite Community of Thessaloniki. A collective volume and this website will support the dissemination of the results of the program which will be complemented by the presentation to universities and institutes abroad.
SOURCE: website thessaloniki-jewishassets.gr
*The results of the research program "Post-war transformation of Thessaloniki and the fate of Jewish properties" were presented on Wednesday (9.12) by AUTH. As the researchers admitted, despite the fact that 75 years have passed since the official end of the Second World War, it has not been ascertained to a large extent what finally happened to the Jewish properties in Thessaloniki. (Data from a newspaper article NATION, 10.12.2020)