There has been a Jewish community in Thessaloniki for over 2,000 years. But after the Jews were expelled from Spain in 1492 by Ferdinand and Isabella many more Sephardic Jews settled in Thessaloniki (Salonica) significantly increasing the Jewish population. Other Jews emigrated from elsewhere in southern Europe and by the 16 century over 50% of the city’s population were Jewish.
At the beginning of WWII the Jewish population of the city numbered 50,000 (just over one fifth of the population). In 1942 the Nazis destroyed the Jewish cemetery with more than 500,000 tombs. In the spring of 1943 the Jewish population were rounded up and on March 15th the first convoy of Jewish Greeks left Thessaloniki bound for Poland. In 1945 only 1,950 retuned. 96% were murdered in the concentration camps.
The plaque on the powerful statue reads:
“Dedicated by the Greek people to the memory of the 50,000 Jewish Greeks of Thessaloniki, deported from their mother city by the Nazi occupation forces in the spring of 1943 and exterminated in the gas chambers of the Auschwitz/ Birkenau death camps”
Jewish Museum
The Jewish Museum of Thessaloniki was founded to honour the rich and creative Sephardic heritage as it evolved in the city after the 15th century. It is housed in one of the rare Jewish buildings that survived the fire of 1917. It is great that the city has this museum and the exhibitions provide detail of the Sephardic way of life which existed.