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The Germans enter Thessaloniki on 9.4.41. A few days later they forbid Jews to enter cafes, pastry shops, etc., they commandeer Hirsch Hospital and many Jewish homes, imprison members of the Community Council, order Jews to surrender their radios and loot the Community offices and the richest Jewish libraries. On 11.7.1942 the male Jews aged 18 – 45 years old are ordered to report to Liberty Square. There, after being subjected to indescribable torture, they are registered and taken to forced labour. The community will pay the Nazis 2.5 billion dirhams to free them. At the end of the same year, the Nazis confiscate the flourishing Jewish businesses and destroy the Jewish cemetery.
On 6.2.43 an SD committee headed by Dieter Vislicheni and Alois Brunner arrived in Thessaloniki and set in motion the mechanism for the definitive extermination of the Jews, who were now obliged to wear the yellow Star of David and to live only in certain districts (ghettos). They are also banned from using telephones and public transport. The Nazis, concealing their real intentions, claim through Chief Rabbi Korets, whom they appoint as president, that they aim to reorganise the community into an autonomous area of the city with its own mayor and chamber of commerce. They are even forming a Jewish militia and requiring Jews to make detailed declarations of their assets. On 6 March 1943, Jews are forbidden to leave the ghettos, and in the Baron Hirsch settlement the stage is set for the final act of the tragedy. There the human herd will be led, ready to surrender to slaughter.
On 15 March 1943 the first train left for the Auschwitz and Birkenau death camps. Successive shipments departing one after the other would in a few weeks carry the Jews of Thessaloniki, packed into wagons destined for animals, to the place of extermination.
On this point should depend the self-sacrifice of those of our Christian brothers and sisters who, at the risk of their lives, offered hospitable asylum to many Jews. In the vanguard were the clergy, the national resistance and the security forces. But also the entire Greek people, who supported wherever and however they could, feeling horror at the crime from the very first moment, even if they had not grasped it in its full extent, just as the victims had not grasped it either.
We cannot forget the strong intercessions of the late Metropolitan Gennadios of Thessaloniki to stop the missions. And we still cannot forget and we will emphasize here the document of 23.3.43, co-signed together with the late Archbishop Damaskinos and 29 other presidents of organizations. From the Academy and the Higher Schools to the technical and professional chambers. This document, written in a strict style, refers to the indisputable truth of the ties that absolutely identify Greek Orthodox Christians with Greek Jews under the common and unique concept of “Greeks”. And it is undeniable that in the whole of occupied Europe no similar action was ventured in the whole of occupied Europe.
Of the 46,091 Jews from Thessaloniki who were transferred to the concentration camps, only 1950 returned, i.e. about 4%.
