[MGSA-L] Greece's Jewish Community - Over 2,000 Years Old

June Samaras june.samaras at gmail.com
Thu Jul 3 20:02:15 PDT 2014


Use the link to see the lovely photographs

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/mike-arkus/greeces-jewish-community-_b_5360653.html

Mike Arkus

Greece's Jewish Community - Over 2,000 Years Old: Down Memory Lane on the
Looney Front
Posted: 07/01/2014 12:45 pm EDT Updated: 07/01/2014 12:59 pm EDT Print

It is not only Salonika, the major intellectual and cultural centre of
Greek Jewry for over two millennia, or the ancient community of Rhodes, nor
such famous members as Colonel Mordechai Frizis, the officer who fought
valiantly against the Italian invasion in 1940, that recall how widespread
Greece's Jewish community was before the German Holocaust.

It is the traces of the smaller centres that one finds wherever one goes
throughout the length and breadth of the land that really bring home the
community's vibrant ubiquity and strength.

Jews first established themselves in Greece in the centuries immediately
preceding Christ. Some believe they may have started arriving after the
destruction of the first temple by the Babylonian King Nebuchadnezzar in
586 B.C. Some archaeologists believe they have found remnants of synagogues
in such places as Athens and Delos dating back to 150 B.C.

Be that as it may, there was already a vibrant community of Jews in
Salonika when Paul visited round about the year 50 of the common era, as
mentioned in the New Testament Book of Acts.

These original Greek Jews are known as Romaniots, to be distinguished from
the waves of Sephardi immigrants who flooded in after the expulsion of Jews
from Spain and Portugal in 1492. The newcomers eventually swamped them,
though small Romaniot communities still remained.

On a recent trip through Greece Yours Truly randomly came across three such
Jewish centres.

Halkida, about 50 miles from Athens on Evia, Greece's second largest
island, was home to Colonel Frizis, a Romaniot Jew who has bequeathed his
name to a street, a square and a statue. A 15th century mosque, a 19th
century synagogue and many Greek Orthodox churches testify to the city's
multicultural traditions.

The small white red-roofed 19th century synagogue is the sixth built on the
same spot, the earlier ones having been destroyed by earthquakes or fires.
The Jewish community here is reputed by some to be the oldest in Greece,
believed to date back to 586 B.C. The Jewish philosopher Philo of
Alexandria, born in 20 B.C., mentions the community.

A Jewish quarter once existed next to the Kastro, the old
Byzantine/Venetian castle, across the narrow strait on the mainland side,
and the eastern gate of the old town walls, demolished by city planners
over 100 years ago, was called the Gate of the Jews.

On the island side, beyond the large general hospital, a beautiful walled
grove of pine trees encloses the Jewish cemetery. In front of it on a
marble wall a large bronze relief with naked bodies, hanged, tortured and
otherwise slaughtered, commemorates the Holocaust. On the right side in
Hebrew are the bronze words of the eternal prayer: 'Hear, O Israel, the
Lord our God, the Lord is one.'

There are busts on either side: one of Frizis, the other of Halkida's
Orthodox Metropolitan Gregorios, who tried to save as many Jews as he
could. Before the war there were 325 Jews here; 155 were deported and
killed. Today the community numbers about 100.

To the north on the mainland in Macedonia, close to Pella, the ancient
capital of Alexander the Great, the hillside town of Veria (also known as
Berea), a major Macedonian city 2,000 and more years ago, had one of the
oldest Jewish communities outside Judaea.

According to the New Testament, Paul went to the synagogue to try to
convert the Jews in the year 55 or so. The Book of Acts says they were
quite receptive to his preachings that Jesus was the Messiah until the
larger Jewish community in Salonika, who had already kicked him out because
they were 'jealous,' got wind of it and had him booted out of Veria too.


These Jews were Romaniots, of course, but most recently Veria's Jews were
mainly Sephardim. They lived in Barbouta, a colourful quarter with a
picturesque stone synagogue and quaint Ottoman-style houses on hilly lanes
in pastel shades of blue, red-brown and yellow with red roofs and wooden
balconies.

Today only the buildings remain, as does a city sign in Greek and English
pointing the way to the 'Jewish Quarter.' What neither Paul could convert
with words nor the Spaniards with torture and expulsion, the Germans
annihilated in Auschwitz. In all up to 67,000 Greek Jews, some 85 percent
of the total, were massacred by the Germans and their acolytes, 650 of them
from Veria.

The stone synagogue, Sephardi and dating from the 16th century, is
shuttered pending conversion into a museum.

Today the steep little stone lanes on a hillside by a narrow tree-clad
ravine over a rushing river resound to the laughter of other children
cycling past. Not far from the shuttered synagogue a sign over a doorway
announces another religion, the Pentecostal Church.
Barbouta is just memories now.

Way to the west in the Ionian Sea, the island of Zakynthos once had a
thriving centuries-old Jewish community. In 1944 the Nazis ordered Mayor
Loukas Carrer at gunpoint to hand over a list of all Jews on the island for
deportation to the death camps.

The mayor handed over a list with only two names - his own and that of
Orthodox Metropolitan Chrysostomos, who told the Germans: 'Here are your
Jews. If you choose to deport the Jews of Zakynthos, you must also take me
and I will share their fate.' Meanwhile they hid the 275 Jews in mountain
villages and all survived the war, many later going to Israel.

The whole island knew of the hiding places but, contrary to the case of
Anne Frank, nobody ratted. Pillars with medallions of the two now stand on
the site of Zakynthos's synagogue, founded in 1489 but destroyed in the
massive earthquake of 1953 that levelled much of the town. The first boat
to bring aid to the quake victims was from Israel, with the message: 'The
Jews of Zakynthos have never forgotten their Mayor or their beloved Bishop
and what they did for us.'

Both Mayor and Bishop are now included in the 'Righteous Among Nations' in
Israel's Yad Vashem Holocaust Memorial in Jerusalem.

By contrast, of 2,000 Jews on nearby Corfu, 1,800 were deported and only
170 survived.

Today about 8,000 Jews are estimated to live in Greece.

Again, mainly just memories.



----------------------------------------
June Samaras
2020 Old Station Rd
Streetsville,Ontario
Canada L5M 2V1
Tel : 905-542-1877
E-mail : june.samaras at gmail.com
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