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Anyone interested in the Holocaust and how the macro-picture was shaped by
micro-level interests should read this book.
—Giorgos Antoniou, Aristotle University, Thessaloniki
This book depicts in a calm and objective manner all the tragedy, but also the
importance of the Jewish community in forming the city’s identity.
—Yiannis Boutaris, Mayor of Thessaloniki 2011–2019
This book explains the ongoing discomfort that the city has with its Jewish past.
—K. E. Fleming, New York University
The book on (the fate of the Jews of) Thessaloniki that we have been waiting for
70 years.
—Joël Kotek, Université Libre de Bruxelles and Sciences Po Paris
The book uncovers untold aspects of Thessaloniki’s Jewish history, convincingly

dispelling the widespread myth that Christians helped as many Jews as they could.
—Nikos Marantzidis, University of Macedonia, Thessaloniki
Saltiel deserves my gratitude and congratulations for providing a page-turner, as

well as a mainstay in my, and hopefully many people’s, library.
—Petros Mavroidis, Columbia Law School
Saltiel’s path-breaking book draws on a rich array of previously untapped archives

to paint a detailed picture of how genocide unfolded in occupied Thessaloniki, and
illuminating as never before the local and municipal dimensions of this grim story.
—Mark Mazower, Columbia University
Saltiel blends detailed narratives anchored in his exhaustive research with broad
analytical insights in a work that should stand for the foreseeable future as the
definitive study of its subject.
—John McNeill, Georgetown University
Saltiel’s penetrating, sensitive and innovative study of the reactions of the non-
Jewish population in Thessaloniki to the fate of the local Jews, is of utmost
importance for a better, even if painful, understanding why they became one of
the most victimized Jewish community. This book is essential reading.
—Dan Michman, International Institute for Holocaust Research, Yad Vashem
Saltiel’s meticulous and nuanced reconstruction of Christian elites in Thessaloniki

demonstrates that a mixture of nationalism, opportunism, and moral cowardice can
quickly lead to the social death, deportation, and mass murder of a significant minority.
—A. Dirk Moses, University of Sydney
Saltiel’s highly original and deeply researched book offers a look into one of the
worst moments of Modern Greek history. An indispensable work.
—Alexander Nehamas, Princeton University; Member, Academy of Athens
Saltiel offers a thick description of the institutional reactions to the Holocaust

in Thessaloniki, pointing to the guilty silence of the city in non-confronting the
darkest moment of its history.
—Miltos Pechlivanos, Freie Universität Berlin
Saltiel’s book is a significant contribution which persuasively explains the

efforts to conceal that Thessaloniki had been a cosmopolitan city whose Jewish
communities had contributed for centuries to its rayonnement.
—Davide Rodogno, Graduate Institute of International and
Development Studies, Geneva
Saltiel’s meticulously researched study of the annihilation of the Jews of

Thessaloniki is a critically important addition to both the history and the
historiography of the Holocaust.
—Menachem Rosensaft, General Counsel and Associate
Executive Vice President, World Jewish Congress
This ground-breaking book on Thessaloniki reflects excellent scholarship and

new findings. The book lays bare how a society abandoned fellow citizens and
took advantage of their plight. A must read.
—David Silberklang, Senior Historian, Yad Vashem
This book is an exemplary study of the behavior of local elites during the
Holocaust. The concepts Saltiel has generated in his study of Thessaloniki could
be usefully applied in other cities and in much of occupied Europe.
—Timothy Snyder, Yale University
A necessary and crucial perspective, in a time when the involvement of bystanders

is subject to distortion within both historiography and politics.
—Dominique Trimbur, Fondation pour la Mémoire de la Shoah, Paris
A meticulously researched, penetrating study of the destruction and despoliation

of the ‘Sephardic metropolis’, Saltiel’s book offers an unvarnished picture of the
confluence of interests that led to that cataclysmic event.
—Laurence Weinbaum, The Israel Journal of Foreign Affairs
This book narrates the last days of the once prominent Jewish community of
Thessaloniki, the overwhelming majority of which was transported to the Nazi
death camp of Auschwitz in 1943.
Focusing on the Holocaust of the Jews of Thessaloniki, this book maps the
reactions of the authorities, the Church and the civil society as events unfolded.
In so doing, it seeks to answer the questions, did the Christian society of their
hometown stand up to their defense and did they try to undermine or object to the
Nazi orders? Utilizing new sources and interpretation schemes, this book will be a
great contribution to the local efforts underway, seeking to reconcile Thessaloniki
with its Jewish past and honor the victims of the Holocaust.
The first study to examine why 95 percent of the Jews of Thessaloniki
perished—one of the highest percentages in Europe—this book will appeal to
students and scholars of the Holocaust, European History and Jewish Studies.
Leon Saltiel holds a PhD in Contemporary Greek History from the University
of Macedonia in Thessaloniki and has received post-doctoral fellowships at the
Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies in Geneva and the
Aristotle University of Thessaloniki.
Routledge Jewish Studies Series
Series Editor: Oliver Leaman
University of Kentucky
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which have characterised Jewish culture both in the past and today. The series is
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The Making of Modern Jewish Identity

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Atonement, Rewards, and Righteousness
Alyssa M. Gray
Deconstructing the Talmud

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The Divine in Modern Hebrew Literature

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Reactions to the Anti-Jewish Persecution, 1942–1943
Leon Saltiel
For more information about this series, please visit: www.routledge.com/middle

eaststudies/series/JEWISH
Reactions to the Anti-Jewish
Persecution, 1942–1943
Leon Saltiel
First published 2020
by Routledge
2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN
and by Routledge
52 Vanderbilt Avenue, New York, NY 10017
Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business
© 2020 Leon Saltiel
The right of Leon Saltiel to be identified as author of this work has been
asserted by him in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright,
Designs and Patents Act 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or
utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now
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Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or
registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation
without intent to infringe.
British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Saltiel, Leon, author.
Title: The Holocaust in Thessaloniki: reactions to the anti-Jewish
persecution, 1942–1943 / Leon Saltiel.
Other titles: Routledge Jewish studies series.
Description: Abingdon, Oxon ; New York, NY : Routledge, 2020. |
Series: Routledge Jewish studies series | Includes bibliographical
references and index.
Identifiers: LCCN 2019056706 (print) | LCCN 2019056707 (ebook) |
ISBN 9780367193843 (hardback) | ISBN 9780429202070 (ebook) |
ISBN 9780429510724 (adobe pdf) | ISBN 9780429517587 (mobi) |
ISBN 9780429514159 (epub)
Subjects: LCSH: Holocaust, Jewish (1939–1945)—Greece—Thessalonikē. |
Jews—Persecutions—Greece—Thessalonikē. | Antisemitism—Greece—
Thessalonikē. | Christianity and other religions—Judaism. | Judaism—
Relations—Christianity. | Jews—Greece—Thessalonike—History—20th
century.
Classification: LCC DS135.G72 T5545 2020 (print) | LCC DS135.G72
(ebook) | DDC 940.53/18094954—dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2019056706
LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2019056707
ISBN: 978-0-367-19384-3 (hbk)
ISBN: 978-0-429-20207-0 (ebk)
Typeset in Times New Roman
by Apex CoVantage, LLC
To all those who
walked along with me
Outside Thessaloniki, 1942
The accountant sits chewing

through the misty arithmetic of crop yields
on lined paper that curls and yellows
in wet heat,
flies buzzing like Messerschmitts.
In the dry dirt at the courtyard’s perimeter,
rats occupy themselves
with the bureaucracy of consumption.
Splatterings of sunlight
break the shade like incendiary bomb fires.
He draws lines, forms columns,
the only sound the perfunctory clang
of an olive pip
spat into the basin of an upturned helmet.
Tim Clare
October 1, 2011
The Poetry Takeaway at Tate Britain
Contents
List of maps and tablesx

List of figuresxi
Forewordxiii
Acknowledgmentsxv
Prefacexviii
1 Historical and theoretical background 1
2 Dehumanizing the dead: the destruction of Thessaloniki’s

Jewish cemetery 42
3 What people knew: contemporary sources on the

Holocaust in Thessaloniki 79
4 The reactions from the city authorities 105
5 Reactions from the institutions: the Church, the courts, the

university121
6 The reactions from the professional associations 151
7 Jewish efforts in Athens and Thessaloniki to save the Jews

of Thessaloniki during the Holocaust 165
8 The actions of the Red Cross delegate in Thessaloniki

during the Holocaust and their post-war legacy 191
9 Conclusion 209
Appendix: short biographies of key individuals219

Bibliography 225
Index243
Maps and tables
Maps
1.1 Division of Greek territory by Axis Powers 2
1.2 Thessaloniki in 1943, with the Jewish ghettos and other points
of interest 20
Tables
0.1 Jewish population in Greece before and after the Holocaust xx
1.1 Deportation trains of Jews of Thessaloniki, 1943 23
4.1 Changes of streets with Jewish names 109
Figures
1.1 Sabi Dekalo, born in 1925, in his early teens, in front of the
Statue of King George I in Thessaloniki 4
1.2 Daisy Benveniste, victim of the Holocaust from Thessaloniki 5
1.3 Timeline of measures against Jews of Thessaloniki 18
1.4 The entrance to the Baron Hirsch neighborhood, before it was
turned into a transit camp 21
1.5 The same road as in Figure 1.4, with the entrance to the transit
camp of Baron Hirsch, after it was fenced, March 1943 21
1.6 Three Jewish children wearing the yellow star in Thessaloniki 22
2.1 View of the Jewish cemetery of Thessaloniki before its
destruction, circa 1920 44
2.2 The destroyed and pillaged Jewish cemetery of Thessaloniki,
from the report of René Burkhardt, the delegate of the
International Committee of the Red Cross in the city, 1942–1943 44
2.3 and 2.4 Scenes from the gathering of 8,500 Jewish men
in Liberty Square to register for forced labor, Thessaloniki,
July 11, 1942 48
2.5 Letter from the Children Soup Kitchens of Thessaloniki to
Matanoth Laevionim that they will be in charge of feeding the
Jewish children, September 11, 1942 50
2.6 and 2.7 The first of the series of six known checks used to pay
the ransom for the release of the Jewish workers 53
2.8 Marbles from the old Jewish cemetery at the entrance of the
State Theater of Northern Greece, in front of the White Tower,
as it can be seen today 59
2.9 Tombstones from the old Jewish cemetery that can be seen
today in Thessaloniki in church courtyards 60
2.10 Female students of a Thessaloniki high school posing as the
“new Hamlets,” holding skulls and bones during a school
excursion to the site of the destroyed Jewish cemetery,
Thessaloniki, 1957–1958 62
3.1 Antisemitic propaganda flyer in circulation in Thessaloniki
during the Second World War, undated 83
xii Figures
3.2 Article titled “The Persecution of the Jews,” published in Megali
Ellas [Great Greece], March 1943 86
3.3 Front page of Nea Evropi, March 3, 1943 91
5.1 Letter of Gennadios to the general secretary of the Greek
governor of Macedonia, Christos Tentzos, recommending
a particular person as a custodian for a Jewish store, “as a
personal commitment,” March 17, 1943 128
6.1 Stamp on the membership books of the Thessaloniki
Chamber of Commerce, deleting any business owned
by Jews, March 4, 1943 155
7.1 First page of Yomtov Yacoel’s rescue plan, March 1943 169
7.2 Invitation to a briefing “on interesting issues,” by the “Special
Athens Committee” of the Jewish Community of Thessaloniki,
December 24, 1942 171
9.1 Transport of Jews from the ghetto in the eastern part of
Thessaloniki to the Baron Hirsch transit camp, via Egnatia
Street, April 9, 1943 210
Foreword
“Let the city get rid of them like it got rid of the Jews” the Ongoing Erasure of
Thessaloniki’s Jewish Past
In thesis VI of “On the Concept of History,” Walter Benjamin, so often an inscru-

table writer, makes a lucidly terrifying declaration:
even the dead will not be safe from the enemy, if he wins. And this enemy has
not ceased to be victorious.1
The Holocaust in Thessaloniki, which is both the subject and the title of this book,
is devastatingly illustrative of Benjamin’s observation. This volume shows us, for
instance, the effort that went into changing the city’s street names, obliterating
any that were linked to its Jewish past and replacing them instead with blandly
geographic or more “Christian-sounding” ones. While initial proposals for such
a move had come earlier, it was not until four months after deportations com-
menced that the city actually got moving on the plan. In mid-July of 1943, by
which time almost all of the city’s Jews had already been sent to their deaths, the
city council set about what it called the “urgent work” of taking down old street
signs and replacing them with new ones. The city had to make sure that marks of
its Jewish past be gotten rid of “like it got rid of the Jews,” as Nea Evropi had it.
What was so “urgent”? No doubt, the urgency to reframe the city as something
other than Jewish was compounded by a new urgency: an urgency to forget. To
forget not simply the storied Ottoman Jewish past—most of the streets whose
names were changed had borne the names of illustrious Jewish leaders of bygone
years—but, more critically, to forget the very recent past, the horrible and no
doubt still vivid recollection of the ways in which the city’s Jews had been treated
just months before—and not just by the occupying Germans but also in many
instances by the chilling non-intervention (at best) of their Christian neighbors.
The urgency was to obliterate the images that must have still burned vividly in the
mind’s eye of the remaining Christians: of Jewish men in suits, beneath a swelter-
ing sun, forced by Nazi soldiers to perform calisthenics in a square (“Freedom
Square”!) as bystanders laughed and pointed at them in their misery. Of Jewish
xiv Foreword
forced work details, collecting garbage in the city’s streets during the occupation.
Of the sudden and complete disappearance of 1 in 5 of the city’s residents. Of
citizens hanged in public, bodies left dangling for hours as a warning. And also,
an urgency to forget the “ongoing victory,” in Benjamin’s words, of the enemy. It
was not enough that the city’s Jews be gone. They had to continue to be victims,
and this ongoing victimization, above all else, had to be continually forgotten, for
it was a victimization in which Greek Christians were not blameless. After all,
by July of 1943 vacated Jewish homes had already been reoccupied with swift-
ness and efficiency by opportunistic Christians. All moveable Jewish property had
been moved. The slaughter of the city’s Jews clearly had its beneficiaries.
These changed street names are a metaphor for the broader history with which
this volume is concerned. And as we read it, we come to understand through the
history that it describes that the dead Jews of the city are still not safe, even to this
very day, even in their very absence. Current debates around the city’s Jewishness,
most recently seen in local reactions to a Holocaust museum now under construc-
tion in the city, reveal the extent to which the enemy of antisemitism persists in
Greece, and point to the deep difficulty with which many Thessalonians confront
(or fail to confront) their own city’s past. Those few urban sites that have been
memorialized as having a Jewish history have been marked as such only grudg-
ingly. The Holocaust memorial in Freedom Square—up until the summer of 2019
a dismal parking lot in what has become a grungy part of town—even its unobtru-
sive existence has been debated, and the memorial itself repeatedly defaced. This
book, in tracing in detail the local mechanics of the Holocaust in Thessaloniki,
shows the long history of which such debates are a part, explains the ongoing dis-
comfort that the city has with its Jewish past, and underscores it to be a continuity
of the fundamental discomfort that interwar Thessaloniki had with the idea that it
was in some core way Jewish.
These debates, this discomfort, and these failures to confront the past are not
simply about a history that is finished and over. They are part of its ongoing, lived
reality. They are the enemy, still victorious.
K. E. Fleming, New York University
Acknowledgments
This book is the product of my PhD that I conducted at the Department of Bal-
kan, Slavic and Oriental Studies at the University of Macedonia in Thessaloniki,
Greece, with the additional work of post-doctoral studies for almost two years.
As I worked on the project of the PhD thesis and the wider research, I have been
deeply grateful that I have been able to count on so many people for their advice
and expertise, but also for their support and encouragement.
I would like to thank my thesis advisor, Professor Nikos Marantzidis, for agree-
ing to be my academic supervisor and guiding me through this project, together
with the other two members of the committee, Professors Stratos Dordanas and
Ireni Lagani, as well as Professors Giorgos Antoniou, Theodosis Karvounarakis,
Nikos Zaikos and Katherine Fleming, who provided important feedback during
my PhD defense. I also appreciate Professor Paroula Perraki, an exemplary educa-
tor, for encouraging me to pursue this degree.
Before I even embarked on this project, the Group for the Study of the History
of the Jews of Greece was providing space, inspiration and support, and I would
like to thank in particular its able coordinators and friends Paris Papamichos-
Chronakis and George Antoniou. An online discussion group provided many
years of interesting and stimulating discussions and exchanges on academic and
other matters: George Gedeon, Sam Hassid, Yacov Schibi, Benny Natan, Alkivi-
ades Triantafillou, Sakis Meir, Jean Cohen and Abravanel.
I would also like to thank many friends and colleagues for the discussions and
information which they willingly shared with me, including Andrew Apostolou,
Richard Breitman, Tal Bruttmann, Philip Carabott, Evanghelos Chekimoglou, Angel
Chorapchiev, Sofia Christoforidou, Anna Maria Droumpouki, Gabriella Etmekt-
soglou, Hagen Fleischer, Vaios Kalogrias, Maria Kavala, Kostis Kornetis, Periklis
Kortsaris, Joel Kotek, Katerina Kralova, Mark Mazower, Alexis Menexiadis, Devin
Naar, Leon Nar, Miltos Pechlivanos, Nikos Stavroulakis, Nikos Tzafleris, Pepos
Vaenas and Maria Vassilikou, as well as Ioannis Megas, Andreas Assael and in par-
ticular Christos Kavvadas for generously sharing their private archives with me.
I was able to count on many friends for their help and support, including Lavinia
Abbott, Kallissa Apostolidis, Vassilis Christakis, George Georgoudis, Diego Giol
and Ursula Siegfried, and Lucia and Michael Hessel. In addition, I thank my col-
leagues at UN Watch for their support and patience during long discussions of my
xvi Acknowledgments
research. Special thanks go to my friends who patiently helped me with transla-
tions, including Phil Taussky, Julian Voloj, Mathias Hirsch, Elliot Hentov and
Mattia Zanazzi.
The research involved consulting archives and libraries in Greece and nine
other countries around the world. I would like to thank the librarians, archivists
and museum staff as well as the staff of the Greek institutions and associations for
their kind assistance in providing me with the requested access and documenta-
tion. I would also like to acknowledge the kind assistance of the Jewish Commu-
nity of Thessaloniki and its President David Saltiel, as well as Marcel Hassid, Ida
Nahmias, Erika Perahia and Aliki Arouh.
As I was developing the argumentation and gathering the documentation, I was
honored by the invitation to present the progress of the research in several fora
around the world, as well as to publish parts of it in prestigious academic jour-
nals. The comments and feedback allowed this research project to be significantly
improved and enriched, and for that I am deeply grateful. While everyone merits an
individual mention, regrettably the list would be rather long. Nevertheless, I would
like to single out my participation at the Summer Seminar on Holocaust Sources
of the European Holocaust Research Infrastructure in Vilnius in June 2016, the
Summer Research Workshop at the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum in Wash-
ington, DC, in July 2016 and the Ninth International Graduate Student Conference
in Modern Greek Studies at Seeger Center for Hellenic Studies in Princeton Uni-
versity in May 2017. In addition, I would like to thank the editors and reviewers of
all the journals and volumes that have featured my research for their contributions
and feedback during the publication process, which have only improved the qual-
ity of the scholarship. Similarly, I thank participants all the workshops where part
of my research work was presented for their valuable inputs.
This volume includes work I conducted during my year as a post-doctoral vis-
iting fellow at the International History Department of the Graduate Institute of
International and Development Studies in Geneva, Switzerland. I would like to
sincerely thank Professor Davide Rodogno for giving me this opportunity, as well
as all professors, staff, post-doc and PhD students who all extended a very warm
welcome, in particular Department Chair Professor Mohammad-Mahmoud Ould
Mohamedou, Valérie von Daeniken, Mona Bieling, Emmanuel Dalle Mulle, Vass-
ily Klimentov, Aditya Kiran Kakati and Dominic Eggel. Most sincere thanks goes
to the Fondation pour la Mémoire de la Shoah for a generous scholarship to enable
this additional research.
I should also thank the Mémorial de la Shoah in Paris for trusting me to curate
their special exhibit titled “Salonika: Epicenter of the Destruction of the Jews of
Greece,” which gave me additional perceptive and a broad overview. The PhD
Research Fellowship awarded to me by Yad Vashem allowed me to thoroughly
study the archive of this important institution and consult its extensive library
to widen my knowledge on the Holocaust. The discussions with Dan Michman,
Dina Porat and David Silberklang have been extremely helpful. I would also like
to thank B’nei B’rith Lausanne and its then President David Hachuel for their
symbolic grant.
Acknowledgments xvii
For this volume, I would like to thank Professor Katherine Fleming for gener-
ously agreeing to write the foreword, Mario Soustiel for preparing the maps and
graphs and Dimitris Mitsopoulos for compiling the index. Steven Feldman of the
US Holocaust Memorial Museum kindly guided me through the process of aca-
demic publishing. Special thanks go to James “Joe” Whiting and Titanilla Panczel
of Routledge for agreeing to publish this book and patiently advising and helping
me along the process.
Finally, I would like to thank my parents and my family for their love and sup-
port during this process.
Of course, any mistakes or omissions are exclusively my responsibility.
Preface
Within a few months of 1943, the overwhelming majority of the members of the
historic Jewish community of Thessaloniki were transported from their homes in
cattle cars to be exterminated at the Nazi death camp of Auschwitz. Thessaloniki,
a major port city in the Balkans and Greece’s second largest city, has the sad privi-
lege of having lost one of the largest percentages of Jewish population during the
Second World War compared to other cities in Europe. Almost 95 percent of the
city’s 50,000 Jews did not survive the war, most of them deported and extermi-
nated in German-occupied Poland. This was not a fringe event in the city’s history
during the Second World War. Rather, the Jews constituted a large percentage of
Thessaloniki’s population, with a long presence in the city, and they contributed
to the social, economic, political and cultural life. Their suffering was felt by all
the citizens and beyond.
The Holocaust occurred all over Europe, in different times and regions, with
varying levels of intensity. One of its most terribly complete outcomes was the
city of Thessaloniki. This book, the outcome of a 2017 PhD thesis—the first in a
Greek university on a subject related to the Holocaust in Greece—looks into the
reasons for this big loss. Examining in detail many of the local actors, the study
lays out the particularities of Thessaloniki in relation to the rest of Occupied
Greece and Europe in general. Some of actions that took place are unique for
Thessaloniki, and this makes the city an ideal case study.
Several explanations could be given to justify the large number of Jewish
deaths. Molho and Nehama provided eight such reasons in their monumen-
tal work In Memoriam, the first effort to document the genocide of Jews in
Greece and an homage to the murdered victims of the Holocaust.2 Yet, even
though they wrote that “examples of self-abnegation and self-sacrifice [by
Greek Christians to help Jews] exist of course in Thessaloniki but can be
counted in the fingers and cannot counterbalance—as big as is the gratitude
owned to those who made this sacrifice—the pressures, the blackmail and the
betrayals that the Jews went thought trying to save themselves,”3 the attitudes
of the local population during this period had not been studied until recently.
Only in the last few years have historians integrated this local perspective in
the research of the Holocaust in Thessaloniki and started to investigate the
Preface xix
stance of the wartime Greek Christian elite of the city, how they reacted to
the antisemitic agenda of the Nazis and the moral priorities they held during
that period.
This book focuses on Thessaloniki’s Greek Christian elites and examines
their role during the Holocaust. By enriching the existing knowledge with new
sources and analysis, the study is able to highlight the role of local actors in key
events regarding the Holocaust. These include the call for slave labor of all Jew-
ish males, the destruction of the Jewish cemetery of the city—a unique event in
occupied Europe—and lastly, the implementation of the Nazi antisemitic laws on
the local level.
This study documents the complex relations between Christians and Jews from
the interwar period to the post-war, taking place in the context of transition from
empire to nation state, nation-building and state consolidation. Although several
actors were involved, both local and outside ones, these processes continued
throughout the turbulent first half of the twentieth century and have culminated
in a city today where the Jews are a distant—and often forgotten—memory. The
Ottoman institution of the millet, the system of organizing the different religious
groups, will be also examined as an interpretive scheme to explain certain stances
of the Greek population.
Using methods of microhistory to examine the stance of the wartime Greek
Christian elite of the city, the book broadens the problematic on bystanders
and collaborators in Thessaloniki and reassesses Greek Christian attitudes.
Did these local decision makers have room to maneuver? Were they aware of
the historical significance of this period? How did they implement the issued
Nazi orders? Did they inform their fellow Jewish citizens of what was up
ahead and try to help them? Were they just “following orders” or weighting
other priorities?
One always needs to bear in mind the central role of Nazi Germany in execut-
ing this plan. Yet, the Nazis could not have done it on their own. The Holocaust
was a carefully planned and organized bureaucratic enterprise, and bureaucracy
affected all aspects of daily life under German occupation. The Germans issued
the orders, but it was often local civil servants, government employees and city
clerks as well as mayors, heads of the associations and unions, and other local
administrators who were tasked with their implementation. Historians agree that
authorities and institutions in Thessaloniki showed neglect and indifference to the
suffering of the city’s Jews.
Using unpublished documents from a wide variety of sources—some pub-
lished for the first time—the book examines the interaction of local Thessa-
loniki actors with the German occupation authorities. Studying the issue of
decision-making at the local level can help answer many of the questions that
are lost in a broader approach, including any moral or other reservations that
could have emerged. Moreover, it helps elaborate the distinction between col-
laborators and bystanders, a common theme related to the Holocaust, where the
limits are often unclear.
xx Preface
Table 0.1 Jewish population in Greece before and after the Holocaust
Community Population before Population after Percentage
Thrace
Didymoteicho 900 33 −96%
Nea Orestias and Soufli 197 3 −98%
Alexandroupolis 140 4 −97%
Komotini 819 28 −96%
Xanthi 550 6 −99%
Macedonia
Kavala 2,100 42 −98%
Drama 1,200 39 −97%
Serres 600 3 −99%
Thessaloniki 56,000 1,950 −96%
Veria 460 131 −72%
Kastoria 900 35 −96%
Florina 400 64 −84%
Thessaly
Trikala 520 360 −31%
Larissa 1,120 726 −35%
Volos 872 645 −26%
Sterea Hellas
Chalkis 325 170 −48%
Athens 3,000 4,930 +64%*
Peloponnesus
Patras—Agrinio 265 152 −43%
Epirus
Ioannina 1,850 163 −91%
Preveza 250 15 −94%
Arta 384 60 −84%
Islands
Corfu 2,000 187 −91%
Zante 275 275 0%
Chania 350 7 −98%
Rhodes—Kos 1,900 200 −89%
Total 77,377 10,226 −86%
Source: Central Board of Jewish Communities in Greece (including note).
* Note: Losses in the Athens Jewish Community were about 1,000 persons. The increase after the war
is due to the settlement of other communities’ members in the capital.
Notes
1 Walter Benjamin, “Theses on the Philosophy of History,” in Hannah Arendt, ed., Illumi-
nations: Essays and Reflections, Thesis VI (New York: Schocken Books, 1968), 255.
2 Michael Molho and Joseph Nehama, In Memoriam: Dedication to the Memory of the
Jewish Victims of Nazism in Greece (Greek) (Thessaloniki: Jewish Community of Thes-
saloniki, 1974), 126–127.
3 Ibid., 150.
1 Historical and theoretical
background1
Introduction
The great majority of the Jews of Greece who perished during the Holocaust
were residents of Thessaloniki. Greece’s second biggest city, Thessaloniki had
been for centuries a major Jewish center, often dubbed the “mother of Israel.”2
The city’s Jewish community has a history stretching back over 2,000 years,
already settled when the Apostle Paul came there to preach the new religion.
The Jewish population received a significant boost when, in 1492, thousands
of Sephardic Jews fleeing the Spanish Inquisition found shelter in Thessalon-
iki, at the time under Ottoman control. The newly arrived transformed the city
and dominated its economic, cultural and political life, making it a “Sephardic
metropolis.”3
At the turn of twentieth century, Thessaloniki counted 70,000–80,000 Jews
of a population of 150,000.4 Thus some 50 percent of the inhabitants were Jews,
with many other ethnic groups being part of this cosmopolitan matrix. Due to
the transition from the Ottoman Empire to the Greek state—the city was incor-
porated into Greece after the first Balkan War in 1912—there was a consider-
able change of the ethnic-religious composition of the population. In the interwar
period, the Jewish inhabitants dropped considerably, due mainly to emigration
abroad for political or economic reasons,5 while the Christian population gained
a significant boost by refugees from Asia Minor as a result of the Greek-Turkish
War of 1922–1923.
When the German army entered the city in April 1941 as Greece lost the war,
Thessaloniki counted about 50,000 Jews—approximately 20 percent of the
population—still marking the city’s character. This illustrious history came to
an abrupt end with the Nazi deportations and the Holocaust, when more than
90 percent of Thessaloniki’s Jews found a tragic death in the Nazi death camp of
Auschwitz. These Jews were well integrated in city life, so their plight affected
all sectors of the Greek public administration and civil society. Although many
Jews worked as independent professionals, a number of them were employed
as civil servants in the local government. With the majority living in the center
of Thessaloniki, their plight was known and could be felt by all citizens and
institutions.
2 Historical and theoretical background
Map 1.1 Division of Greek territory by Axis Powers
Methodology, sources, bibliography
Research questions
The study focuses on Thessaloniki’s Greek Christian elites and examines their role
during the Holocaust. It proposes a new narrative into the historic developments,
looking into the role of local actors and their actions during this period. It argues
that the period of the German occupation—a period of crisis that marked a clear
cut from what was normal until then—shook up basic notions of the Thessaloniki
society. Developments that were in play for thirty years, such as the integration
of the city’s Jews into the national body, were sidelined and the Greek Christian
community chose to operate in terms of “millet,” the way that life was organized
prior to the city’s incorporation into the Greek state, in 1912.
Using the approach of microhistory,6 the study examines several case studies, in
particular, the actions of the city authorities, the Church, the courts, the university,
Historical and theoretical background 3
the professional associations, and the press. These were the city’s most prominent
institutions which had—or could have had—an impact on the deportation of the
Jews. In addition, the actions of the government and other institutions in Athens as
well as those of the Red Cross are also considered. I would have liked to include a
few more institutions, such as the office of the general governor of Macedonia, the
representative of the Greek government of Athens in the region, but their archives
have not been discovered and information is fragmented.
The focus is primarily on the elites of Thessaloniki, the people in positions of
power, contacts with the German and Greek authorities, as well as a certain abil-
ity to act. Several sources detailing the actions of these elites have been found, in
contrast to ordinary people about whose attitudes our knowledge is quite scarce
and fragmented. In addition, the study concentrates on the city of Thessaloniki
during the period between July 1942 and August 1943, and follows the local
developments. Consequently, the actions of players located elsewhere, such as
Greek authorities in Athens, the government-in-exile in Cairo, or the leadership
of the resistance groups, are discussed only as they relate to the issues at hand.
In an attempt to explore these topics, several case studies are examined pertain-
ing to the city of Thessaloniki. On the eve of the deportations, in 1942, Thessa-
loniki counted 50,000 Jews, approximately 20 percent of the population, making
the city a major Jewish center. The community was well-integrated within city
life, with around 50 percent of its members living in central areas alongside a con-
siderable Christian population,7 so their plight was known and could be felt by all
sectors of the Greek public administration and civil society. In seven substantive
chapters, the reactions of most, if not all, of the prominent institutions in the city
of Thessaloniki are examined in detail, including the city authorities, the Church,
the university and the professional associations.
This book does not aspire to be a comprehensive historical narration of the
period of the Nazi occupation of Thessaloniki and the antisemitic measures. It
aims to highlight some of the key events that took place in a new context by pro-
viding additional information and insights. In this way, the understanding of the
events that unfolded can be deepened, elaborated and contextualized.
Sources and archives

The study is based to a large extent on primary sources. The ambition was to
document the events that unfolded through contemporary materials, originating
often from the eyewitnesses themselves. In addition, extensive archival research
allowed to cross-check and evaluate the trustworthiness of descriptions or allega-
tions through this multi-dimensional approach.
The research tried to find as many archival sources possible, in Thessaloniki,
in Greece and around the world. The sources consulted in Thessaloniki include
the archives of the following institutions: Municipality of Thessaloniki, Dio-
cese of Thessaloniki, Chamber of Commerce and Industry, Traders’ Association,
Professionals’ Chamber, Bar Association, Union of Journalists, the Electricity
Company, the University Senate, the Greek Literature and Historical Archive
Figure 1.1 Sabi Dekalo, born in 1925, in his early teens, in front of the Statue of King
George I in Thessaloniki. Dekalo was deported to Auschwitz and was mur-
dered in Struthof by Nazi Professor August Hirt of the Reich University of
Strasbourg.
Source: Archive of Saby Decalo, his first cousin.
Figure 1.2 Daisy Benveniste, victim of the Holocaust from Thessaloniki. When she was
deported, she was in her early teens. Picture taken April 6, 1933.
Source: Archive of Leon Saltiel.
(ELIA) and the Autonomous Food Agency, located at the Historical Archive of
Macedonia. The Jewish Museum of Thessaloniki also houses several archives
from this period. In addition, the study considered the full body of the two news-
papers that were in circulation during the period of the occupation, Nea Evropi
and Apogevmatini.
Many of these archives and documents have been safeguarded due to the inter-
est and care of a few collectors, who saved them from the oblivion of history,
oftentimes literally from the trash. Christos Kavadas and Ioannis Megas shared
their priceless collection for this historical research. In Athens, I consulted the
archives of the Greek Foreign Ministry, the National Bank of Greece, the Jewish
Museum of Greece (which possesses the archive of the Agency for the Custody
of Jewish Properties) and the Karamanlis Foundation. I would also to thank Ms.
Sandra Modiano for sharing with me the papers of her uncle, Dr. Leon Cuenca.
The materials included in post-war trials were very helpful, most importantly of
Max Merten in Athens in 1959 and Adolf Eichmann in Jerusalem in 1961. These
were located at the archives of the Military Tribunal in Athens, Yad Vashem in
Jerusalem, online sources and transcripts published in newspapers at the time.
In particular, the verbatim transcript from Merten’s trial was identified and con-
sulted, and not the summary record which has been used so far. The documenta-
tion contained in the collections of the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum and of
Yad Vashem are priceless and their efforts of both institutions to collect, digitize,
safeguard and disseminate this information is a great service to the academic com-
munity, the memory of Holocaust victims and the pursuit of historical truth.
All in all, archives in ten countries were studied for this book. These include
the British National Archives, the Wiener Library in London, the Mémorial de
la Shoah in Paris, the archives of the Swiss Ministry of Foreign Affairs in Bern,
the archives of the Argentinian Ministry of Foreign Affairs in Buenos Aires,8 the
archives of the Danish Ministry of Foreign Affairs in Copenhagen, the docu-
ments of Rabbi Michael Molho deposited in the Library Tomás Navarro Tomás
of the Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Cientificas (CSIC) in Madrid, and the
archives of the International Committee of the Red Cross in Geneva. Important
files from the German and Italian archives were integrated in the study through
comprehensive volumes that have been published with these documents.9
The primary sources were enriched and contextualized with materials published
after the war by historians, researchers or eyewitnesses. These materials have
been sought in the main public and university libraries in Thessaloniki, Athens
and abroad. It is important to note here that the study did not rely on—and does
not substantially incorporate—survivors’ testimonies. This happened for several
reasons and among them to keep the narration without the effects of hindsight.
Overview of bibliography
Comprehensive overviews of the bibliography on the Holocaust in Greece have
been published recently by several historians.10 This book extensively used two
important works: the volume In Memoriam, written by Thessaloniki Jewish
intellectuals Michael Molho and Joseph Nehama,11 and the Memoirs of Yomtov
Yacoel, the Jewish Community’s legal advisor and one of its leaders during this
period.12 Both works contain a lot of the personal experiences of the authors, who
compiled them very close to the actual events.
Publications of works related to the Holocaust in Greece started with a signifi-
cant delay. “If Holocaust memory made it into the Western cultural mainstream in
the early 1980’s, in Greece it had to wait until the early to mid-1990s in order to
pass the threshold into historiography and mainstream publishing.”13 According
to historian Odette Varon-Vassard,
one has to view this ten to fifteen-year delay within the context of Greek post-
war history and its particularities. [. . .] Greek [World War Two] collabora-
tionism began to be researched and openly discussed only in 2000. The story
of the Greek Jews was in a sense the fourth silence to be broken, as Greece
had to deal with its deepest wounds first.14
Due to the late start and certain language and cultural barriers, the bibliography
on the Holocaust in Thessaloniki lacks great detail and depth on the range of the
different characters involved. Thus, the issue of elites and bystanders only started
to be researched quite recently. Andrew Apostolou first discussed the roles of local
actors, in particular the press and the provincial administration.15 Others, such as
Mark Mazower,16 Stratos Dordanas,17 Giorgos Margaritis18 and Vassilis Ritzal-
eos19 followed, looking at several institutions ranging from the Church to the local
administration to the professional associations. The present study builds upon the
work of previous scholars and enriches the field with new sources, research ques-
tions and interpretations.
An issue that is often brought up during a discussion of the Holocaust in Thes-
saloniki is the role of Chief Rabbi Zvi Koretz. While this discussion is outside the
framework of this study, it is hoped that it can contribute to this debate with the
new documentary sources and context it provides. The issue has been dealt with in
the existing bibliography, with articles in a positive and negative light.20
Historical overview: from the millet to the Second World War
The millet system and the integration of Thessaloniki into the Greek state
This study puts forward a new interpretive scheme on the Holocaust in Thessa-
loniki. The special conditions of the German occupation—the separate adminis-
trative regions, the hunger and terror of the civilian population, and the targeting
and isolation of the Jewish community—brought back the millet system of the
Ottoman Empire to the city’s routine. Under this system, which was solidified in
the mid-nineteenth century during the Tanzimat reforms, each confessional com-
munity (Muslims, Christians or Jews) had certain self-rule.21 This was the modus
vivendi for hundreds of years in the city and the whole empire. Even after the
Greek army entered Thessaloniki, in 1912, some thirty years before the arrival of
the German army into Greece, the spirit of millet remained alive and it persisted
throughout the interwar period.
The Greek Orthodox Community of Thessaloniki was the only institution in
charge of the local issues of the Christians in the city during the late Ottoman
Empire, like the Jewish or Muslim one for the rest of the citizens. The leader
of each millet was the intermediary between the Ottoman authorities and its
subjects. In the last phase of the Ottoman Empire, right before the city became
part of the Greek nation state, the community was headed by prominent lawyers,
doctors and merchants under the spiritual guidance of the metropolitan. These
elders were part of structures with judicial and executive powers, which regu-
lated education, tax collection, social policy and even the defense of national
aspirations. Many of the community leaders participated in the Macedonian
Struggle, the effort to win over the population of Macedonia for the Greek side
against Bulgaria during 1904–1908, and continued to play important roles in the
decades that followed 1912, even though most of the civil servants had come
from “Old Greece.”22
The Greek Church, “which has always had an active presence in all the aspects
of the everyday life of the Greek people,” was headed by Bishop Gennadios,
who was appointed to this position a few months before the entry of the Greek
army in Thessaloniki in 1912. Prior to that, Gennadios had served for eight years
(1897–1905) as secretary of the Synod of the Ecumenical Patriarchate in Con-
stantinople, becoming exposed to the Ottoman structures. Gennadios, apart from
his church duties, was also president of the city’s Greek Orthodox Community,
having substantial political responsibilities.23 This important role played by Gen-
nadios and the other Greek Christian notables, although not anymore institution-
alized, remained as an unofficial practice in the life of the city in the interwar
period. In the years of the German occupation, some of the leaders of the Greek
Community were still alive and active in the city’s affairs.24
The perception of “Greekness” is closely related to the tradition of the Greek
Orthodox millet, which uses religion as its basis. Indeed,
The notion that there was continuity in the Greek genos (race/descent) and
that this was transmitted via religion was one of the building blocks of Greek
citizenship ever since the inception of the Greek Kingdom. [. . .] The ethnic/
national homogeneity of Greece is built upon the elements of religion (Greek-
Orthodox), language (Greek), national consciousness, and an ambiguous
conceptualisation of “Greek descent” which gives rise to a division among
Greek citizens, as well as among aliens on grounds of descent. Thus there are
the omogeneis (of Greek descent) and allogeneis (of non-Greek descent).25
The expansion of the Greek state to the north in the twentieth century brought
within the national union significant Jewish and Muslim populations. Although
they became Greek citizens, the old Ottoman traditions as well as concepts of
belonging to the Greek nation endured and became an angle through which the
Greek state dealt with these populations. It is argued that in the independent Greek
state, “the survival of elements of the Ottoman millet system turn[ed] religious
divisions into political and legal categories.”26
As far as the Greek state’s dealings with its minorities is concerned, it con-
sists of a unique combination of “pre-modern legal definitions based on reli-
gion” together with modern notions of citizenship.27 Religion became thus the
lens through which the Greek state approached its minority populations, creating
new millet-style structures for the Muslim Community and abolishing Christian
Orthodox Communities, with the Orthodox Christian Community of Thessaloniki
only officially dismantled in April 1921. “Only the structure of the Jewish Com-
munity survived the transition from Ottoman to Greek rule largely intact.”28
Harris Mylonas adds further nuance to the legacy of the millet and its applica-
tion in several countries in the Balkans, elements of which even survive today. He
claims that it is not a mere “legacy,” the continuation of the institution by inertia,
but rather it could be considered “a manufactured one resulting from governmen-
tal elites’ agency acting strategically to maintain and repurpose an institution for
their own purposes.”29 He argues that the Greek government elites consciously
chose to keep some elements of the millet alive and applied it to the new territo-
ries that came within their control. “Thus, instead of the survival of the features of
the millet system, we should talk about the repurposing of some of the features by
interested governments.”30 A discussion of the particular interests and choices of
the Greek authorities goes beyond this discussion, but it would be also interesting
to note that this structure also served the priorities of the Jewish elites of Thessa-
loniki of the time who were able to secure more autonomy in their internal affairs.
The interwar period

The events that unfolded during the thirty years between the entry of the Greek
army in Thessaloniki in 1912 until the Second World War may help cast a light
on what followed. A combination of different factors, “disputes over language
instruction, the harmonization of the calendar and holidays, the status of educa-
tional institutions, religious freedom, communal self-determination,”31 had cre-
ated a rift between the Christian and Jewish populations of the city and many
of these controversies were heatedly debated in the city’s press. These policies,
aimed at strengthening the “Greek character” of the city and assimilating the
Jewish population, were combined with
antisemitic clichés intersected with nationalist insecurities about the “Greek”

character of Macedonia (and Salonica in particular) and suspicions about the
designs of neighboring countries, as well as with the anticommunist senti-
ment that predominated in the aftermath of the 1917 Bolshevik Revolution.32
The changes in nationalities, religions and classes created a new reality for
Thessaloniki. “Mid-war Thessaloniki was not a linear decedent of the Ottoman
Selanik, but another, very different city.”33 To the contrary, efforts were made to
create a continuity with its Roman and Byzantine past.34 The city was in transition,
the whole population in a period of great adjustments. And yet, elements of the
millet were kept alive among the local population and its leaders until the eve of
the Second World War. All the factors, which will be briefly discussed later, had
“placed the Jewish community of Salonica increasingly in a state of siege during
the period 1925–35.”35
Demographic/urban changes
During the interwar period, the city saw developments that altered not only the eth-
nic composition and social fabric of the city but also its look and functionality as
an urban center. The first ten years of Greek rule over Thessaloniki and Macedonia
saw a big change in the population mix of the region. After the Balkan wars, large
number of Slavic populations left the region.36 The Greek-Turkish war of 1922 was
followed by the exchange of populations based on religious grounds. This measure
saw approximately two million people being forcibly displaced—around 1.3 mil-
lion Greek Orthodox Christians from Turkey and 500,000 Muslims from Greece.37
Many of these new Greek citizens were installed in the “new lands,” the newly
acquired territories in the north where the Greek Christian population was deemed
to require strengthening. Some 163,000 Anatolian Greek refugees settled in Thes-
saloniki, making Greeks the ethnic majority in the city.38 By the end of the 1920s,
the only significant minority population in the region was the Jews, primarily
those located at the regional capital of Thessaloniki. By 1941, out of 250,000 citi-
zens, only 50,000 were Jews, the rest being Greek Orthodox Christians.
The Great Fire of 1917, which burned most of the historic center, also marked
the city’s character irreversibly. The largest area that was destroyed was part of the
Jewish quarter and the great majority of those left homeless were Jews. Apart from
the big struggle to rehabilitate all these people, another challenge for the city’s
Jews were the designs of the Athens government for the rebuilding of the area,
which were seen by many as containing an antisemitic agenda.39 The Jews would
lose their prominent role in the city center and the ethnic geography of the city
would be reshuffled. In the same spirit, the vast area of the Jewish cemetery, once
outside the city walls but by now inhibiting the city’s growth, was put in the target
of the new urban planning.
The fluidity of borders, populations and economic realities, as well as the Great
Fire of 1917, saw many changes in the established elites of Thessaloniki. The
traditional elites, capitalists and bureaucrats were replaced or relocated to Ath-
ens and other European cities. The urban middle class was destroyed, and in
turn massive pauperization occurred. Former large land owners were replaced by
small ones.40
As these changes were occurring in the old class structures of Thessaloniki,
new populations took some new roles.
Businessmen from Southern Greece and the Ottoman territories and Greek
bureaucrats established themselves in Thessaloniki and replaced the older
dominant classes. Of course some of the old industrialists and merchants kept
their position. But no more than ten out of the sixty richest Thessalonians
continued to live in Thessaloniki in the 1920s. New middle classes and a
stratum of paupers made their appearance in the new slums around the city.41
This change in the elites, between native and newcomers, is also evident in the
ownership of Thessaloniki’s 146 share-holding companies during the interwar
period:
Only 21 out of the 146 companies were owned by “native” families, in the
sense that they used to live in Thessaloniki in the 19th century. Seven out of
these 21 families were Christian, one was Muslim (Christianised) and the
rest 13 were Jewish. That means that capital accumulation was linked with
the establishment of newcomers rather than with the “natural” development
of the “native” capital. Indeed, more than half of the factories’ owners came
from the Macedonian interior and 30 per cent from Asia Minor, Thrace and
Eastern Rumelia.42
Hellenization/integration
Overnight, the Jews of Thessaloniki were changed from citizens of an empire to
citizens of a nation state. The integration to the Greek Christian majority became
one of the community’s main challenges. The Athens government tried to assimi-
late this population through education but also through measures that would
change their everyday lives, such as conscription to the army, mandating by law
that Sunday should be an official day of rest (which meant that the city’s Jews
could no longer observe the religious holiday of the Sabbath), adopting the Greek
language in their businesses, and so forth.
Many efforts were made to insert the teaching of Greek into the curriculum of
all Jewish schools. The new national language replaced much of the teaching in
French or in Hebrew, and sidelined the traditional idiom of Judeo-Spanish, which
was still spoken at home. Yet, only a part of the young generation was able to learn
the new language with adequate fluency on the eve of the Second World War.43
Rise of nationalism/antisemitism
The Greek refugees who came from Anatolia, although not familiar with the par-
ticular structures of Thessaloniki and its methods of intercommunal coexistence,
nevertheless were aware of the organizational system of the millet, as former
Ottoman subjects themselves. The prevailing of the Jews in many aspects of the
city’s economy created a commercial competition between the refugees and the
city’s Jews. The newcomers were also introduced to a new version of post-1922
Greek nationalism, spearheaded by Greek Prime Minister Eleftherios Venizelos,
whose party and policies represented the main political expression for the refu-
gees. Its elements included a “vision of a homogeneous, internally unified, ter-
ritorially conscious, and regenerated Greek nation.”44
The war of 1922 and the collapse of Megali Idea45 had made Thessaloniki “a
battleground for the reconfiguration of Greek national identity.”46 As Aristotle
Kallis remarked, “In Greece, the nationalist movement was marked not just by
the pursuit of ethnic homogeneity and cultural assimilation, but also by an idi-
osyncratic siege mentality vis-à-vis minority groups inside state territory and the
country’s still-covetous Balkan neighbors.”47
These developments, occurring during a brief time period and in close sequence
to one another, also had an impact on inter-communal relations. A competition
grew between the Greek Christian population and the Jewish community, which
was seen as being insufficiently Greek and unwilling to assimilate into the new
nation state. Right-wing groups were formed with antisemitic agendas that fueled
these tensions, with the help of local newspapers and other instigators. Such was
the case of the organization Three Epsilon (EEE, National Union of Greece),
comprised mostly of Anatolian refugees, with a clear antisemitic and nationalistic
agenda. The climax in intercommunity hostility and EEE’s most notorious act was
the burning of the Jewish neighborhood of Campbell on June 29, 1931, which has
been described as a pogrom.48
A response by elements of the Jewish community was the Zionist movement,
a form of Jewish nationalism that called for the creation of a Jewish homeland
in the biblical territory of Palestine. In practical terms, the main goals of the
Zionists in Thessaloniki was to advocate for civil rights of the Jews of Thes-
saloniki in the new Greek state, in the areas of religious freedom, equal political
representation and economic opportunities, and the fight against antisemitism.49
This was in line with the policies of other similar parties in interwar Europe,
where “Zionism was a way for Jews to participate as equal citizens in the socie-
ties in which they lived and articulate their belonging in the places they already
called home.”50 Many Jews adhered to the cause, which caused frictions with the
other two camps: the assimilationists and the communists. The community was
divided among those three groups, which competed with each other for influence
and support.
Another issue that troubled Christian-Jewish relations during most of the inter-
war period was that of the separate electoral colleges for Christians and Jews. In
the 1923 elections, the Jews of Thessaloniki had to vote for their own candidates,
separate from the rest of the electorate. This measure, which was only cancelled
in 1934, went through different phases and also included the rearrangement of the
election precincts so that the Jews voted all together in certain stations exclusively
reserved for them.51 The expressed reason was that this move would guarantee
the parliamentary representation of the Jews. However, the real reason was that
the Jews, due to the numbers, were seen as influencing the outcome of the gen-
eral election, especially as they opted for anti-Venizelist parties. The government
thus chose to limit their perceived impact.52 The measure of the separate electoral
college also targeted the Muslim minority in Greece, living in the Thrace area,
signaling a determination of the government elites to preserve these elements of
the millet system in the form of this separation.
This clearly discriminatory measure, which legally separated citizens based on
their religious beliefs, was amplified by harsh attacks by certain prominent Greek
Christian politicians, coupled with an antisemitic campaign of particular news-
papers with links to extremist groups. While a complete discussion of this issue
goes beyond the limits of this book, its important manifestations are addressed in
brief below.
The measure to separate the Christian and Jewish voters created the image
of the Jew as a threat for the nation, who lacked patriotism, creating suspicion
between the two populations and enabling tension and discrimination.53 It also
revealed an undercurrent of antisemitism in a sector of the Greek political body.
Prime Minister Venizelos openly criticized the Jews of Thessaloniki in Parliament
for not wanting to integrate and learn Greek, justifying the need for the separa-
tion.54 Several heated debates took place in Parliament over the years, providing
political cover for voices such as Thessaloniki newspaper Makedonia, which had
also instigated the Campbell riots. In addition, groups like EEE were fed by these
headlines, which aggravated intercommunal tensions even further. Politicians
would intervene to calm the situation only when political confrontation between
the two communities had reached very tense levels.
Following the elections of March 1933, an appeal to the Election Court by
anti-Venizelist parties found that the separate electoral college was unconstitu-
tional and cancelled the elections in Thessaloniki.55 Makedonia responded with
headlines such as “Israelites, you want war? You will have it!”56 After his electoral
defeat, Venizelos described the stance of the Jews as “a hostile act against half of
the Greeks,” while directly blaming the Jews for the collapse of the Megali Ellas
[Great Greece], due to their vote in the 1920 elections.57
The measure was finally cancelled after ten years of existence. Venizelos
reacted vehemently against the repeal, repeating the false argument that the Jews
with their vote negatively influenced the election results.58 However, this decade
poisoned Christian-Jewish relations and fueled antisemitic accusations against the
Jews of Thessaloniki. It also served as an official government-sponsored barrier
between the two communities, which reminded the Jews, every time there was an
election, that they were not fully equal citizens within the Greek state.
Economic decline
All these events in the political and societal front also impacted the economic
front. The Jews were traditionally business oriented, with the middle class work-
ing in the commerce sectors and the lower class in production of tobacco, textiles
or as port stevedores.
Thessaloniki was transformed from a big port of an empire with strategic
depth to the second largest city of a smaller nation, thus losing a lot of its com-
mercial and competitive edge. The Greek state wanted to undermine the monop-
oly of the Jews in sectors of the economy and encouraged Christian businesses.
The economic crash of 1929 did not help things, and neither did the rising social
tensions. Business activities were severely curtailed, something that touched big
parts of the Jewish community.
As it is becoming clear from this brief historic overview of the interwar period,
the consequences of wars, economic crises, the rise of nationalism and efforts by
the government to “Hellenize” these new lands created conflict between the local
Christians and Jews. Due to this upheaval, economic struggle and rise of antisem-
itism, many Jews of Thessaloniki chose to migrate from their native lands and go
to Palestine, France or elsewhere around the globe. The legal system and govern-
ment policies were used to maintain the divisions on the basis of religion which
were a leftover from the Ottoman period. This legacy of the millet was linked
to the incorporation of the new lands to the Greek state. The transition from the
empire to the nation state required national consolidation which created a strong
sense of Greek nationalism. This had a strong religious component, as the Greek
Orthodox Church is closely linked to the sense of Greekness. Nevertheless, it was
also the communities themselves that preferred to live as an autonomous group.
The Jewish Community of Thessaloniki tried hard to maintain these privileges,
which were now accepted by law by the Greek state. Devin Naar described its role
and reach of activities “like a municipality and a state.”59
During the interwar period, the Jewish community was in a balancing position.
On the one hand, Thessaloniki’s Jews had to accept the new realities and become
citizens of a nation state instead of an empire. The Greek government sought to
take away the primary role Jews played in the economy of the city. They were
seen as “not sufficiently patriotic,” leaving them only with two viable choices:
assimilation or emigration.60 Among the measures it took was to institute Sunday
as an official day of rest, in contrast to the Jewish Sabbath that was the norm until
then, and to push for the linguistic assimilation of the Jews through education.61
Albeit the problems, several young Jews started learning and speaking Greek.62
There was a movement within the Jewish community to willfully undergo the
process of Hellenization. By the mid-1930s, “the sources of communal tension
were fading.”63 This was enhanced during the period of the Metaxas dictator-
ship (1936–1941), which paradoxically created quite a hospitable situation for
Thessaloniki’s Jews. Ioannis Metaxas was a Greek general who was named prime
minister in April 1936 and, four months later, became a dictator suspending Par-
liament and certain articles of the Constitution guaranteeing civil liberties. His
regime lasted until his death during the Greek-Italian War and few months before
Greece’s capitulation to the Nazis. Metaxas copied many of the elements of Mus-
solini’s fascism, with strong corporatist, anti-communist and rightist character-
istics. Yet he did not express any open hostility to the country’s Jews. To the
contrary, Metaxas banned certain antisemitic organizations that had troubled the
Jewish community in the years prior—such as the EEE—earning the respect and
admiration of the Jews.64
Through this lens, one should consider the case of the large numbers of Greek
Jews, especially those of Thessaloniki, who enlisted and fought courageously dur-
ing the Greek-Italian war of 1940–1941, the first episode of the Second World
War in Greece. This could signify the progress of integration, as 165 Jews who
lived in Thessaloniki died fighting during the war, out of 658 total deaths in the
city, or 25 percent—more or less their share in the population.65
However, these positive developments did not finally solidify the links between
the two communities, in creating the bonds of citizenship and a common sense
of belonging and brotherhood. This short-lived success in the battlefield was
shadowed by the arrival of Italy’s stronger ally, Nazi Germany, which in a cou-
ple of weeks was able to occupy the Greek territory, with Thessaloniki falling in
April 1941.
German decision to deport the Jews of Thessaloniki

According to existing documentation, the decision for the deportations of the
Jews of Thessaloniki was made by Hitler on November 2, 1941. Gerhard Michael
Engel (1906–1976), army adjutant to Hitler from 1936 to 1943, noted in his diary
that Hitler was at the Wolfsschanze, his Eastern Front military headquarters, in
the presence of Chief of Operations of the High Command of the German Armed
Forces (OKW) Alfred Jodl, Chief of German Police and the SS Heinrich Himmler,
Chief of the Reich Main Security Office (RSHA) Reinhard Heydrich, adjutant
Rudolf Schmundt, and later General Walter Warlimont:
Himmler reports about the evacuation of foreigners (Jews), comes to the situ-
ation in the Baltic and Ruthenien, mainly Riga, Reval and Minsk. Raises a
question about the Jewish population in Salonika saying that Salonika was
a city with one of the largest Jewish communities; danger of an entwine-
ment of Jews and Levantines. F.[ührer] agrees with him and demands that the
Jewish elements be removed from S.[alonika] To this end Himmler demands
authority and receives it. SD commandos will be deployed with reinforce-
ment. Keitel asks if military command should be engaged. F.[ührer] answers
only if urgently need be. But asks Keitel to inform military command that
Reichsführer SS [Himmler] had received authority that was not to be inter-
fered with. Sch.[mundt] and I happy that armed forces and troops will not
become involved.66
However, this decision took a while to reach implementation. For comparison,

in Serbia, which was occupied only a week before Thessaloniki, by May 1942
the vast majority of its Jews were killed.67 Around that time, one can find the first
references to German plans directed from Berlin against the Jews of Thessaloniki.
On May 19, 1942, the German plenipotentiary in Athens Günther Altenburg asked
his Italian counterpart, Pellegrino Ghigi, of his opinion as he received a sugges-
tion from his government to consider introducing a yellow badge for the Jews
in the whole country. Ghigi believed that this was “neither opportune nor neces-
sary,”68 an opinion that was approved by the Foreign Minister in Rome some ten
days later.69 The efforts of the Germans for uniform measures in the whole of
Greece continued during the next months, negotiating with the Italians but with
little progress.70 In December 4, 1942, General Alexander Löhr, German supreme
commander south east met with his Italian counterpart, General Carlo Geloso,
commander of the Italian forces in the Greek theater, and asked him to implement
anti-Jewish measures in Italian-occupied territories. Geloso replied that “[he]
could not carry out such acts without an explicit order of [his] government and
since [he] had no such orders, [he] could not possibly follow them on that road.”71
Around January 12, 1943, Altenburg informed Ghigi about their decision to
“evacuate Jews from the Salonika region.” Ghigi “was not pleased with this infor-
mation” but assured Altenburg that the Germans were free to do as they wished
in their occupation zone.”72 From then on, developments were very quick. Adolph
Eichmann’s deputy, Rolf Günther, came to Greece for a preparatory visit around
January 13–15, sent by the RSHA in conjunction with the Foreign Ministry “in
order to conduct the negotiations regarding Jewish affairs.”73 Günther had dis-
cussed preparations with Dr. Klingenfuss at the German Legation in Athens and
Fritz Schönberg, the German consul general in Thessaloniki and the commander
of the local German forces.74
In his testimony to the Eichmann trial, Max Merten, the German officer in
charge of civilian affairs in Thessaloniki, provided a description which could have
been the content of this meeting. This testimony should be taken into considera-
tion with great care, as Merten insisted that Adolf Eichmann was present in this
meeting (referred to as the “Accused”), which was not the case.
As far as I remember today, the Accused returned to Salonika in the first half
of January 1943. As I remember it, he must have brought with him an order
instructing the Commander to convene a largish number of military person-
nel to a discussion about the measures to be carried out against the Jews of
Salonika. The discussion took place on the first floor, in the Commander’s
mess. All of the top Army Group officers were there, including the General
of the engineers, the General for transport matters, and the Chief Medical
Officer of the medical department. There was also an authorized representa-
tive of the Athens legation with the German Consul-General in Salonika.
The Accused himself only made a few introductory remarks at this discus-
sion. In substance, these indicated that, in accordance with an order of the
Fuehrer, German legislation on Jews was now to be applied also to the Jews in
Greece, and that Sturmbannführer Guenther, who was also present, would give
further details. Guenther then spoke for between two and a half and three hours.
He explained that, on the basis of evaluations of intercepted Allied radio com-
munication and documents, it could be concluded that an Allied landing was
being planned in Greece, and specifically along the Aegean coast, which would
place the sixty-five thousand Jews in Salonika as potential enemies in the rear
of the German troops, thus creating a major threat to security. For this reason,
he said, it was necessary to evacuate these Jews from Salonika. They were to be
transferred to the Cracow in the Generalgouvernement, in order to be made to
carry out useful work. He also surveyed the kinds of occupations, and also men-
tioned that the legal basis for these evacuations was the Reich legislation on
Jews. There was no objection to the measures as such. It was only during a dis-
cussion of the individual operations to be carried out that a comment came from
Major (Reserves) Kruesemann—at that time on the staff of the Commander—
to the effect that this entire operation, including its implementation, did not fall
within the scope of the duties of the Commander. Guenther also explained that,
in order to carry out the evacuation, a special Security Service unit would come
to Salonika and would bring along its own police unit.75
In the beginning of February 1943, SS officers Dieter Wisliceny and Alois Brun-
ner arrived in Thessaloniki for the implementation of the Nazi orders.
Periodization of the Holocaust in Thessaloniki

With regard to the actual implementation of measures against the Jews in
erman-occupied Thessaloniki, one can distinguish three periods. The first period
G
starts in April 1941, when the Germans entered Thessaloniki, until July 1942.
During this period, there were no systematic antisemitic measures. Some Jew-
ish leaders were put in jail,76 the Jewish archives and libraries were confiscated
(by the Special Kommando [Detachment] Rosenberg, to be discussed later), some
Jewish merchants were robbed, and yet these actions did not have a mass charac-
ter and most of the people went on with their lives. Particular categories of both
Jews and non-Jews were targeted, so these measures were not seen as exclusively
and uniformly anti-Jewish.
Even more so, in a report of August 1942, the German consul in Thessaloniki,
Schönberg, complained that the Jews of the city “have remained untouched in
their stores and still exert the same influence on the financial life of Greece to this
day. It is amazing that even today the Jews of Salonika hold the lion’s share of
the import of German goods.” He attached two lists of twelve pages total with the
German companies doing business with Jews in Thessaloniki.77 Similarly, Greek
antisemitic campaigner Laskaris Papanaoum sent a strong letter to the German
Consulate in Thessaloniki78 complaining, inter alia, that “the Jews in Salonika, as
all of Greece, live like God in France,” a German expression meaning that they
live extremely well.79
For different reasons, some of which one can only speculate, the Germans
waited for a long time to implement the “Final Solution” in Thessaloniki.80 The
most plausible explanation for the delay is the German wish to apply uniformly
the antisemitic measures to all Jews in the country. That required the cooperation
of the Italians, who were not willing to lose the Jews who were seen as important
to their economic and political interests, especially in the newly acquired territo-
ries for which they had prepoderanza (preponderance).81 When the Germans saw
that the Italians were not willing to cooperate, they decided to proceed unilaterally
with the deportation of the Jews in the territories they controlled.82 The Italian
non-cooperation continued, as the Italian consulate was authorized to issue cer-
tificates to Thessaloniki Jews of Italian ancestry, with larghezza (generosity) by
the Foreign Ministry in Rome.83
Figure 1.3 Timeline of measures against Jews of Thessaloniki.
Another reason could be the fact that Jewish businesses continued to represent
German companies and were still needed for the supply of the German forces.
The complaints of the German consul showed this other side of the coin: that the
contribution of the Jewish businessmen in the city’s economy was of primary
importance and their possible removal would not only affect the local economy
but also the war effort.84 The Germans in Thessaloniki had to build their own net-
works of collaborators and supporters before they removed this important com-
mercial element.
The second period began on July 11, 1942, with the gathering for forced labor of
all male Jews in Liberty Square until the end of December 1942, with the destruc-
tion of the city’s Jewish cemetery. The destruction of the cemetery, together with
a ransom of two billion drachmas, was part of the deal for the release of the Jew-
ish laborers. This period is important because it was the first time that the Jewish
measures were systematic and touched all the members of the Jewish community.
Nevertheless, these events were not orchestrated directly from Berlin, and one
could claim that they were more a response to long-standing local grievances
rather than part of a plan from Adolf Eichmann’s office.
Indeed, the delay in implementing the “Final Solution” in Thessaloniki could
also be true in the second period. The measure of the gathering in Liberty Square for
forced labor seems to have been the suggestion of Colonel Athanassios Chrysochoou,
one of the major figures in the city’s administration at the time.85 He complained to
the Germans that “the Jews—in contrast to the largest part of the population—are
not obliged to carry out labor work or to provide contributions in kind.”86
At the same time, the Liberty Square events took place without direct instruc-
tions from Berlin. Friedrich Suhr, the legal advisor in Eichmann’s office, who
was probably not informed at the time of the events, reported them to the Jew-
ish Affairs section of the Foreign Ministry only after several weeks, giving full
credit for the action to the German commander of Salonika-Aegean, mentioning
the agreement of Minister Vassilios Simonidis,87 the general governor of Mac-
edonia, the most senior Greek official in the region. Instead, on the same day,
July 11, 1942, Suhr wrote a memo to the Foreign Ministry in Berlin calling for
the need of “synchronization” of the marking of Jews and Jewish companies in
Greece.88
In addition, the initiative for another key event of this period, that of the destruc-
tion of the old Jewish cemetery, also seems to have come from the local Greek
population, based on a number of documents, references and testimonies. These
two events clearly marked the actions and perceptions of the local Greek popula-
tion and shaped its stance during the crucial third period.
According to the existing documentation, these two measures—the slave labor
and the destruction of the cemetery—were not part of an organized antisemitic
plan. The Nazis had no sympathy for the Jews, and they responded favorably to
any local triggers. They maintained control and directed the whole process. At
the same time, it is also possible that the Germans saw some limited utility in
exploiting Jewish labor for construction projects vital to their needs, although
they were willing to reconsider when they realized the limited productivity of
these laborers.
The third period started in January 1943, with the preparatory visit of Rolf
Günther from Eichmann’s office to Thessaloniki and Athens, followed by the
arrival of SS officers Dieter Wisliceny and Alois Brunner in February 1943.89 This
is when the implementation of the “Final Solution” in Thessaloniki commenced,
which included harsh antisemitic measures such as ghettoization, yellow star,
plunder of properties, and the deportations from March to August 1943. Eich-
mann’s men were clearly in charge of this process and had the initiative. After
this period, only a handful of Jews remained in the city until the end of the war.
What is important to stress is that while the narration so far has been linear,
these two last periods were not a natural continuation of one another. They did
coincide timewise, but this was more of a coincidence rather than an organized
plan. It is unclear whether the events of the second period triggered the develop-
ments that followed, possibly by bringing the issue of the Jews of Thessaloniki
more forcefully to the attention of authorities in Berlin. But what is clear is the
following: in the second period, the main initiators are the local Germans and the
local Greek Christians against the local Jews, without any instructions or involve-
ment from Berlin, whereas in the third period the targets remained the local Jews
but with instructions directly from Berlin and the participation of local Germans
and local Greek Christians.
To provide more context on the events that are narrated in this book, it is impor-
tant to keep in mind that deportation trains left Thessaloniki every three to five
days, packed with thousands of Jews. These Jews, trapped in ghettos, had to cross
the whole city to get from the residencies to the transit camp of Baron Hirsch90
next to the train station (see Table 1.1).
Map 1.2 Thessaloniki in 1943, with the Jewish ghettos and other points of interest
Figure 1.4 The entrance to the Baron Hirsch neighborhood, before it was turned into a
transit camp.
Source: Archive of Byron Mitos.
Figure 1.5 The same road as in Figure 1.4, with the entrance to the transit camp of Baron
Hirsch, after it was fenced, March 1943. The sign read (in German, Italian and
Greek): “Zone inhabited by Jews.”
Source: Photothèque CICR.
Figure 1.6
Three Jewish children wearing the yellow star in Thessaloniki, March–
April 1943. Elias Recanati, eleven years old, is on the right.
Source: Archive of Elias Recanati.
The numbers of how many Jews were deported in each convoy are not exact.
The two main sources, the Greek Railway Company and the Auschwitz camp, only
provided estimates. Some of these trains included also Jews outside of Thessaloniki,
such as Veria and Florina, as well as the German occupation zone next to the border
with Turkey, such as Orestiada, Didimotiho and Soufli—some 2,000 in total.
Table 1.1 Deportation trains of Jews of Thessaloniki, 19431
Transport Date of Destination Date of Passengers Passengers

Number departure Arrival (SEK) (Auschwitz)
1 March 15 Auschwitz March 20 2,400 2,800

5 March 27 Auschwitz April 3 2,800 2,800
6 April 3 Auschwitz April 9 2,800 2,500
14 April 28 Auschwitz May 4 2,600 2,930
15 May 3 Auschwitz May 7/8 2,600 1,000 + 2,500
16 May 9 Auschwitz May 16 1,500 4,500
17 June 1 Auschwitz June 8 820 880
18 August 2 Bergen Belsen August 13 441 –
19 August 10 Auschwitz August 18 1,800 1,800
1
The information on the departures from Greece comes from a letter sent by the Greek Railway
Company (SEK) to the Jewish Community of Thessaloniki on January 9, 1945. SEK called the
numbers “rough,” needing additional checking. On the arrivals to Auschwitz, the source is the
records of the Auschwitz Museum as collected by Danuta Czech, Auschwitz Chronicle 1939–1945
(London: I. B. Tauris, 1990). Czech also speaks of the numbers being estimates. These sources
have been published in Hagen Fleischer, Crown and Swastika: Greece during the Occupation and
the Resistance 1941–1944 (Greek) (Athens: Papazisis, 1995), 344 and Georgios Handrinos, “The
‘Trains of Death’: From Thessaloniki to Auschwitz,” Sidirotrohia 43–44 (December 2013): 18–32.
The numbers and dates for the 17th and 19th convoys come from Molho and Nehama, In Memo-
riam, 120–121. The train to Bergen-Belsen carried 74 “privileged” Greek Jews and 367 Jews with
Spanish citizenship. On July 15, 1943, a train carrying some 322 Jews of mostly Italian citizenship
left Thessaloniki for Athens. On the same day, the couple of dozen Jews with other nationalities,
such as Swiss, Turkish or Persian, were also repatriated. See Telegram of Italian Consulate in Thes-
saloniki to Italian Embassy in Athens and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in Rome, July 15, 1943,
in Carpi, Italian Diplomatic Documents, document 1943.102, 256–269.
The issue of Jewish properties

An underlying issue across the examination period of this study is that of the Jew-
ish properties. Many of these elements are discussed in the chapters that follow.
Jewish properties and assets were confiscated by the Germans from the early
days of the German army’s entry to Thessaloniki. The Germans took over Jewish
assets that were deemed strategic such as movie theaters, paper supplies or apart-
ments needed to house their officers. However, these measures were not seen as
threatening by the Jewish community, as they were targeted, not life-threatening
and in parallel to the hardships of the city’s Greek Christian population.91
A rather unknown issue that relates to Jewish assets is that of the safe deposit
boxes in the banks. Between May and November 1941, a special German unit
called Special Kommando [Detachment] Rosenberg came to Thessaloniki and
other Greek cities. Its experts plundered the archives of many institutions, includ-
ing those of the Jewish Community, all synagogues and Jewish organizations,
newspapers and bookstores as well as the libraries of prominent intellectuals of
the city. In addition, this group also opened to “systematically check” 2,300 safes
in Greek banks owned by Jews. While no list with the contents of these deposit
boxes was appended to the report, it is to be assumed that much of their valuable
contents ended up as property of the Reich.92
When the Jews were being forced into ghettos, a government body, the Agency
for the Custody of Jewish Properties (YDIP), was established on March 7, 1943,
in order to administer the properties, businesses and homes that the Jews were
leaving behind.93 This agency, set up as a Greek state institution, acted under Ger-
man supervision and in order to operate with a sense of legality branded Jew-
ish properties as “enemy assets.”94 One of its main purposes was to identify and
appoint eligible “custodians,” on various grounds, to manage these assets.
This was not an easy task. There were over 2,300 stores and 12,000 apart-
ments owned by Jews.95 Many institutions petitioned YDIP with suggestions
of people for the allocation, such as the general governor, professional associa-
tions, the Church and so forth. Many properties were also given to institutions
such as the Municipality of Thessaloniki, the International Red Cross, profes-
sional associations, and others.96 Nevertheless, the Germans tightly controlled
the agency and often offered the lion’s share of the Jewish assets to people close
to them, such as informants or agents,97 making it “an extraordinary story of
greed, coercion and fraud.”98 According to Stratos Dordanas, “a large number
of Christian caretakers [were] appointed by the Germans to manage the Jewish
owned commercial properties, which touched the very core of the Greek col-
laboration phenomenon.”99
Several prominent individuals of the Thessaloniki society were involved in the
allocation of the properties in different capacities. Mark Mazower observed that
“German policy implicated much of the city’s business elite in the disposal of
Jewish property and created a powerful incentive for them to work with Berlin.”100
Later on, these custodians were allowed to sell the movable and immovable prop-
erties under their purview, bringing them a significant financial profit.101
Albeit their efforts, the Germans and their collaborators failed to keep this pro-
cess orderly. As the Jews were being deported, a “general and shameless pillaging
took place.” People rushed into the vacated Jewish homes, looting everything
inside, even tearing down walls and ceilings looking for valuables. The most valu-
able assets, pianos, carpets and furniture, were stolen by the Germans themselves
and much sent to Germany. YDIP needed twenty-seven warehouses to store what
was left of the Jewish goods.102
This plundering reached such an extent that even the materials of the build-
ings of the former Jewish neighborhoods, as well as the marbles and bricks of
the destroyed Jewish cemetery, became objects of profit. Numerous advertise-
ments that appeared in the city’s press touted the sale of wood, tiles, bricks, pipes,
chimneys, doors, windows “of excellent quality.”103 Consequently, it was not only
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his wife and not for these pages. In a month the few intimate friends
she saw had grown tired of telling her how charming she looked in
black. In the settling of the estate, despite the money owed to his
creditors, Sam had left her far from penniless. The house in Park
Avenue was sold, and all it contained—the pictures alone bringing
her a comfortable fortune that many another woman in her situation
would have been satisfied with. Rose Van Cortlandt considered it a
mere pittance. She found a bond of sympathy among other widows
who had been reduced to twenty-five thousand a year.
Lamont became a frequent visitor to her smart little studio apartment
in Washington Square—to which Sue was never invited, and where
we shall leave Rose Van Cortlandt to the care of a few so-called
Bohemians to consume her whiskey and cigarettes.
Enoch was doing an unheard-of thing—for Enoch—straightening up

the living-room of his hermitage on the top floor, slowly transforming
this much-beloved refuge of his from its pell-mell accumulation to a
semblance of neatness and order. The idea had struck him suddenly,
following a decision which he had come to the evening before, as he
sat hunched up in his big leather chair before the fire thinking over
past events, the Van Cortlandt suicide being one of them.
He had left his card at the house of mourning with a formal word of
sympathy, more than that he felt he could not do. He had argued
with himself for more than an hour, trying to decide whether or not to
write the widow a letter of condolence, and had begun two at his
desk, both of which he destroyed as being false in sentiment and not
honestly in keeping with his opinion of the deceased, whose
business methods he had so openly denounced to the Fords. True,
he had accepted her invitation, and gone to the musicale, but in this
case it was Sue who was solely responsible for his presence. What
he had expected had happened—he had found Lamont, despite his
warning to him, pleading to take her home. He had arrived in the nick
of time to offer her his arm and his club cab, both of which she had
gladly accepted.
The old room during all the years it had warmed and sheltered
Enoch, had become, little by little, so choked with books, bibelots,
and souvenirs, some of them utterly useless to him, that he had only
now awakened to the fact that there was little floor space left for his
feet to wander over, and he was continually upsetting this and that,
whenever he moved. Nooks on the table and mantelpiece, where he
was wont to lay his pipe, spectacles, and tobacco, were now hard to
find, and were continually being smothered under letters, books, and
pamphlets—Matilda and Moses having strict orders to keep
everything tidy, and to touch nothing.
“’Spec’ I fine him snowed under some mornin’, an’ have to dig him
out,” remarked Matilda. “Gittin’ so bad, Mister Rabbit wouldn’t have
no show gittin’ through—reg’lar claptrapshun place—bad’s my ole
pot-closet, whar I used to stow ’way mah broom. ‘Bresh up! Bresh
up!’ he sez to me, ‘Matilda.’ Jes’ ez ef I cud straighten out dat dar
conglomeraction, ’thout techin’ it—mah lordy! but I do certainly
despize dust, man.”
“’Tain’t no common dust,” Moses would reply. “’Spec’ yo better keep
yo black han’s offum dat yere dust—ain’t yo never heerd tell of
immo’tal dust? Ef you ain’t, yo ain’t never read yo Bible. Dem things,
like dust an’ ashes dar, is sacred.”
Enoch had begun his house-cleaning with a will. He was in no humor
to be interrupted. He went at his work grimly, his teeth set; the
hopelessness of the task appalled him.
For a while he prowled around his bookcases, grumbling over the
many useless volumes, which like unwelcome tramps had lain
hidden snug in their berths among those dear to him. One after
another he routed these vagabonds out of their nests, and flung
them in a pile on the floor for Matilda to cart away in her blue apron,
and present them to the ash-man if she chose. Some of these trashy
novels had the ill-luck to be discovered in the company of the
product of such able masters as Thackeray and Dickens, Scott and
Fielding, Balzac, Hugo, and Maupassant. These latter in French,
which he read fluently. One yellow paper-covered novel he raised
above his head and sent slamming to the floor.
“Trash!” he cried aloud—a habit with him when he was roused and
was forced to speak his mind for the benefit of his own ears. “Trash!
That’s what they want nowadays—a novel never gets interesting to
them until they get to the divorce—artificial heroines who make you
shudder, whose morals and manners are no better than a trull’s in a
tavern, and heroes whom I always feel like kicking—a lot of well-
dressed cads. As for style, it’s gone to the dogs. They do not even
speak correct English, much less write it. There’s not one of them
who could produce a page of Thackeray or Flaubert if they were to
hang for it. What they write for is the publisher and his check. It’s that
infernal check that has prodded on more writers to ruin than it ever
helped. The more money they can make, the more mediocre and
sensational they get—scarcely a page that is not cooked up like a
pudding—one quart of sentimentality to two heaping pints of
sensation, add a scant teaspoonful of pathos, sprinkle with a happy
ending, and serve hot before the last novel gets cold. Slop! and
drivel!” he snarled, scraping out the bowl of his strongest pipe, and
stuffing it with fine-cut Virginia that would have bitten any less hardy
tongue than Enoch’s. He searched in vain for a match; discovered
Rose Van Cortlandt’s invitation, tore it in two, rolled one half into a
lighter, kindled it over the blazing logs in his fireplace, lighted his
favorite brierwood, and began to snort and puff the smoke through
his nostrils, his pipe doggedly clenched between his teeth, his
opinion of modern literature gruffly subsiding in grunts. Then he
returned to his books.
He plucked out another—“Muriel’s Choice”—and turned to the fly-
leaf. On it was hastily scribbled in pencil in a woman’s angular
handwriting—all ups and downs: “Do read this, Mr. Crane; so sorry
to have missed you. Emma Jackson.” He turned the pages with a rip
under his thumb.
“About as light as Emma,” he remarked, recalling that person to his
mind, whose attentions had annoyed him when he was a young
student at law. He was about to send it spinning to the pile when he
noticed it contained several woodcut illustrations depicting the
lovelorn and unhappy Muriel at various stages of her romantic
history. Muriel seemed always to be waiting for him—at the old
turnstile ’neath the mournful drooping willows; at the rain-flecked
library window, listening for the grating sound of his carriage wheels;
again at the stile. This time she had brought her Newfoundland dog.
“They’ll do for the children to color,” reflected Enoch, referring to a
hospital charity he never mentioned to others.
He laid the book aside, straightened up, drew a deep, courageous
breath, and riveted his gaze on the centre-table.
“What’ll I do with all that?” he exclaimed aloud, scratching his gray
head, half tempted to dump the whole of it into his bedroom closet,
and sort it later. Then he realized there were important papers buried
under the pamphlets and books, bills and receipts that needed filing,
and more than one unanswered letter.
He began with the books, mostly scientific works, which had lately
served him as reference in an article on economics he had written
for the Atlantic Monthly modestly over his initials, and which had
been widely quoted. These filled the gaps left by the pile on the floor.
The letters, bills, and receipts he stowed away in the drawers of an
old-fashioned mahogany desk beside his fire. One of these drawers,
the small one over his inkstand, was locked. This he rarely opened,
though he carried its flat key on the end of his watch-chain—had, in
fact, for years.
Matilda thought it was where he kept his money. Had his strong-box
been open on the table, its contents would have been as safe with
Matilda and Moses as if under the protection of his own pocket.
The old room, now that the books were in place, the table cleared
and neatly arranged, and the chairs pushed back into cosey corners,
began to assume an air of hospitality, and that is precisely why
Enoch had cleared it up. There remained, however, a final touch of
welcome, which he put on his hat and hurried out for—a gorgeous
bunch of red Jacqueminot roses. These he arranged in an old
Chinese porcelain bowl on the centre-table. This done, he surveyed
his domain, with a feeling of relief and satisfaction, and rang for
Matilda.
“For de land’s sakes!” exclaimed that honest soul, as she poked her
bandannaed head into the open doorway, and stood with her arms
planted on her big hips, while she glanced around her at the change.
“Befo’ de Lord, ef it doan look scrumpsush.”
“Needed it,” muttered Enoch, turning a furrowed brow upon her, as
he bent to smell the roses.
“Dat it suttenly did, marser. ’Tain’t de fust time I tole Moses I’se been
worryin’ over de looks of dis yere place. Ain’t had no fixin’ up like dis
in y’ars. Dat’s sartin’. ’Spec’ youse ’spectin’ company, ain’t you?”
“That’s why I sent for you, Matilda—where’s Moses?”
“He’s a pokin’ of his fiah down in de cellar—ain’t yo felt de heat?”
She bent down on her knees, and opened the register between the
bookcases, a puff of dust accompanied the hot air, sending her hand
across her eyes, her voice choking.
“Gwine to strangle me, is yo? Keep yo mouf shut d’yer hear me, till I
clean yo face so’s you kin open it ’thout insultin’ yo betters,” she
commanded, snapping shut the register, and wiping it with her apron.
“Matilda,” said Enoch, as she rose to her feet, his eyes kindling with
good-humor for the first time that morning, “I’ve invited a few friends
this afternoon to tea.”
“Yas, suh——”
“It isn’t as easy as you think, Matilda. You and Moses will have to
attend to it—cakes, sandwiches, teacups, and all.”
He drew out his portfolio, and handed her a ten-dollar bill, which she
received respectfully and tucked deep in her bosom.
“Is—is yo gwine to hab quality, marser—or just plain tea?”
“Both,” smiled Enoch. “Miss Preston and her mother are coming at
five, Mr. Ford also, the Misses Moulton, and Mr. Grimsby. Six in all,
Matilda.”
“Ah see,” returned Matilda with conviction. “Wot you might call mixed
company.”
Enoch raised his eyebrows sharply in surprise.
“’Tain’t de tea, nor de kittle, nor de cakes, nor de sandwhiches, nor
de bilin’ water, what’s a worryin’ me,” declared Matilda. “It’s de doilies
—I ain’t got ’em, marser, but I kin git ’em, an’ dey ainter goin’ ter cost
no ten-dollar bill, neider.”
“But the teacups?” he intervened anxiously. “Here, I’ll give you a note
to Vantine’s—ask for Mr. Gresham.” He turned briskly to the desk
and opened his inkstand.
“Ain’t no use in goin’ dar,” she protested. “Ain’t no Mister Gresham’s
got ’em. I got ’em, an’ dey ain’t no common kitchen china, neider.
Dey’s wot my Mistiss Mary left me when de good Lord done come
an’ tuk ’er from me.” Her voice quavered. “Dey’s de best. Dey’s so
white an’ fine, yo kin see yo han’ through ’em, an’ dey’s got lit’l’ gold
rims round ’em, an’ handles no thicker’n er butterfly’s wing. Doan’
s’pose I’se er gwine let Miss Sue drink outer no common store trash,
does yer? Um! um!—mouf like er rosebud. ’Mines me er mah young
mistiss when she was jes about her aige, an’ young Capt’n
Pendleton come up to de big house to see ’er. Bimeby he seen me,
an’ come inter de kitchen, whar I was a mixin’ an’ a stirrin’, and a
stirrin’ an’ a mixin’, for de hot corn cakes, an’ de waffles for de
supper dat evenin’. ‘Matilda,’ he sez to me, all a shinin’ in his
uniform, ‘I’se gwine teck yo babby ’way from you, d’yer hear me,
nigger? She’s done lived long nuf lone in dis heah lonesome place
—’er eatin’ out ’er heart.’ Den I begun to shook an’ shake, an’ I got er
tremblin’ in mah knees, an’ I cudn’t say nuffin for de sobbin’ an’ de
cryin’. Den he ’gun to laf, an’ he come over an’ laid his han’ ’pon my
shoulder. Den I see his eyes was er twinklin’ like de stars in de
heaven.
“‘Miss Mary an’ I’se gwine be married,’ says he.
“‘Yo ain’t er gwine teck ’er ’way from ’er ole mammy, is you?’ sez I.
‘See heah,’ sez I, ‘Marse Pendleton, I done brought ’er up—I done
nussed ’er. I ain’t never let ’er outer mah sight fer twenty years ever
since she was a babby.’
“Den he ’gun to talk ’bout devotion an’ pholosophy—an’, an’ de end.
‘Dere ain’t goin’ to be no end,’ says I. ‘She ain’t never even dressed
herself, alone, yit; nor combed ’er own har. Dere ain’t been a
mornin’, nor an evenin’, nor er night, dat her ole mammy wa’n’t dar to
help ’er.’ Den I see he was er smilin. ‘Mammy,’ sez he, ‘youse gwine
long wid us.’ ‘Praise de Lord,’ sez I. An’ dat’s de way I happin to
come North, Marser Crane. I wanter goin’ let mah young mistiss be
travellin’ round ’mong dem Northerners, ’thout her ole mammy to
teck cyar of ’er.”
She ceased speaking, and moved slowly toward the door. “I’ll git
everythin’ ready fer de tea,” she said, brightening. “You needn’t
worry ’bout nothin’, Marser Crane. ’Tain’t de fust time mah ole Moses
an’ I’se waited on comp’ny.”
Enoch stood listening to her as she descended the stairs. She was
crooning softly to herself in a minor key:
“Moonlight on de swamp an’ ’possum in de tree....”
Enoch leaned over the banisters; then the door of her kitchen closed
upon her and he returned to his room. For a long moment he stood
thoughtfully before his desk, thinking of her devotion, of what the
death of her mistress must have meant to her, of the vicissitudes in
the years that followed, of their present sordid quarters in
comparison to the “big house,” its great rooms, and its bygone
hospitality, the picture she had drawn of that young Captain
Pendleton and the one he loved, clear in his mind. Then he slowly
unbuttoned his watch-chain of braided hair, inserted the flat key in
the lock of the little drawer above his inkstand, opened it, felt under a
packet of letters tied with a narrow blue ribbon, and drew out a small
leather daguerreotype case, unhooked it, and stood gazing at the
portrait of the young girl it contained—a young girl in a checkered
silk dress, with large, nervous black eyes, her dark hair falling in two
soft curls over her neck, a red rose in her hair. He turned it askance
to the light, bringing into clearer detail the delicate contour of the
wistful face, the drooping, sensitive, melancholy mouth, the bit of
lace at her throat, fastened by a brooch of garnets. Then he
reverently returned it to the drawer, closed it, and locked it.
It did not, as Matilda had supposed, contain his money—only a
memory.
While Enoch had been straightening out his room, Joe had been
fidgeting this morning over his work in the office of Atwater &
Grimsby, Architects, a modest square room on the third floor of an
old brick building in State Street, its two dingy lower floors being
filled by Italian fruit merchants and the mingled perfume of the green
banana, the orange, the lemon, and the fig. Joe this morning had
accomplished nothing, his whole mind elated over Enoch Crane’s
invitation to tea and his promised glimpse of Sue. He drew, sprawled
over his drawing-board, his pencil and T-square moving at a snail’s
pace as he counted the hours that remained before five, which the
moon-faced clock, solemnly ticking over his head, appeared in no
hurry to shorten; its punctilious hands seemed barely to move. He
fussed for an hour over some rough ideas for a dormer window,
spent another in searching through a book on early Tudor for a half-
timbered inspiration, broke the point of his pencil constantly, and
finally, with the memory of Sue’s voice in his ears, upset a full bottle
of India ink, its contents flooding the emerald-green water-color lawn
in front of Mrs. Amos Jones’s cottage destined for Dunehurst,
changing it into a lake of indelible ink that found an outlet for itself
over the edge of the drawing-board and went streaming to the floor.
Sam Atwater’s thin, alert face raised in disgust. He slid off his stool,
readjusted his eye-glasses with his nervous hand, and regarded the
ruin of Mrs. Amos Jones’s water-colored country-seat in dismay.
“That’s done for,” said he gloomily.
“By the gods!” cried Joe, flinging up his strong arms in his
enthusiasm. “Done for! Why, it’s immense! It’s a hummer, by Jove!
Look at the value of black, will you? Ripping! Cast your eyes on that
contrast of trees and roof bang up against that ebony lake. Talk
about values, picks up that little touch of apple-green on the roof and
makes her sing. You wait until I get through with the next water-color.
I’ve got a scheme, I tell you, that will make the rest of the boys sit up
and blink. Why, black’s the most valuable thing in the world, only
you’ve got to have enough of it. We’ve been fooling around with a lot
of timid shadows, afraid to smash in a big effect straight from the
shoulder. Look at the value of that high light next to the strongest
dark. That’s one reason why Rembrandt’s portraits look as if they
could step out of the frame and shake you by the hand. Ruined! you
sou marqué—it’s a corker! Black—that’s it, and plenty of it, with
good, strong drawing and a big, splendid sky smashed in with
Chinese white, raw umber, and French blue—I’ve got it, Sam. You
wait. No more anæmic water-colors for me, and no more white
paper, either. That’s good enough for illustrators, but it’s no good for
architects. Give me gray paper—gauche—and charcoal—something
you can build on.”
Sam Atwater was studying him as he rattled on with the wide-eyed
interest of a man listening to the secret of a new invention, which,
although he did not wholly grasp its possibilities, nevertheless was
slowly opening his eyes to its logical advantages.
“Gray paper—that’s it!” cried Joe. “Cool gray for gray days, and a
yellow gray for hot sunlight. Can’t you see, old man, that shadows
are transparent and that everything else in hot sunlight is opaque?”
As no one had yet touched the ink-bottle, Joe kicked it into the
corner.
“When is this miracle of yours going to happen?” asked Atwater,
picking up the ruined water-color disconsolately and jamming it into
the waste-paper basket.
“Happen!” exclaimed Joe. “Why—just as soon as I can draw well
enough and can get used to handling gauche instead of the
skimmed milk I’ve been using.”
“You can draw well enough now, Joe,” returned Atwater—“when you
want to.” He paused, grew a little red, half turned away, then
wheeling around, added seriously: “See here, Joe, I’m not the
nagging kind, and you know it—but—you know what we’ve got to do
as well as I do, and the time that’s left us to do it in. I’m doing my
best to get the Jones job in before the 15th, specifications and all.
Well—you don’t seem to be getting on to the job lately, that’s all. I—I
hate to say this and—but, you see how it is, don’t you? We’ve got to
hustle—and there’s another thing I might just as well say,” he went
on, clearing his throat and twirling his HB lead pencil nervously in his
active hand, a hand as precise as a machine, and as timid as a
woman’s. “You’re not the same as you used to be—you’ve changed
—you’ve got to dreaming—well—ever since the Fords moved in.”
Joe gripped him heartily by both shoulders. “Good old Sammy,” said
he. “Oh, you’re right—I don’t deny it. I’m goin’ to brace up and help—
and—and hustle. There—feel better?”
The clock above them struck twelve-thirty with a wheezy dang.
“Time to eat!” exclaimed Joe, with a persuasive twinkle. “Poor old
Sammy! See here, what we need is food and a change of scene.
What do you say to going to Old Tom’s for luncheon—eh? It’ll do you
good—my treat, Sammy, and don’t you dare say no, because if you
do—” he grinned—“I’m going to pick you up and carry you there, if I
have to walk up Broadway with you on my back. Is it a go?”
Sam hesitated. “Hadn’t we better go back to the Pioneer Dairy,” he
ventured. “It’s cheaper, Joe, and the stuff isn’t so bad.”
“It’s abominable,” protested Joe. “I’m tired of the kind that mother
used to make. I’ve got enough of skimmed milk, I tell you, and
seeing that sour old maid with the asthma pass the crullers. No, sir—
what we want is some man’s food and a good pint of ale in us—in a
snug place that’s alive.”
He grabbed Atwater’s derby from the hook next his own and jammed
it on his studious head, wholly against Sam’s ideas of right and
wrong.
“Come along!” cried Joe, recovering his own broad-brimmed gray felt
—a daily companion of his Beaux-Arts days, which had sheltered
him through dozens of like little extravagances that his pocket
always suffered for on the morrow. And so the two went off to old
Tom’s chop-house in Trinity Lane, where they had, heeding the
counsel of old Tom himself, a “combination” of spicy sausage, juicy
chop, and a broiled kidney, sizzling hot, and done to a turn, that
genial little Irishman in his shirt-sleeves further suggesting, with his
habitual abbreviation of vegetables, a little “cel” and a little “spin” on
the side, and two pints of his oldest ale, nearly as dark and powerful
as Hartligan’s oldest, next door, and with two cross-sections of hot
mince pie to follow, “mince with a slip on,” smothered under the best
of Welsh rarebits, all of which in due time, as Tom had promised,
were poked through the blackened worn hole connecting with the
busy kitchen, and were devoured serenely, without as much as
ruffling the digestion of youth.
“I feel better,” declared Joe, and he looked it. So did Atwater, though
he had broken a whole golden rule in regard to light luncheons and
his duty to his drawing-board. He was also worrying about the pie.
“Let’s have another,” coaxed Joe, as he pinioned his last morsel of
mince-meat, flaky pie-crust, and melted cheese nimbly on his steel
fork and calmly raised it.
“Let’s what?” exclaimed Atwater, aghast. “More of that pie? Not on
your life. That stuff will put you on the Christmas tree if you get the
habit.”
“I’ll split one with you,” laughed Joe. “Come on, be a game sport.”
“No, you won’t,” declared Atwater firmly.
“Now, Sammy; it’s my fête day.”
“You wait until you get the bill, and you’ll think it’s New Year’s,”
remarked Atwater gravely.
“Ben Jonson and good old Falstaff would have been tickled to death
with this place,” enthused Joe, sipping his coffee and unheeding the
anxious look in Atwater’s eyes, as he ordered two light panetelas.
“Nothing like good food for inspiration, old man. Hanged if I wouldn’t
like to have a tavern of my own—bumpers—trenchers, old beams,
cobwebs, and troubadours, buxom lasses, a few captains of fortune
with their ready blades, and the mail-coach due at one. Veiled lady
getting out, assisted by his Grace the Duke. Dogs, minions, and
stable-boys—small, fair-haired child running with bunch of posies for
the Duke’s lady, smiling Boniface in doorway with napkin. Steaming
leaders stamping out of their trace-chains—and a fight in the back
room——”
“Everything all right, gentlemen?” interrupted Tom, bringing the bill in
his head and enumerating its items and total to Joe.
“I hope so,” ventured Atwater meekly, his mind still dwelling on the
pie, as Joe laid his last spare ten-dollar bill on the table, received
four dollars and ten cents back in change, shook the genial Irishman
by the hand, who boasted he had never been out of New York, and
when he wanted a breath of sea air went to the Battery,
complimented him upon his cuisine, and thanked him for the good
luncheon—all with so much cheery good-humor, that Tom followed
them both out to the door, and over its sawdusted threshold, to send
them off with a final wave of the hand.
Joe Grimsby was the first to arrive.

Whatever glimpse he was to get of Sue this afternoon he wished to
prolong as much as possible. In fact, he sprang up Enoch’s stairs as
early as half past four, heralding his presence by a hearty “Hello!”
that brought Enoch out to his landing.
“I’m early, I know, but then I didn’t want to be late,” he explained with
a frank laugh, as Enoch welcomed him with both hands and ushered
him into his room.
Joe flung himself into the proffered armchair and glanced about him.
“By thunder!” he cried. “What a nice old room.”
“It’s comfortable, my boy,” returned Enoch, studying his well-knit
figure and his splendid chest, his keen eyes observing the well-bred
ease with which Joe made himself instantly at home. He had
changed his office suit for a soft, light-gray homespun—its double-
breasted high-cut waistcoat, the flamboyant black silk bow cravat,
and the low, turned-down collar, allowing plenty of play to his strong,
ruddy throat, giving him a slightly foreign air, which Enoch rightly
decided was the result of his Paris student days in the Latin Quarter,
where Joe had lived out four eminently respectable years, made a
good record at the Beaux-Arts, plenty of friends, and no liaisons. So
that when he left there was no good, faithful little “Marcelle” or
“Yvette” to shed tears over his going, and all he had to do was to call
a fiacre, shoulder his trunk, chuck it on top, say again good-by to his
old concierge, Madame Dupuy, and to the red-faced cocher awaiting
his order—“Gare St. Lazare.” It seems almost a pity that there was
no little Yvonne or Marie to accompany him to the station. Ah, how
brave they are! And when one’s heart is big so that it chokes one it is
not easy to be brave—none to have packed his things and bought
his ticket in her perfect French, and put a kiss between the
sandwiches, and deposited more right before the accustomed eyes
of the important red-faced chef de gare, until the tragic, relentless
bleat of his horn sent the long-dreaded express to Havre moving
swiftly out of the station. Joe had come out of it all as straight as a T-
square.
“So you like the old room?” said Enoch, opening a thin box of fat
cigarettes.
“Ripping old room,” Joe declared. “I’ve never known a room that
didn’t have a personality—good, bad, or indifferent. Some rooms
seem almost to speak to you.”
“Or, rather, they reflect the personality of the occupant,” said Enoch.
“Some rooms reflect deeper than mirrors, my boy. They give out to
you much of the true character of the person whom they shelter.
They’re as much a part of them as their minds and manner of life.”
“Look at the charm of this old place—its friendliness, the way it
hangs together!” Joe went on. He was bordering unconsciously on a
compliment, Enoch swerving it with:
“Take, on the other hand, for instance, in your profession. There is
nothing more ridiculous and incongruous to me than the houses
some people live in. Some of you architects design salons and
dining-rooms for people who would be far more at their ease in the
kitchen. Imagine a boudoir with a Madame Récamier lounge for a
woman’s rights delegate—a library for a grocer, and a ball-room for
an undertaker, and you have my idea,” grinned Enoch.
“You ought to see the bedroom I’ve designed for Mrs. Amos Jones,”
Joe declared. “She’s daft on Marie Antoinette ever since she saw the
Petit Trianon last summer and bought the postal cards.”
Enoch broke out into a hearty laugh.
“I’ve got baa-lambs in blue bows and shepherdesses with golden
crooks,” confessed Joe, “stencilled all over the frieze, and the royal
crown made by a cabinet-maker in Hoboken over her canopied bed.
Atwater was furious, but Mrs. Jones would have it.”
Enoch roared.
“That’s it,” said he. “I can see it all. What a lot of fools some women
are.”
“Ever seen Mrs. Amos Jones?” Joe ventured.
“No,” grinned Enoch, “but I can imagine her.”
“No, you can’t,” chuckled Joe, as Matilda passed through the room to
open the door for the Fords, and hurried back a second later to
reopen it for the Misses Moulton.
And what a tea it was! How pretty Sue looked, and how good were
the hot little muffins Matilda had prepared as a surprise, which old
Moses served with silent dignity in his best alpaca coat and white
cotton gloves. And how “darling” Sue thought Matilda’s exquisite little
cups, into which Miss Ann poured tea with the grace and gentleness
of a lady.
The old room had never heard so much talk before, so much
neighborly good-humor, broken at intervals by Ebner Ford’s
somewhat raw and insistent attempts to engage the others in
listening to the beginning of one of his many anecdotes—all of which
Mrs. Ford had heard a thousand times, and which generally ended
apropos of business, but which did not deter that effusive lady from
referring as usual to her famous Southern family, of course apropos
of the muffins, which she naïvely led up to.
“Now, when I was a girl,” she beamed, “I remember so well our
delicious Southern hot breads—our table fairly groaned with them,
Mr. Crane. We were five sisters, you know. Well, of course, our
house was always full of company, father being so prominent in the
place. I shall never forget how furious father was at an old beau of
mine for taking me driving in the phaeton without his permission,”
simpered the rotund little woman. “You see, we were young girls and,
if I do say it, we had a great many young men at the house
constantly, and, of course, when father became judge....”
“Yo heah all day hiferlutin’ talk,” whispered Matilda to Moses in the
bedroom, transformed for the occasion into a serving-pantry. “I’se
never heerd no real quality yit a talkin’ ’bout dere family. Dey don’t
have to. Eve’ybody knows what dey is when dey looks at em.”
There were two young people in two chairs by the window in the
fast-growing twilight, whom Enoch skilfully managed to leave by
themselves.
“And you forgive me?” ventured Joe, looking up into her frank blue
eyes.
“Why, I haven’t anything to forgive you for,” laughed Sue nervously.
“Only it did seem a little queer—your—your inviting me so suddenly.”
“But you will forgive me, won’t you? You don’t know how much I’ve
thought about it, and how much I cared. Then when we met on the
stairs that day and you seemed so cold—half afraid of me. Tell me
you’re not afraid of me now, are you?”
A deeper color spread slowly to her cheeks.
“Why, no; I’m not afraid. I was foolish, I suppose,” Sue added half
audibly, with lowered eyelids, clasping her hands nervously in her
lap.
The dusk of evening came on apace; they forgot the chatter in the
old room.
Joe leaned toward her.
“I wish we could be friends,” said he, regarding her small, nervous
hands longingly. “Real friends, I mean—that is, if you’ll trust me?”
She glanced up at him quickly, her gaze as quickly reverting to her
lap. Then, with a forced little shrug of her pretty shoulders:
“Why, yes; of course I’ll trust you, Mr. Grimsby.”
Impulsively he touched her warm little hand.
“Honest?” he smiled, thrilled by that touch from his head to his feet.
“Honest Injun? Cross your heart?”
“I said I would,” she said evenly.
Their eyes met—his with a happy gleam in them, hers with a timid,
tender look, her heart beating until she felt its throb in her ears.
“I fear we had better be going,” she said, making a little movement to
rise. “I’m afraid it’s awfully late.”
Joe snapped out his watch, bending closer to the window, where he
ascertained it lacked a few minutes past six.
“You can stay a little longer, can’t you?” he pleaded. “Now that we’re
to be good friends.”
“It’s on account of mother,” she replied evasively, catching the tone
of Mrs. Ford’s voice which had risen to that shrill key which invariably
accompanied her leave-taking—a moment in which she again
referred beamingly to Lamont, who had been kindness itself, she
had heard, to Mrs. Van Cortlandt, “all through that awful tragedy, my
dear,” she explained to Miss Jane Moulton, who had scarcely
opened her lips. “He’s kind to every one,” she went on effusively.
“You should see the beautiful roses he sent me only yesterday—two
dozen of the most gorgeous American Beauties. I was so surprised
—as I told daughter....”
Her words nettled Joe, and he turned sharply. Enoch struck a match
savagely under the mantelpiece and lighted the Argand burner.
“Oh, please don’t!” protested Sue. “I do love the twilight so, Mr.
Crane.”
“Then you shall have it, my dear,” returned Enoch. “I wonder if you’ll
do me a favor. Will you sing to us—in that twilight you love? Just a
little song, any you please. I’m sorry there’s no piano. Come, won’t
you?”
“Please,” pleaded Joe.
“Why, yes; of course I will if you wish it, Mr. Crane,” consented Sue.
“Let me see—what shall I sing?”
“That ravishing little thing from—‘Aïda’—isn’t it, darling?—the one
with the fascinating warbles,” suggested her mother. “She has
another one that’s too cute for words,” she confided to Miss Jane. “I’ll
get her to sing it.”
Sue started to rise. Enoch raised his hand.
“Pray don’t get up,” he begged. “Sit where you are, dear, and sing
me the ‘Old Kentucky Home.’”
The room grew hushed. Two dark forms filled the narrow doorway of
the bedroom. Enoch slipped into his favorite chair, his chin sunk
deep in the palm of his hand. Then Sue began. The old song poured
forth from her pure young throat clear and plaintive, in all the simple
beauty of its words and melody. Matilda’s lips moved. At the third
verse something seemed to be strangling her; unseen in the dusk,
she buried her black, tear-stained face in her hands, Moses
comforting her in whispers.
Joe sat beside the singer in the dusk—immovable—in a dream.
Beneath his hand lay Sue’s—warm, tender, unresisting. Thus ended
the song—as if it were the most natural thing in the world for songs
to end that way.
CHAPTER X
Miss Jane had gone out. She had taken her purple parasol with her
to Stuyvesant Square, where the sun this March afternoon glistened
on its faded fringe, and sent the saucy brown sparrows to doze and
preen their wings in the bare branches of the trees, Miss Jane
finding protection for her frail person back of the iron fence on a hard
bench, its thin, cast-iron arms polished by the weary, the worthless,
and the poor. Sometimes she sat in the corner, looking out upon the
passing life of the street, though she much preferred the bench
beside the straggling geraniums and begonias when the sun shone.
She had taken with her as well, secreted in the depths of her black
silk reticule, a small volume of Lowell’s verses—some of them she
knew by heart, and those she did not helped her to forget her cough.
There were a lot of things tucked away for safe-keeping in that
reticule of Miss Jane’s: Old addresses of cheaper seamstresses
which might some day be needed, a spool of sewing silk and a
needle, in case of accidents; her name and address written plainly
by Miss Ann; three old prescriptions that, alas! were always being
renewed, and clippings from the New York Observer on sermons she
had missed, stuck to licorice drops—all these did not hinder her thin
fingers from finding a hidden cracker for the sparrows, which she fed
them in tiny bits under the alcoholic eye of a well-to-do Tammany
policeman with park manners, who always saluted her respectfully.
Miss Jane was so reticent in public that she rarely opened her lips,
total strangers like car-conductors and new church-sextons being an
unavoidable exception. She took up but little space in the world, and
was of no more hinderance to others than her own shadow—and yet
she was a woman, had once been a girl, and once a baby. There is a
degree of modesty which becomes conspicuous. It is almost
impossible to conceive that Miss Jane had ever loved; that she had
ever laughed, or felt the pain of happiness; that coquetry had once
peeped mischievously from the corners of her eyes, playing hide-
and-seek with her smile—a smile that once had made more than one
young man’s heart beat the faster—all that was dry and dead.
There were other withered leaves in the park.
And so Miss Jane had gone out. In fact, there was nobody left in the
house but Miss Ann, Ebner Ford, Matilda, and the cat, Moses having
crossed the ferry to his savings-bank in Brooklyn, a suburb noted for
its savings.
Ebner Ford waited until Miss Jane had timidly passed his door on
her way out. Then he hurriedly shaved, put on his best suit of
clothes, selected a fresh white tie, doused some of his wife’s
lavender perfume on a clean handkerchief, and leaped up the stairs
to Miss Ann’s door, which she had unfortunately left ajar.
She was darning her sister’s stockings when he knocked, and had
barely time to hide them and seize her knitting before he thrust his
head in with an ingratiating grin.
“Got so pesky lonesome down-stairs, thought I’d just come up and
cheer you up,” he blurted out, unheeding her embarrassment. “Hope
I’m not intrudin’—Emma’s gone with girlie to a show. Grand day, ain’t
it, Miss Moulton?”
He had safely gained the centre of the room, an old trick with him in
business interviews; doors marked “Private” or “No admission” had
no terrors for Ford.
Miss Ann had sprung out of her chair by her sewing-table and stood
helpless before him, flushed.
“And so you were left alone, Mr. Ford,” she said bravely, with
dignified resignation.
“That’s about the size of it,” he laughed, selecting the sofa, and
crossing his long legs, his head thrown back at his ease, as she
reseated herself before him. “I’m not much on goin’ to shows,” he
declared. “Seen too much of ’em. There wa’n’t a troupe that come to
our town when I was a boy but what I’d tag after ’em and see ’em
perform. Since I’ve had so many business cares I’ve kinder gotten
out of goin’ to the theatre. S’pose you’re pretty crazy about ’em, Miss
Moulton, ain’t you? Most women are.”
“I’ve never been to the theatre,” confessed Miss Ann quietly, her
eyes upon her knitting.
He shot forward with a surprised smile, gripping his bony knees with
his long hands.
“Well, say, that beats me!” he cried.
“Neither my mother nor my father approved of the theatre; my sister
and I have never gone,” she added simply. “We were brought up
differently, I suppose.”
“You ain’t missed such an awful lot,” he returned, by way of
consolation. “I’ve seen some shows where you got your money’s
worth; then, again, I’ve seen ’em that wa’n’t worth twenty-five cents
—your pa and ma didn’t have nothin’ agin the circus, did they?”
Miss Ann looked at him, with pinched lips and a hesitant smile.
“Perhaps we’d better not discuss it,” said she. “I’m afraid our views
are so different, you see. To be frank with you, Mr. Ford, the people
of the stage have never attracted me—when you consider their lives,
their—their——”
“Don’t you tell Emma,” he intervened, paused, and added
confidentially: “But I knew an actress once—finest little woman you
ever see, Miss Moulton.”
The needles in her frail, active hands flew nervously.
“Wished I could remember her name—hold on, I got it. Nell Little.
‘Little Nell,’ I used to call her. Come up with a show from Troy and
took sick at the Eagle House. Had a small dog with her, I remember
—one er them shiverin’, tinklin’, black-and-tans. Nell thought an
awful lot of that little cuss. Seems he’d saved her life once in a
smash-up on the Delaware and Lackawanna; led them that was
searchin’ for her into a burnin’ sleeper. Well, when she took sick at
the Eagle House, and the rest of ’em had to leave her—no, hold on,
I’m gettin’ ahead of my story.”
The trembling needles dropped a stitch.

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The Holocaust in Thessaloniki

reactions to the anti Jewish persecution

Holocaust History, Holocaust Memory; Jewish Poland and

Jewish Displaced Persons in Italy 1943 1951 Politics

Anti-Semitism and The Holocaust: Language, Rhetoric and

From Moscow to Stalingrad The Eastern Front 1941 1942

The Origins of Right to Work Antilabor Democracy in

Remembering the Holocaust in Educational Settings 1st

The Persecution of the Knights Templar Scandal Torture

Asians in Colorado A History of Persecution and

The book uncovers untold aspects of Thessaloniki’s Jewish history, convincingly

Saltiel deserves my gratitude and congratulations for providing a page-turner, as

Saltiel’s path-breaking book draws on a rich array of previously untapped archives

Saltiel’s meticulous and nuanced reconstruction of Christian elites in Thessaloniki

Saltiel offers a thick description of the institutional reactions to the Holocaust

Saltiel’s book is a significant contribution which persuasively explains the

Saltiel’s meticulously researched study of the annihilation of the Jews of

This ground-breaking book on Thessaloniki reflects excellent scholarship and

A necessary and crucial perspective, in a time when the involvement of bystanders

A meticulously researched, penetrating study of the destruction and despoliation

The Making of Modern Jewish Identity

Charity in Rabbinic Judaism

Deconstructing the Talmud

The Divine in Modern Hebrew Literature

The Holocaust in Thessaloniki

For more information about this series, please visit: www.routledge.com/middle

The accountant sits chewing

List of maps and tablesx

1 Historical and theoretical background 1

2 Dehumanizing the dead: the destruction of Thessaloniki’s

3 What people knew: contemporary sources on the

4 The reactions from the city authorities 105

5 Reactions from the institutions: the Church, the courts, the

6 The reactions from the professional associations 151

7 Jewish efforts in Athens and Thessaloniki to save the Jews

8 The actions of the Red Cross delegate in Thessaloniki

Appendix: short biographies of key individuals219

In thesis VI of “On the Concept of History,” Walter Benjamin, so often an inscru-

Community Population before Population after Percentage

Map 1.1 Division of Greek territory by Axis Powers

Methodology, sources, bibliography

Sources and archives

Historical overview: from the millet to the Second World War

The interwar period

antisemitic clichés intersected with nationalist insecurities about the “Greek”

German decision to deport the Jews of Thessaloniki

However, this decision took a while to reach implementation. For comparison,

Periodization of the Holocaust in Thessaloniki

Figure 1.3 Timeline of measures against Jews of Thessaloniki.

Transport Date of Destination Date of Passengers Passengers

1 March 15 Auschwitz March 20 2,400 2,800

The issue of Jewish properties

Enoch was doing an unheard-of thing—for Enoch—straightening up

Joe Grimsby was the first to arrive.

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List of maps and tablesx

1 Historical and theoretical background 1

4 The reactions from the city authorities 105

6 The reactions from the professional associations 151

Appendix: short biographies of key individuals219