If you stand at the old train station in Thessaloniki today, time seems to have stood still. Rusted tracks glimmer in the pale light of Greek spring. The site looks unremarkable, but it is an open wound in European history.
In March 1943, sirens marked the start of one of the most efficient and cruel waves of deportation under the Nazis. Nearly 50,000 people — descendants of Sephardic Jews who had fled to the Ottoman Empire after the Spanish Inquisition in the late 15th century — were crammed into cattle trucks and deported from their Greek homeland to Auschwitz-Birkenau, where most were murdered.
For centuries Thessaloniki was a cultural melting pot. Walking through the city, you could hear Greek, Turkish, French and Ladino — a medieval Spanish enriched with Hebrew, Turkish and Greek words spoken by the Sephardic community.
“Jerusalem of the Balkans”
The trading and port city on the Aegean was known as the “Jerusalem of the Balkans.” At the start of the 20th century, when the total population was estimated at 120,000–130,000, roughly 60,000–62,000 residents were Jewish — about half the city. By the Nazi occupation in 1941, the Jewish community numbered approximately 52,000–56,000 out of a total population of about 260,000–300,000. From March to August 1943, an estimated 48,000 Jews were deported by train, primarily to Auschwitz.
Within months the large Jewish community had almost completely disappeared. Jewish life in the city was wiped out. Only about 2,000 Jewish residents survived the Holocaust, mostly by going into hiding. Very few returned alive from the camps.
“Forgetting is a second death”
Behind these facts lie countless personal tragedies. Renee Revah lost most of her ancestors in the Holocaust, including her great-grandmother Sol Venezia and her children Olga, Lina and Isaac. The victims are commemorated each year with a memorial march to the deportation site.
“My grandfather’s relatives gathered here in this square, believing they were being sent to forced labor in factories across Eastern Europe,” Revah recalled. “They boarded the trains, were crammed together there, and from that point on, all trace of them was lost.” Her grandfather survived by hiding in Athens; he later learned most of his family had been deported and murdered.
The commemoration of the Thessaloniki deportations remains an important date in Greek remembrance culture. “This commemoration is a matter of great importance, for forgetting is a second death for these victims,” said student Savvina Mermigka. “As a young person, I’ve noticed a very strong rise in antisemitism lately, and I believe that this can only be countered by educating people about historical events.”
Antisemitism is a problem across Greece. The General Secretariat for Religious Affairs has recorded nearly 60 incidents over the past eight years, including antisemitic graffiti, damage to monuments, cemeteries and places of worship, and physical attacks. Following the events of October 7, 2023, the Central Board of Jewish Communities in Greece (KISE) and the Jewish Community of Athens reported a dramatic rise in antisemitic speech, particularly online.
Scant knowledge of Jewish history
There are many reasons for this trend. One is that Greek school lessons do not dwell on the history of Jewish life in Greece, Jewish communities and culture, nor the Holocaust. “For example, as a young person, after graduating from Greek school, I only superficially knew about the Holocaust in Greece,” said student Filippos Mermigkas, who attended the memorial march with his sister Savvina. “Remembering these people who died a martyr’s death is especially important for young people, who are not very informed about the Jewish community and its place in the world — particularly today, in a politically tense situation where half-truths prevail. I see this a lot among young people. They often have misconceptions about the Jewish community.”
After World War II there was long silence in both Greece and Germany regarding crimes of the Nazi occupation. Reappraisal and genuine engagement with remembrance or reconciliation came belatedly and tentatively. Germany’s focus on crimes against Ashkenazi Jews of Central Europe meant the fate of Sephardic Jews, particularly in southeastern Europe, remained a blind spot.
That has begun to change. The fate of Thessaloniki’s Jewish population has moved to the forefront of remembrance debates. Greece plans to build a Holocaust museum in Thessaloniki; construction began in early 2024 after lengthy bureaucratic hurdles, and the opening is set for 2028. The museum project was first proposed in 2013 by then-mayor Giannis Boutaris, an advocate for addressing the city’s Jewish history.
Shared European cultural memory
German President Frank-Walter Steinmeier visited the site in October 2024 during a state visit, expressed shame over German crimes in Greece and said the museum is a commitment to democracy. The Greek Holocaust Museum has an estimated total budget of about €40 million ($46 million), with Germany contributing €10 million so far. The new museum is intended as a symbol of a shared European culture of remembrance and as acknowledgment of the crimes against the roughly 50,000 deported Jews of Thessaloniki — a fate inseparable from both German and Greek history.
“We are united in our efforts to create a place to remember the Jewish communities of Greece, but we are also united in our responsibility to ensure that it becomes a place of dialogue,” said Monika Frank, Germany’s consul general in Thessaloniki.
The silence at the old train station after the memorial march serves as a warning. It reminds us that “Never Again” must not be merely an echo of the past, but a conscious decision — in favor of remembrance and against hatred.
This article originally appeared in German.