In Memory of the Jews of Greece for Yom Hashoah

“I will give them, in My House and within My walls, a monument and a name (Yad Vashem) better than sons or daughters.  I will give them an everlasting name which shall not perish.” Isaiah 56, 5.

Hall of Remembrance,Yad Vashem.
Photo: Berthold Werner 

As night falls this Wednesday in Israel Yom Hashoah - Holocaust Memorial Day will begin.   A state ceremony will take place that evening in Warsaw Ghetto Square at Yad Vashem.  The President and the Prime Minister will speak.  The Chief Rabbis will recite prayers.  Six torches will be lit, each one by a survivor in memory of the six million Jews, almost two thirds of European Jewry, who were murdered in the Holocaust. 

Flags will fly at half-mast that day.  Places of entertainment will close for 24 hours.  The main television channels will broadcast only programmes related to the Holocaust.  The radio stations will carry sombre music.  At 10.00 o’clock on Thursday morning sirens will sound calling the whole country to come to a standstill and to observe two minutes silence in memory of those who died.

Batis Family Plaque
Memorial Cave, Yad Vashem

Millions of Ashkenazi Jews from northern and eastern Europe were murdered during the Holocaust but its terrible impact also reached Italian Jewry and the Sephardi communities of Greece, the Balkans and even North Africa.  One of the survivors who will be lighting a torch at this year’s state ceremony is Artemis Miron.  She was born in Ioannina in Greece.  Her father, Iosif (Pepo) Batis, was arrested, shot and killed in 1943.  Her mother and brother were murdered in Auschwitz in 1944.  Artemis herself survived forced labour in Auschwitz and death marches to Ravensbruck and to Malchow. 

The Jewish community in Greece is the oldest in mainland Europe dating back more than 2,000 years.  The first written record of Jews there is from about 300 BCE.  Synagogues have been discovered from the second century BCE.  In Jerusalem two synagogues have been established by Jews from Greece; one in the Ohel Moshe neighbourhood in Nahlaot and one in the Sephardi Orphanage near to the neighbourhood of Even Israel. 

Beit Knesset Beit Avraham VeOhel Sarah:

Plaque on the wall of
Beit avraham VeOhel Sarah

Ioannina is in North West Greece where Albania, Yugoslavia and the Ionian Sea meet.  There was already a Jewish community there in the days of Alexander the Great and it was in its day the largest Jewish community in Greece.  The community spoke Judeo-Greek (Yevanic) and used the Romaniot rite of prayer, an ancient rite that dated back to Byzantine times. 

Entrance to Beit Avraham VeOhel Sarah

Avraham and Sarah HaCohen came to Jerusalem from Ioannina in 1925.  They had no children.  Avraham died later that year and his widow decided to consecrate their house as a synagogue for Jews from Ioannina whilst she was still alive.  She died 14 years later in 1939 but until then she lived in a modest room at the side of the synagogue.  Nowadays Sephardi Jews pray in this synagogue.  There is no-one to speak Yevanic and the Romaniot rite is almost never heard here. Many religious items from the original community are preserved in the synagogue.

Beit Haknesset Kahal Tzion:

Salonica, The Fortress

Salonica, Thessaloniki, is Greece’s second largest city.  In 1492 thousands of Sephardi Jews settled in Ottoman Greece, many of them in Salonica, following their expulsion from Spain and Portugal.  They quickly became the dominant group and their Judeo-Spanish language (Ladino) became the predominant language of Greek Jewry.  The Sephardim developed Salonica into a major commercial centre.  In the last quarter of the 19^th century 56% of the city’s population was Jewish.  They were so influential that the city virtually shut down each Saturday, the Jewish Sabbath.  Salonica became known as the Jerusalem of the Balkans or as “la madre de Israel” – the mother (city) of Israel.  A street near my home in south Jerusalem is called Kedoshei Saloniki – the holy ones of Salonica.  It is dedicated to the memory of the 50,000 Salonica Jews who were murdered in the holocaust. 

The Sephardi Orphanage, Jerusalem

The Sephardi Orphanage in Jerusalem was established by the Jaffa Road near Even Israel in 1908 by two Bukharian families.  There have been synagogues in the orphanage building ever since its foundation.   In the early days of the 20^th century Jews from Salonica came to settle in Even Israel.  They established a community centre and a synagogue.  At first the synagogue was in the home of Ezra Benveniste.  In the 1920s the community of “Olei Salonica” (immigrants from Salonica) moved their synagogue to the ground floor of the orphanage where it flourished for thirty years until it joined with another synagogue founded there by a Sephardi religious Zionist association called Al Hamishmar (Standing Guard).  Services are still held there every day.

Postscript:

The destruction of Greek Jewry began in 1943.  By the end of the Second World War 60,000 Greek Jews, 86% of the pre-war population had been killed.  Today only about 5,000 Jews live in Greece most of them in Athens and Salonica.  There are just 35 Romaniot Jews alive in Ioannina.

From Cochin in Southern India to Nevatim in Southern Israel

One of the best things about Israel is the diversity that exists in such small country.  People from five continents have come to settle here and the country is home to communities from many different cultures and religions.  I love to show people aspects of Israel that they haven’t seen before.

There are many cultural gems here.  One of these is Moshav Nevatim  Just to the east of Beer Sheva, Nevatim was originally founded as a kibbutz, together with ten others, one Saturday night in October 1946.  It was part of a determined attempt to establish a Jewish presence in the Negev in anticipation of the partition of Palestine.  During the War of Independence in 1948 the kibbutz was besieged by the Egyptian army.  It was kept supplied with food and other essentials by air-drops.  Nevatim survived the war but was abandoned soon afterwards.

In 1954 Nevatim was re-established as a moshav by Jews from Cochin on the Malabar Coast in Southern India.  Cochin was the oldest of the Jewish communities in India.  The tradition is that Jewish traders called here during the time of King Solomon.  Exiles from the Kingdom of Judah settled here soon after the destruction of the First Temple in 586 BCE and were joined by refugees fleeing after the destruction of the Second Temple in 70 CE.  They settled first in the ancient port of Cranganore near to Cochin.  Here they received protection from the Hindu rulers and were granted special privileges that were recorded on copper plates (known as the “Sasanam”) that were given to the community.  The Hindu king gave the Jews permission to live freely, build synagogues, and own property "without conditions attached" for "as long as the world and moon exist". The area where they lived in came to be known as ‘Jew Town’.

The Sasanam

In the 14^th century the port of Cranganore silted up and trade moved to the smaller port of Cochin.  In the 16^th century the established community was joined by Sephardic Jews fleeing from the Iberian Peninsula.  It’s perhaps not surprising that in India, the home of the caste system, the two communities did not mix.  The older established Malabar community, who became known as the Black Jews, were seen as inferior by the newcomers, the Pardesi or White Jews.  They maintained separate synagogues.  The Pardesi Jews did not even allow the Malabar Jews into their synagogue.  Needless to say they did not intermarry.  By the early 20^th century most of these divisions had disappeared thanks largely to the efforts of Abraham Barak Salem.

An Indian Jewish Family in Cochin

There were eight synagogues in Cochin.  The Black Jews had seven and the White Jews one, the Pardesi synagogue.  Only the Pardesi synagogue is still open.  The interior of the 16^th century Kadavumbagam synagogue was brought to Jerusalem in 1991 and reconstructed in the Israel Museum where you can see it today.

Most of the Jews have left Cochin and have settled in moshavim and in cities in Israel.  At Nevatim they have built a heritage centre for Cochin Jewry with a museum, a film presentation of their history and a beautiful synagogue.  Arrange your visit in advance and you can enjoy a delicious meal of kosher Cochini food.