On the eve of the Greek national holiday, March 24, 1944, Nazi soldiers encircled the Jewish quarter in the northern Greek city of Ioannina.
The community of Romaniote Jews, native to Greek lands for more than 2000 years, would experience the darkest moments in its history.
The story began several months earlier on September 8, 1943, when Italy surrendered to the Allies and passed control of Ioanna into German hands. On September 22 General Jürgen Stroop, the commander of the SS division which had suppressed the Warsaw ghetto uprising, was appointed as the head of the Greek police.
Under Stroop’s command, the Nazis ordered Jews to register or face execution. They also imposed a daily curfew between 5 PM and 7 AM and forced Jews to give them food and equipment.
At the beginning of March 1944, a census was held in the city, after which the Germans imprisoned four leaders from the Jewish community. The arrested leaders managed to smuggle a letter out of prison calling for Jews to flee the city, but the deputy head of the community, Shabetai Kabeli, claimed that the Germans would not harm the Jews, so long as the Jews provided them with money and supplies.
Kabeli went to parents whose sons had fled the city to join the underground and convinced them to persuade their sons to return, claiming they were in fact collaborating with the communist underground, thereby endangering the entire community.
Only very few Jews fled into the mountains, among them the four members of the Matsa family. Others obtained false papers with the help of Greeks such as Father Athanasius and succeeded in joining the partisans or reaching Athens.
Some Christian residents of Ioannina hid Jews in their homes. Some of the leaders of the Jewish community dug a tunnel under the old synagogue in the ancient Jewish quarter, in which they buried all the Torah scrolls, ornamental curtains and ritual items.
On March 24 German units surrounded the Jewish quarter, marking Christian houses with a crucifix and forcing the Jews to stay in their homes. This operation was undertaken with the aid of the local Greek police. Jews living within the fortress area were concentrated in the nearby military hospital, after which they were violently loaded onto military trucks.
See 15 chilling photos of the Jewish roundups in Ioannina from Nazi archives
Jews living outside the fortress were concentrated in Mavilis Square across from the lake, where the Germans separated the men from the women and children. Some 1,870 Jews were loaded onto trucks and driven in crowded conditions to Trikala.
They spent the night in the local Jewish cemetery, sleeping on blankets they had brought with them. The next day the convoy reached Larissa. Two elderly people died on the way.
The deportees from Ioannina were deposited in a military garage, where the Jews of Larissa and Trikala, who had been brought a day earlier, were already waiting. The Jews from Ioannina were held in this garage for about a week, and all their valuables were forcibly taken from them upon threat of death.
A number of Jews succeeded in escaping by bribing the the drivers of the garbage trucks, or by jumping over the fence. Those who escaped joined the partisans and fought with them till the end of World War II.
From Larisa, the Jews of Ioannina were deported by train to Poland. Their journey lasted eight to nine days and more Jews died en route. In Auschwitz a selection was conducted, and a small number of Jews were sent to work. Most of the Jews, including Kabeli, his wife and her sisters, were sent to the gas chambers and murdered.
The property of the Jews of Ioannina was confiscated by the German army and distributed to local Greek residents, some of whom were collaborators with the Germans, as well as to the Greek authorities.
Greek citizens were allowed to take over the houses and the stores of deported Jews. Units of the Greek underground later recovered some remains of Jewish property, which were returned to survivors after the war.
After the war only the Kahal Kadosh Yashan synagogue remained useable. The Kahal Kadosh Hadash synagogue, which had been used as a stable during the occupation, was severely damaged.
91% of the Jews living in Ioannina on the eve of the Nazi occupation in 1943 were murdered in the death camps. From 2,000 Jews, only some 164 returned to the city after the war. Most of them left during the first decade of the postwar period, due to the difficult living conditions. Today, as far as we know, only a few dozen Jews still live in Ioannina.
From Yad Vashem
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5 comments
My grandparents and relatives left Ioannina before WWI — Julis and Dalven — Professoe Rae Dalven my gramdmother’s cousin.
My wifes mother was one of the few survivors of this atrocity. She was shipped to Auschwitz and when they disembarked from the train, her cousin grabbed her from the “wrong” line where she was standing with her mom, dad and family, and she went to the line her cousin was in…thus saving her life.
Her name was Rachel Negrin and after she war she went back to Greece, met a Jewish man who had also lost all his family and they were married and left for America. They had 6 children, 5 girls and finally, a son. Both Rachel and her husband Issac Nahmias have passed, but, their legacy lives on as their numerous grandchildren and great grandchildren are thriving in California and with each passing year the family continues to grow. Today there are 11 great-grand children (with another due in a week) and, god willing when all of grand children are finished having babies that number could grow to as high as 35.
Rachel and Ike are smiling as their spiritual connection with all of us continues on. These two special people persevered and through their amazing efforts we are all here today living amazing, fruitful lives and we will never forget what they did for all of us.
May Their memory’s be eternal
Some of this does not make sense. Help of the local Greek police, no. The SS moved in with brute military force–they did not need the help of local police, and if local police did anything to assist it had to have been at Nazi gunpoint. Also, routinely, all over Greece the Nazis themselves methodically sacked the Jews’ houses and took anything of value and sent it back to Germany. They were very very methodical about that, so don’t be making it look like the Greeks were part of this brutal scenario helping the Nazis and taking advantage of the Jews’ misfortune. No way. The Greeks were themselves an invaded and violated people, the Nazis also murdered Greeks, civilians, women and children, and burned entire villages. So no, the Greeks were not in on the despicable acts of the Nazis. They resisted when they could, they fought the Nazis, they organized vast underground resistance. And they helped the Jews whenever they could, but all too often the Nazis organized things so no one could help. Like, having a complete census of all the Jews and putting out an order that for any one person who was missing ten more would be killed, stuff like that so that no one could hide them, they could not escape, etc.they did that in some areas. In this area they apparently were able to flee and be hidden by Greek friends, and some indeed were. So don’t blame the Greeks. This hideous crime against the Jewish people was 100% the Nazis, not the native people of an invaded country. This article misrepresents things. In only a couple of lines, but that is more than enough.
Please provide your sources and not conjecture. Thank you!