Thessaloniki commemorated the "Memorial Day of Greek Jewish Martyrs and Heroes of the
Holocaust" on Sunday, with speeches and an exhibition tracing the history
of the Jews in Thessaloniki,
through their synagogues, at the city's Jewish Museum.
The event took place at Eleftherias Square, the site where in July 1942 Germans rounded up 9,000 Jewish males to humiliate them publicly. The first Jews from Thessaloniki were shipped to the Auschwitz concentration camp - where nearly 50,000 Jews of Thessaloniki or 96 pct of the Jewish population at the time were exterminated - in March 1943.
Greece established the memorial day in 2004 by unanimous parliamentary decision; the date falls on the anniversary of Auschwitz-Birkenau's liberation by Soviet troops.
Speakers at the event included the prefect of Central Macedonia, the minister of Macedonia-Thrace, the ambassador of Israel, the president of the Central Jewish Council of Greece and the Thessaloniki Jewish community, Thessaloniki's mayor, and others.
January 28, 2013
