Jan 24, 2023
The inhuman events of the Holocaust affected the whole world. It is often forgotten, however, how severely the Holocaust affected Greece and the members of the country’s Jewish communities.
Many of these communities were wiped out entirely (including in Rhodes and Chania), and the history of the Jewish community of Thessaloniki, the country’s largest, is particularly tragic, leaving a huge void that is still felt today.
In total, more than 60,000 people in Greece lost their lives in the Holocaust, making it one of the countries with the highest mortality rate, with only about 3% of the Jewish population surviving the Holocaust.
On occasion of the Holocaust Remembrance Day, bellow you can watch Stavros Niarchos Foundation’s (SNF) video featuring real stories of victims, sourced by the project “Mapping the Childhood”:
For more than 10 years, the Stavros Niarchos Foundation (SNF) has supported museums, synagogues, and other institutions working to ensure that the stories and the tragedy of the Greek Jewish communities during the Holocaust are never forgotten.
SNF grants have supported the creation and digitization of archival testimony material from Greek Jews in Greece and abroad, education for students and teachers on the Holocaust and human rights, the needs of major synagogues in Greece (the restoration of Yad Lezikaron and Etz Hayyim), programs at the Jewish Museum of Greece, the expansion of the Jewish Museum of Thessaloniki, and, most importantly, the construction of the Holocaust Museum of Greece in Thessaloniki, expected to be completed in 2026.
