Glossary

The Allach concentration camp was the third largest of the 169 sub-camps of the Dachau concentration camp in Munich. As of June 1944, hundreds of Jews-mostly from Romania and Hungary- were transferred from Auschwitz to  Allach. From 22 February 1943 until 30 April 1945 – day of liberation of the camp by the US army- more than 10,000 prisoners worked on the construction of airplane engines in the factories of BMW (Bayerische Motoren Werke).

The international Jewish organization Alliance Israélite Universelle was founded in Paris in 1860, aiming to safeguard human rights of Jews around the world by providing francophone education and vocational training. The Alliance schools in Greece contributed significantly to the modernisation of the country’s Jewish communities. In Thessaloniki, from 1870 to 1910 the Alliance founded ten elementary schools and two vocational training schools for boys and girls

Camp term referring to the assembly and roll call of prisoners outside in order to be counted and/or to ensure their presence during the imposition of disciplinary measures or execution of prisoners.

At the beginning of the 12^th century, the ancient Jewish community of Arta was comprised of about 100 families of Romaniote descent. At the time of the Despotate of Epirus the “Greca” synagogue was built and the Jewish cemetery was opened. After the Ottomans took control of the town in 1449, the community saw an influx of Sephardi refugees from the Iberian Peninsula and from the south of Italy. They formed their own, separate community, centered around a new synagogue, the “Pulieza”. The Jewish community was also known as “Rabane Arta”, “Arta of the native wise rabbis”. The Jews of Arta were shopkeepers, kept leather and glassware stores, while many were tinsmiths, peddlers or butchers. Women worked as seamstresses. The community maintained two schools, and many Arta Jews were active in the social and cultural life of the city. On 24 March 1944, the Nazis arrested 353 Jews of Arta and deported them to Auschwitz. Only 30 survived to return to the town, together with 28 more, who had fled and hid in the surrounding villages. Among the 317 victims of the Kommeno massacre of 16 August 1943 were three members of the family of Zakinos Ieremias from Arta. After the war, the members of the community emigrated and the community was officially dissolved in 1959. Subsequently its cemetery was expropriated and the synagogue plot granted to the Municipality. In March 2022 in an official ceremony, the street starting from the Square of Jewish Martyrs -where the Arta Holocaust Memorial is situtated- was renamed to “Isaac Mizan street”, in memory of the last Auschwitz survivor from Arta.

Jews who lived in the Rhine valley and neighbouring France. After the Crusades (11^th-13^th c.) they steadily moved eastward into the areas that today comprise Poland, Russia and the Baltic states. During the 17^th century, due to widespread persecution in eastern Europe, a great number of Ashkenazi Jews resettled in western Europe. Ashkenazi Jews speak Yiddish, a Germanic language of the Middle Ages written in the Hebrew alphabet, fused with many elements taken from Hebrew, Aramaic and various Slavic and Romance languages. They also differ from Sephardi Jews in cultural traditions and customs, chanting, synagogue liturgy as well as in the pronunciation of the Hebrew language.

Jewish presence has been recorded in Athens since the beginning of the 1st century C.E. It is known that Paul of Tarsus visited a synagogue in Athens, where apart from Jews, he also met with several gentiles who honoured the Jewish religion. Sephardim from Spain settled in Athens after 1492. The Jewish community of Athens was among the communities destroyed during the Greek War of Independence against the Ottoman Empire. After 1843, when Athens became the capital of the Greek state, a small Jewish community was established in the city. The first Jews were Sephardim from Smyrna but also Ashkenazi Jews, mostly representatives of Jewish businessmen from other countries. In 1847 there was an anti-Semitic attack against David Pacifico, a Jewish British national who had previously served as Portuguese Consul. This resulted in the blockade of British ships from the port of Piraeus. Recognition of the Athens Jewish community came as late as 1889. At the dawn of the 20^th century, the community numbered about 500 members, while in the next decades a large number of Jews from various areas of Greece settled in the capital. At the beginning of WWII, the Jews of Athens numbered about 3,000. In Thiseio, the Etz Hayyim synagogue was built in 1904 by Romaniote Jews and in 1935 the Beth Shalom synagogue was built by Sephardi Jews. The wealthiest Athenian Jews were Ashkenazi, while Sephardim, originally from various areas of Greece and Turkey were mostly peddlers, antique dealers and shopkeepers. During the German occupation, more than 3,000 Jews from all over Greece sought refuge in Athens then under Italian command. Following the Italian surrender in September 1943, Athens came under the German zone of occupation. On 24 March 1944, in what became known as the “Synagogue Blockade”, about 850 Jews were ambushed and transported to the Haidari camp where they were met by other Jewish prisoners. There they fell victim to humiliation and abuse. On April 2 1944, the Jewish prisoners were led to the Rouf railway station, where they were loaded on a train bound for Auschwitz. Following liberation, Athens became the center of Jewish life in Greece. Today about 3,500 out of the entire Jewish population of 5,000 reside in Athens.

Auschwitz concentration camp, that has become a symbol of the Holocaust, was built near the city of Oświęcim in occupied Poland and was the largest camp complex operated by the Nazis. It consisted of 3 main and approximately 40 subcamps. The main camps were a) Auschwitz I, the main camp (Stammlager) and the administration centre of the camp complex. About 70,000 people, mostly Polish intellectuals and Soviet prisoners of war were murdered there; b) Auschwitz II-Birkenau, a concentration and extermination camp with gas chambers. About one million Jews were murdered there –amongst them 55,000 Greek Jews– and 19,000 Roma; and c) Auschwitz III-Monowitz or Buna, a labour camp. Most people were murdered in the gas chambers of Birkenau immediately following Selektion (selection), that took place upon arrival to Auschwitz of the deportation trains from all over Europe. Thousands more died in the camp from illness, malnourishment, abuse, executions, medical experiments and deadly injections of phenol in the heart. It is estimated that 15,000 people died during the “death marches” that started in Auschwitz. As of November 1944, the SS began to destroy the camp’s archives, the gas chambers and the crematoria. On 27 January 1945, the Soviet army arrived at Auschwitz concentration camp, where they discovered approximately 7,000 emaciated prisoners.

The practice of tattooing camp serial numbers was exclusively applied to Auschwitz prisoners. Incoming prisoners, not selected for extermination in the crematoria but instead selected for work, were assigned a single serial number by means of this particularly painful procedure during registration in the camp. The serial number was initially tattooed on the chest and subsequently on the left forearm, first on the outer side and later on the inner side. Time of arrival, gender and the reason for incarceration determined the serial number of each prisoner. In the project “Greek Jews Holocaust Survivors”, Artemis Alcalay photographs Auschwitz survivors in a way that their camp number on their forearm is visible and thus each photograph embodies the industrialised dehumanisation and extermination carried out by the Nazi regime.

Refers to the Jewish neighbourhood in western Thessaloniki, founded by the Jewish Community after the 1890 fire, in order to provide housing to populations previously residing at the Thessaloniki seafront neighbourhoods. In March 1943, German officers and their accomplices turned the Baron Hirsch settlement into a transit camp for the 48,000 Jews residing in Thessaloniki before deporting them to Auschwitz-Birkenau and to Bergen-Belsen.

The Bergen-Belsen concentration camp was situated in what is today Lower Saxony. Ιn April 1943 the SS took over command of part of the camp and used it as a concentration camp. Initially, it served mainly for Jewish prisoners who were to be exchanged for German prisoners abroad or released in return for material exchange. About 52,000 people died in this camp during the period from 1943 to 1945. On 15 April 1945 British troops liberated about 50,000 prisoners, men and women, most of who were on the verge of collapse because of disease and starvation.

The construction of the Beth Saul Modiano Synagogue (81, Queen Olga street, Thessaloniki) designed by the Italian architect Vitaliano Poselli and funded by Fakima Modiano in memory of her husband Saoul Iakov, who was distinguished for this commercial and charitable activities, was completed in 1898. Beth Saul functioned as the central synagogue of the Thessaloniki Jews until 1943, when it was blown up by the Nazis.

The first written testimony of the Jewish presence on Corfu dates back to the 12^th century, when the Spanish rabbi Benjamin of Tudela in 1148 visited the island. According to historians, in 1267 many Jews lived on the island, at the vicinity of the “Kambielou” hill, known as “Jewish mount”. After the city was occupied by the Venetians in 1387 and especially during the 15^th and 16^th centuries, the Jewish presence in Corfu was enriched by Sephardi refugees from the Iberian Peninsula and Italian speaking Jews from Apulia (Puglia). They tried in vain to integrate into the pre-existing Romaniote community. In 1551 the newcomers that formed the majority and lived within the castle walls, founded the Apulian community and imposed the Apulian dialect. The two communities that emerged -the Greci (Greeks) and the Pugliesi (Italians and Spaniards)- lived separately and each had its own synagogue. By a decree of 1622 the boundaries of the neighbourhood that is, up to this day, known as the Evraiki (Jewish) or, previously, the “Yetto” were established. The neighbourhood, however, was not a legally imposed ghetto, but rather a result of Jewish families voluntarily settling in a specific area over time. During the period of French rule (1797-1814), the Jewish community was granted equal rights, an act that led to the resentment of the part of the Christian population. From 1814 to 1864, Corfu was under British rule. During this period, the community that at times numbered around 4,000 members, flourished both financially and culturally. The Romaniotes built a new synagogue, the Nuova (“New”), which operates until today. Even so, the same period was marked by the deprivation of civil rights and the exclusion of Jews from the exercise of the legal profession. When the Union of the Islands with Greece was proclaimed in 1864, the island’s Jews were granted full political and civil rights. Many Jewish families amassed great wealth, while the community had many schools and a home for the elderly. In 1925 a Rabbinical School was founded and until the beginning of the 20^th century a Talmud Torah School was in operation. Resurgence of the anti-Semitic “blood libel” myth in 1891 led to a pogrom against the Jews of the island. It is estimated that about 20 persons lost their lives and the material damage was extensive. As a result, more than 2,500 Jews left the island. By the beginning of WWII, the community had dwindled to 2,000 members. After the Italian surrender in September 1943, Corfu came under German occupation. In June 1944 the Nazis and their collaborators deported 1,900 Cofiote Jews to Auschwitz. About 180 survived. Following the end of the war, many emigrated to Israel or settled in big cities. Today the Jewish community of the island numbers about 65 members. At the exhibition “Corfu | Homecoming. Greek Jews Holocaust Survivors” shown in 2020 at the Corfu Synagogue with the support of the Federal Embassy of Germany in Greece and the Jewish Community of Corfu, Artemis Alcalay presented portrait photographs of Corfiote survivors as well as a video with excerpts from their interviews-conversations. More information can be found at the following link https://greekjewsholocaustsurvivors.art/en/project/corfu-homecoming/

Furnace used for the incineration of corpses. The Nazi concentration and extermination camps had special facilities with furnaces for the incineration of prisoners who had died of hardship, were executed or murdered in the gas chambers. Five large crematoria and two smaller ones operated in Auschwitz-Birkenau, called the “Little Red House” and “Little White House” respectively.

The first prisoners entered the gate of the Dachau concentration camp, situated 16 km northwest of Munich, on 22 March 1933, just a few weeks after Hitler’s rise to power. Although the Dachau camp was initially established for the internment of political prisoners, gradually Jews, Roma, German, and Austrian criminal convicts, as well as citizens of countries at war with Germany or under German occupation, were also imprisoned there. Over time, from 1933 to 1945, an entire complex of approximately 100 subcamps was created, wherein almost 41,500 people died. Dachau was liberated by the US army on 29 April 1945.

The concentration camp Venusberg Gelenau in Saxony was one of the subcamps of the main concentration camp of Flossenburg close to the borders with Czechia. This subcamp operated from 15 January to 14 April 1945. About 1,000 Jews –all women- were transferred there from the Ravensbruck and Bergen- Belsen camps in order to provide forced labour in the production of aircraft parts for Venus-Werke AG. On 29 April 1945 the women prisoners of this subcamp reached the Mauthausen concentration camp.

Refers to the Third Primary School and as of 1932 the Fifth Primary School of Corfu, that also includes a Kindergarten. Along with the Greek language, the Hebrew and the Italian languages were also taught. In 1939-40 208 students attended the school, whereas 76 children visited the kindergarten.

Construction of the Gusen concentration camp by prisoners of Mauthausen started in December 1939.  As of May 1940, it operated as the main subcamp of the Mauthausen camp complex, where prisoners  provided forced labour in the quarries. Initially the prisoners were mostly Spanish and Polish. From 1943 onwards, due to the increased demand, the two large German armaments industries of Steyr-Daimler-Puch AG and Messerschmitt GmbH Regensburg transferred the production of armaments and aircraft parts to Gusen. In total about 71,000 prisoners were deported to Gusen from all over Europe. Approximately 36,000 did not survive. The prisoners were mostly from Poland and the Soviet Union.  The camp was liberated by US troops on 5 May 1945.

The Haidari camp in western Athens was the largest concentration camp in occupied Greece. The camp operated under Italian command for just a few days and on 10 September 1943 was handed over to the Sicherheitsdienst (Security Service) of the SS, remaining under its control until 27 September 1944. Haidari served primarily as a transit centre for the deportation of prisoners to other concentration and extermination camps. Block 15 housed prisoners sentenced to death and Jews from different parts of Greece, prior to their deportation on the “death trains” bound for Auschwitz and Bergen-Belsen.

Ioannina was the centre of Romaniote Jews in Greece, that is Greek-speaking Jews. The first concrete historical reference to the Jewish population in the city of Ioannina comes as late as the 14^th century, under the reign of Andronikos II Palaiologos. On the eve of the German attack on Greece, about 2,000 Jewish men and women lived in the city. Due to the Italian occupation of Ioannina, the Jewish population in the city had not been targeted by the antisemitic measures and persecutions implemented in 1943 by the Germans and Bulgarians in their own occupation zones. Seven months after the Italian surrender, on 25 March 1944, the Germans arrested approximately 1,800 Jewish men and women of Ioannina, transferred them to Larissa by lorries where they were loaded on the train that had left Athens on 2 April 1944 for Auschwitz. There, and in several other death camps, about 92% of the Romaniote Jewish population of Ioannina was exterminated. Nowadays, the community numbers about 50 members.

In the beginning of the 20^th century there were ten Italian schools in Thessaloniki, a fact that confirms the economic and political significance of Italy for the city. The role of Italian Consul Guelfo Zamboni in the effort of rescuing the Jews of Thessaloniki during the deportations that took place in the first six months of 1943 was instrumental. At his order, certificates of Italian nationality were granted to Greek Jews of Italian descent. This made a difference of life and death to them, as Nazis and their collaborators had exempted Italian Jews from deportation. 322 Jews were transported to Αthens -Italian occupation zone- on a military train (tradotta) that departed from Thessaloniki on 15 July 1943, 92 of which were granted Italian nationality only at the very last minute.

Guelfo Jamboni received in 1992 the honorary title of Righteous among the Nations from Yad Vashem. In 2008, at the National Remembrance Day of the Greek Jewish Martyrs and Heroes of the Holocaust, his contribution in the rescue of Greek Jews during the Shoah was recognised as the highest act of humanity. The event was organised by the Central Jewish Board of Greece, the Athens Prefecture and the Jewish Communities of Athens and Thessaloniki. At the same event the Spanish Consul of Athens Sebastián de Romero Radigales (1884-1970) was also honoured (see the relevant entry below).

Refers to the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee, the first Jewish organization in the U.S., founded in 1914 in order to support the Jewish people living in Palestine suffering from famine in the aftermath of WWI. Since then, Joint’s contribution in the relief of Jewish people throughout the world from pogroms, epidemic outbreaks, famine, political unrest, and economic disaster is continuous. After WWII, Joint has been instrumental in the reconstruction of the Jewish communities of Europe after the Shoah, in the support of the State of Israel and of the Jewish communities of the former Soviet Union. Today Joint is active in over 70 countries and its work extends to global crisis response.

Camp term that refers to a camp prisoner who was assigned to supervise the work of other prisoners

The Sephardic community in Kastoria goes back to approximately 1550. Before WWII, the Jewish population numbered 900 people, with most of them living in the “Charsi” (market) quarter. Some were craftsmen, others were cloth and glass merchants, and a few ran clothes stores or owned bakeries and grocery stores. The community had a Synagogue and a Greek Jewish School. On 27 March 1944, the Germans transported the 763 Jews of Kastoria by lorries to Thessaloniki – alongside a small number of Yugoslavian Jews who had sought refuge there– and subsequently deported them to Auschwitz-Birkenau. The Jewish community of Kastoria lost 96% of its members in the Shoah.

The Jewish presence in the city was enriched by the arrival of Ashkenazi Jews from Hungary in 1526 and Sephardi Jews from Thessaloniki in 1880, as well as from other cities of the Ottoman Empire. As a result, the Ashkenazi Jews were assimilated. In the 19^th century, the city was recognised as an important centre of production and trade of tobacco and as such attracted many Jews seeking a better life. In 1884 the construction of the “Beth El” synagogue was completed and at the beginning of the 20^th century the community numbered over 2,000 members. The Alliance Israélite Universelle founded a Jewish primary school and a Kindergarten in Kavala, which was attended by Jewish, Christian and Muslim students. In 1941, Kavala became part of the Bulgarian zone of occupation and in 1943 began the imposition of anti-Semitic measures that included forcing Jews to wear the yellow star, looting of their properties, deprivation of their civil rights and deportation of many young Jewish men to work camps in Bulgaria. In the early hours of 3 March 1943, the Bulgarian authorities arrested 1,484 Jews of the city and imprisoned them in the tobacco warehouses of the Jewish company Commercial Company of Salonica Ltd. On 7 and 8 March of 1943 the prisoners were transferred with army vehicles to the railway station of Drama and from there by commercial train to Gorna Dzhumaya in southwest Bulgaria. On 18 and 19 March they were loaded in trains bound for the Bulgarian port of Lom on the Danube, where they were handed over to the Germans. On March 21 they were transported by boat to Vienna and from there by train to the Treblinka extermination camp where they were all murdered. From the Jewish community of Kavala, the second largest Jewish community in Greece after Thessaloniki, only 42 persons survived. After the end of the war, the few survivors tried to rebuild the Jewish community, but their efforts were in vain. The Jewish Community of Kavala was officially dissolved in 1980.

Judaeo-Spanish language spoken by Sephardi Jews in Greece and all over the world. It includes loan words from Hebrew, Aramaic, Arabic, Turkish, Italian, French, Greek, and various Slavic languages.

Camp in German.

The Salonika and Greece Jewry Heritage Center in Memory of Leon Recanati (1890-1945) is located in Petah Tikva, 10 km east of Tel Aviv. The Center was established in 2010 by Leon Recanati, a member of the Thessaloniki Jewish community and serves as a center for the Greek-Jewish community in Israel. It presents the history and lives of members of the Jewish community of Thessaloniki, with its people, stories, traditions, cuisine, music, religion, and language (ladino), through educational programs, lectures, concerts and publications. The founder’s aim has been to give a voice to the community, preserve and promote their unique and rich culture, and allow future generations of the community to explore their heritage. Since 2014, the contribution of the Leon Recanati Centre to the project “Greek Jews Holocaust Survivors” has been valuable.

The Marechal Lyautey Camp, also known as Fedhala, was situated approximately 16 km north of Casablanca, in what is today Morocco, that was under French rule until it was occupied by the US Αrmy in November 1942. As a result of a proposal made at the Bermuda Conference in April 1943, the Marechal Lyautey camp was chosen to house refugees fleeing Nazi Europe. In mid-May 1944, the first 38 refugees arrived at the camp.

Τhe Mauthausen concentration camp, situated in north-eastern Austria, approximately 20 km off the city of Linz, was from 1938 until 1945 the main camp within a complex of about 40 subcamps. It served as the biggest persecution centre on political, social, and racial grounds in Austria. In Mauthausen prisoners were forced to work to death in the local quarries. Out of the approximately 190,000 inmates about 90,000 were killed. On 5 May 1945, the US army liberated Mauthausen.

Messerschmitt Bf 109 was a German fighter aircraft, which was the main aircraft used by the Luftwaffe (German air force) during WWII.

In April 1891 the murdered body of a young girl, Rubina, daughter of Chaim Sarda, a Jewish tailor, was discovered next to the Corfu synagogue. Initially, the local authorities arrested three Jews, amongst them the girl’s father. They were later though set free, causing the wrath of the Christian population that had believed the victim to be a Christian girl sacrificed by Jews in a ritual murder. The Jewish quarter of the island came under siege. Violence spread to the neighbouring islands of the Ionian Sea and the news shocked public opinion in many European cities. It is estimated that 17 to 22 persons lost their life, while foreign press raised the number of victims to 50.  In the aftermath of those antisemitic attacks, half of the approximately 5,000 Jewish men and women of Corfu abandoned the island.

A seaside town in the French-Spanish border in Catalonia, approximately 160 km off Barcelona. During WWII it served as a transit, escape or detention point for people trying to escape occupied Europe.

Jews that found refuge in Corfu from Italy and from the Iberian Peninsula between the 13^th and the 16^th century were called Pugliesi. Jews from Apulia (Puglia) in Southern Italy had settled in Corfu as of the end of the 13^th century, where they co-existed with a flourishing Romaniote community. They were joined by Sephardi immigrants from the Iberian Peninsula who found refuge in the island after 1492 and after 1589. More Jews from southern Italy were added to the community, both in 1494 during the occupation of Naples by the French and in 1540, when they were expelled from the kingdom of Naples. In 1551, the newcomers founded a second community, the ‘’Apulian’’ -separate from the ‘’Greci’’ (Romaniote Jews) –and settled within the castle of the city of Corfu. They wrote and spoke the “Judæo-Italian”, a Venetian and Apulian dialect. They had their own cemetery in the quarter of San Rocco, close to the Monastery of Platytera and a synagogue called ‘’Kahal Kadosh Italiano Corfiato’’ that was destroyed in 1537. A new synagogue called ‘’Vecchia’’ or ‘’Midrash’’ was built on Palaiologou street in the Jewish quarter. It suffered extensive damage from fire, was rebuilt in 1926 but was later completely destroyed during the German bombing of the island in September 1943.

The Ravensbrück camp, 100 km northwest of Berlin, was the largest nazi concentration camp for women. Until 1945 approximately 120,000 women and children, 1,200 young girls but also 20,00 men from 30 different countries were imprisoned in the camp, amongst them Jews, Sinti and Roma. It is estimated that 28,000 persons perished in Ravensbrück, which was liberated on 30 April 1945 by Soviet armed forces.

The Jewish presence in Rhodes dates back to the 2^nd century BCE. During the 15^th and 16^th centuries CE, Spanish-speaking Jewish refugees from the Iberian Peninsula settled on the island, making it one of the most important economic and cultural Sephardic centres of the Eastern Mediterranean. Jewish people in Rhodes lived in ‘’La Juderia’’, the Jewish quarter that covered the area between the harbour and the south-east end of the fortifications. In 1941, approximately 2,000 Jews lived in Rhodes and had four synagogues. Given that Rhodes was under Italian occupation, Jews on the island had not been targeted by the antisemitic measures and persecutions implemented in 1943 by Germans and Bulgarians in their occupation zones. In July 1944, eight months after the Italian surrender in September 1943, the Nazis arrested the Jews of Rhodes and Kos and deported them to Auschwitz. Due to the intervention of the Turkish Consul, 50 Jewish men and women (of which 13 were Turkish nationals) were exempt from deportation. Of the 1,604 deported men, women, and children, only 151 survived. Today, the Jewish community in Rhodes consists of approximately 40 persons.

An old rice-husking facility in the outskirts of Trieste, that was converted by the Germans into a concentration camp following Italy’s surrender in 1943. It was also used as a transit camp for prisoners, Christians and Jews, who were then deported to Germany or Poland. The drying unit of the facility was converted into a crematorium. When the camp was evacuated on 29 April 1945, the Germans blew up all the camp facilities.

A name given in Byzantine times to identify Jews that had settled in what is today Greece during the Hellenistic period (3th c. b.C.E.). Romaniotes formed the majority of the Jewish population in the area until the 15^th century, they adopted the Greek language and started a distinct Greek-Jewish tradition. They built synagogues and continued to use Hebrew as their language of worship. Following the arrival of the Sephardim at the end of the 15^th century, the majority of the Romaniote communities, with the exception of those in Epirus, Peloponnese and Crete, were culturally absorbed by the Sephardim. The main differences of the two communities are found in their language, dress, dietary traditions and liturgy. Until WWII and the Shoah, Romaniote Jews were the majority in the communities of Arta, Preveza, Patras, Trikala, Volos, Chalkis and Chania. Ioannina was the undisputed centre of the Romaniote Jewry.

On 2 April 1944 a train carrying more than 1,500 Jewish men and women who had been arrested in Athens, Chalkis, Patras, Arta, Agrinio and Preveza departed from the Rouf train station in Athens. Amongst them there were 150 Jewish men and women residing in Greece who held foreign nationalities, mostly Spanish, who had also been arrested in Athens. The train stopped in Larisa and Thessaloniki where more than 2,500 Jews who had been arrested in these cities but also in Ioannina, Volos, Trikala and Kastoria were also loaded. In Vienna, the train wagons carrying the Jews with Spanish nationality were directed to the Bergen-Belsen camp. The rest of the train cars arrived at Auschwitz on 11 April 1944.

Sebastián de Romero Radigales (1884-1970) was a Spanish jurist and diplomat. In 1928 he married Elena Cutavá Anino, born in Romania to Greek parents. In the period from 1937 to 1939, during the Spanish civil war, he served as a diplomatic delegate of the Franco government. Radigales returned to Greece in April 1943 as Consul General of Spain. Following the end of the war he remained in Greece until 1950. With the rang of Chargé d’Affaires he was involved in 1946 in the creation of the Reparation Committee for Sephardi Jews who were forced to abandon their properties prior to deportation. Even though during the persecution of the Jews of Thessaloniki Radigales was instructed by the Spanish Foreign Office to retain a ‘’passive stance’’, he acted differently risking his career. He made great efforts for the repatriation in Spain of the Spanish Jews of the city who had been exempt from the antisemitic measures of the Germans under the condition that they would return to their home country. Moreover, he issued new Spanish passports even to Jews who did not really have the Spanish nationality. The reluctance of the Spanish government to promptly organise their repatriation resulted in the deportation on 2 August 1943 of 367 Spanish Jews of the city to the Bergen –Belsen camp. Radigales also tried to help the persecuted Jews of Athens in any way possible. He appealed to the German authorities to release Jews prisoned in the Haidari detention camp. He also guarded the possessions which belonged tothe arrested Jews in order to ensure that they would be returned to their owners or their legal heirs after the war, actions that went above and beyond his duty as a diplomat and were opposed to the policies of his government. In 2014 he was posthumously recognised by Yad Vashem as Righteous Among the Nations for his contribution in the rescue of the Jews of Greece.

The term ‘’selection’’, Selektion in German, refers to the procedure carried out upon arrival of the trains to Auschwitz, during which SS officers, usually physicians, chose the persons unfit for forced labour. Within the next hours, hundreds of people, amongst them mostly the sick, the handicapped, women with small children, pregnant women and the elderly were murdered in the gas chambers. The ‘’selections’’ continued to take place in regular intervals throughout the internment of the prisoners. In the language of the prisoners and subsequent survivors of Auschwitz, the terms seleccion and selektia were also used to describe this procedure.

Jews that were expelled from the Iberian Peninsula at the end of the 15^th century. The term is derived from ‘’Sepharad’’, the Hebrew name for Spain. Some settled in cities of northern Europe, mostly ports, where they could engage in commercial activities. The majority of the Iberian Jewish exiles settled in the Ottoman Empire, mainly in Thessaloniki and Istanbul, prompted by an invitation extended by Sultan Bayezid II. There, they flourished and in time outnumbered the existing Jewish communities that were culturally influenced by them. Until its destruction by the Nazis in 1943, the Sephardic community of Thessaloniki was the largest worldwide, also known as “Madre de Israel” and “Jerusalem of the Balkans”. Sephardim in Greece spoke Ladino, a Judaeo-Spanish language with loanwords from Hebrew, Aramaic, Arabic, Turkish, Italian, French, Greek, and various Slavic languages.

On 24 Friday March 1944, eve of the national holiday of March 25^th and of the Annunciation, the Nazis surrounded the Beth Shalom synagogue in Thiseio, and ambushed about 350 Jews, mostly men, who had gathered there relying on a rumour, spread by the Germans the day before, that matzot and sugar would be distributed at the synagogue for the upcoming Passover holiday. At the same time, the Germans arrested their wives and children and transported them to the synagogue, in total 850 persons. During the “Synagogue Blockade” no distinction was made between Greek and foreign nationals. The Jewish prisoners were then led to the Haidari camp. On 2 April, they were loaded with Jews from other cities onto trucks and were transported to the Rouf railway station, where they were put on a train bound for Auschwitz

Ancient sources and findings attest to the presence of Jewish people in Thessaloniki as early as the 1^st century BCΕ. During the 16^th and 16^th century CE Spanish-speaking Jews emigrating from the Iberian Peninsula settled in the city, then under Ottoman rule. From that point onwards, the populous Jewish community of Thessaloniki thrived commercially and culturally, and the city was named “Jerusalem of the Balkans”. From the annexation of Thessaloniki to the modern Greek state in 1912 to the start of the German occupation in 1941, the large Jewish community of the city, which included 85% of the Jews of Greece, experienced the tribulations brought about by the Great Fire of 1917, the arrival of refugees from Asia Minor in 1923, the deep rupture between the supporters of Venizelos and their opponents, the rise of anti-Semitism and the 1929 financial crisis. The 55,000 Jews residing in Thessaloniki responded to those challenges along the roads taken by Jews in the rest of Europe; some of them integrated into the Greek society, others embraced the Zionist vision and emigrated to Palestine, while others endorsed socialism and fought for social justice and workers’ solidarity. The occupation of Thessaloniki by the Germans marked the end of the Jewish community in the city. Following the imposition of antisemitic measures, the Germans deported approximately 48,000 Jewish men and women from Thessaloniki to Auschwitz-Birkenau in 19 transports, that took place from 15 March to 10 August 1943. Almost 96% of the deportees were murdered in the gas chambers or died of hardship during their internment or during the death marches. Today, approximately 1000 live in Thessaloniki.

The Jewish community in Trikala in Thessaly included both Romaniote, Ashkenazi, and Sephardic Jews. In late 19^th and early 20^th century, it had three separate synagogues, one for each group. Until shortly before WWII about 520 people lived in the Jewish quarter of Trikala, mainly active in commerce and the crafts. During WWII, most Trikala Jews, having been informed about what happened in Thessaloniki in 1943, found refuge in the villages controlled by the National Liberation Front (EAM-ELAS). Nevertheless, in March 1944, 139 Jewish men and women of Trikala were aarrested and deported to Auschwitz-Birkenau. Only 6 came back alive. Today, the Jewish community in Trikala comprises no more than 40 persons.

On 23 April 1945 Soviet troops liberated 2,400 Jewish inmates of Bergen-Belsen near the village of Langendorf, 6.3 km off Tröbitz in Brandenburg. The inmates were in a train that had left the camp on 10-11 April headed in the direction of the Terezin ghetto/camp, ahead of the advancing British army. Amongst the ‘’exchangeable’’ Jews, that were to be exchanged for German political prisoners or for hard currency, were also Greek Jews. The “lost train”, as it later became known, traveled back and forth for two weeks amidst ceaseless fighting and bombing. Due to a damaged bridge the train did not reach its original destination. During their odyssey in the train from west to east Germany as well as in the next eight weeks following liberation, more than 490 men and women died of air strikes, starvation, typhus and hardship, amongst them Zvi Koretz, Chief Rabbi of Thessaloniki.

Yad Vashem, The World Holocaust Remembrance Centre was established in 1953 by a decision of the Knesset, Israel’s Parliament, having as its aim the commemoration of the victims of the Holocaust and also the documentation, research and education on the Shoah. The name means “a Memorial and a Name” and is taken from a verse in the Book of Isaiah (56:5), where G-d promises to give a memorial and a name in Jerusalem in memory of those who have no one to carry their name after death.

Zyklon B was a chemical product, initially used as a pesticide. During WWII it was used as means of extermination in the gas chambers operating in the Nazi camps, particularly in Auschwitz.