The Jewish cemetery

The Jewish presence in Thessaloniki began in the Hellenistic and Roman times. When the Greek army conquered Thessaloniki in 1912, it essentially seized a multiethnic, multi-religious city where Jewish residents constituted the largest population group. In the context of the emerging nationalism of the era, the popularity of the Great Idea (the irredentist concept of reviving the Byzantine Empire), and the formation of the Greek nation-state, the Jewish presence in Thessaloniki was highly problematic. The ‘issue’ was resolved through the ‘final solution’ during the city’s Nazi occupation, the Holocaust and the extermination of almost 97% of Thessaloniki’s Jewish population. An important aspect of the erasure of Jewish presence and memory in the city was the destruction of the Jewish cemetery which had operated in Thessaloniki for five centuries.

The Jewish cemetery was located on what today is the site of the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, covered a surface area of more than 35 hectares and had more than 300,000 graves. After the Great Fire of 1917, the zoning plan proposed by the French urban planner Ernest Hébrard called for the creation of green spaces and the establishment of a university campus in the location of the Jewish cemetery.

During the interwar period, several decisions dictating the forced expropriation and conversion of parts of the cemetery were rescinded thanks to the efforts of the Jewish community. In 1930, refugees living to the east of the cemetery vandalized 70 graves ‘because, due to a decision by the Cemetery Committee of the Jewish Community, the cemetery gates closed at 9 p.m., preventing people from using the cemetery as a shortcut on their way home’. In 1931, after the pogrom against the Campbell Jewish Quarter, members of the nationalist organisation ‘3E’ ‘charged into the Jewish cemetery and destroyed hundreds of graves’.

The final destruction of the cemetery took place during the Nazi occupation of Thessaloniki. While the city’s Jewish residents were confined in ghettos, the cemetery was looted and the stolen bricks and marble gravestones were used as building materials. In the words of Ilias Petropoulos: ‘At first, the looting took place after dark. But when the rabble learned that the “Holy” Church and the Municipality of Thessaloniki had officially joined the plunder, the whole city got to work. You could see whole families stealing bricks and pieces of marble. Even today, I can find and photograph marble gravestones built into yards all over Thessaloniki’.

The landing of the residence on Limnaiou Street, where we are now standing, is one of those gravestones. Houses, roads, churches, courtyards, all built with gravestones: an image that perfectly captures the trauma that has been so well hidden in every corner of the city.  

Objects

Postcard, showing the cemetery in the 19th century. Source : http://www.macedonian-heritage.gr/HellenicMacedonia/media/original/d58b.jpg
Jewish tombstone at the entrance of a house in Limnaiou Street. archive of Harry Tsavdaroglou (2021)
✕

Map