Dr Hilary Pomeroy
Salonica: The Rise and Fall of a “Jewish” City
Dr Hilary Pomeroy - Salonica: The Rise and Fall of a Jewish City
- He who has not seen Salonika on the Sabbath, or even on a Jewish festival, has not seen the influence of the hand of Israel in the diaspora. Even before the sunsets, before the eve of the Sabbath, all the traffic in the port come stand still. The Jewish sailors whose vessels fill the waters of the port begin heading towards the shore. They lower their sails, draw in their and their nets. The European ships are forced to fit in with the Jewish Sabbath and to time their arrivals and departures with the Port of Salonika, so that these do not fall on the Sabbath, or a Jewish holy day. Alongside the sailors, the Jewish fishermen also return to the peace of the heavens on the Sabbath, the porters, and the port workers, and the men with horses and carts, who for the most part are also of Israel, hurry to their homes and the whole port prepares itself to receive the Sabbath. So there we are, 1908, and again in 1910 when they visit again in a very Jewish town. How is it that within 30 years, the Jewish community of Salonika was completely annihilated at the hands of the guest staffer. For this talk, I have number of sources, which may be of interest to you. The sources are such things as response. Those were the written questions and answers to rabbis, travellers accounts, tax registers, at least those that survive various natural disasters over the centuries. Census reports, Ottoman records from the time of Solomon the great, communal accords, photographs, and perhaps somewhat unexpectedly postcards, which are a wonderful source of historical and social documentation. So let’s quickly run through the historical outline, or let me remind you, here we are.
Okay, here we have the Sultan, the Ottoman Sultan. Now, what happened was that when Thessaloniki became part of the Ottoman Empire, having been part prior to that part of the Byzantine Western Roman Empire, the Sultan and all the Sultans would carry out a process which I mentioned last time, of what is known as the surgun that is moving populations from one place to another. This would be basically for political reasons and also for economical ones as well. So when he came, when the Sultan Bayazid came to the throne, he emptied Salonika of its Jews and transferred them to Istanbul. So for a period of several years, Salonika had no Jewish population because remember, there had always been Jews in Salonika, Greek speaking Jews, Romania Jews, obviously by Byzantine Jews, if you wish. With the arrival in 1492, of the Sephardi Jews thought to be in Salonika about 20,000, but many, many thousands more weren’t moved to the Ottoman Empire. Those who arrived in Salonika were refilling the Jewish population. The quotation that I read to you stresses the importance of water in Salonika, water for the Jews. And here we have a general view of the harbour, and with the port and the warehouses, it’s very much like that today, except of course, different types of boats. You can see on the left hand lower corner that this is from an archive that belongs to that belong to a philanthropist, a Parisian philanthropist Albert Kahn and his archive, the are a wonderful resource. And if you visit Paris, you are able usually to be able to see the archive, or at least with special permission, more views of the port.
Some of you may know this particular illustration, another photograph from the Albert Kahn collection, but it was used for the cover of that wonderful book by Leon Sciaky, “Farewell to Salonika.” And I’ll just point out, we can just about see in the distance, sorry, the white tar. And here is one of the Jewish cinemas. I say Jewish cinemas because the cinemas in the Salonika were mainly owned by Jews. This amazing allegiance that Jews and interest Jews felt for photography and for the cinema. Again, a general view. As you can see, there isn’t a deep cliff dividing the roadside or the promenade from the waters. And it’s like that now. You walk along the promenade and the water is lapping on your hand or left hand side. And on the other side, traffic passes by and behind are the multiple bars and cafes that throng the promenade. And another lovely photograph, very interesting, because it was taken in 1917. 1917 is the year of the terrible fire that almost destroyed, well, certainly destroyed the centre of Thessaloniki and most of the Jewish quarter and the Jewish homes. You can note here, to rather curious looking kiosk. And they are at the bottom of a square. This is the square that we will hear about presently, it was the square where many Jews were forced to gather in 1943. But I’ll come to that presently. This building is on the right hand side of Liberty Square. And because of that, because of it situation, we can tell how big or small the square was by comparing it with present day photographs, right? So the Jews were very concerned and involved in any trade to do with the water. And in fact, they were involved in all types of menial work.
Don’t forget who have arrived in Salonika from the late 15th century onwards they had come from a terrible cataclysmic event, having had to hurriedly within the face or space of four months leave Spain, gather their belongings or sell them. Gather in the case of rabbis, their scrolls, their safer tours, their books in the case of the printers who were so prevalent in at that time to gather together the heavy metal print that they would take into freedom and travel in very difficult conditions through great vicissitude and hardship. So the actual edict of expulsion published in 1492 precisely stated that anyone going into exile could not take with them, could not take with him or her gold or silver. So the Jews who arrived in Salonika were on the hall, apart from a few who’d managed to get their goods and wealth out were extremely poor and impoverished and were forced into menial tasks. Here we see the porters who were known as hamals in Salonika and Salonika was famous for its Jewish stevedore or porters who could carry enormous weights. Sometimes it said they could ha easily carry 200 kilos on their backs. They were also fishermen and there were two types of fishermen. There were the fishermen who fished near the shoreline very near to the city, and who would sleep on the beach at nighttime. And then there were the fishermen who would go far out to sea. They would go usually for up to almost a week, though sometimes for a month. As you can imagine, the Jews who arrived in Salonika, the Sephardi Jews were basically observant and adhere to rules and customs. So if they saw that smoke was arising from Salonika, from the chimneys, that signified that it was Thursday morning, and the housewives would beginning to bake their breads and prepare their meals for Shabbat. So the fishermen would return to shore on a Friday.
But they weren’t all fishermen, they were, as I say, very much occupied as all sorts of menial simple tasks. Here we have a Jew selling a salad in the street, so no shop, just crouching. So some more pictures in this case postcards, photographs on postcards of these porters with their typical beards and payots. And you can see on the man on the left, for example, he has a bolster at the base of his spine, so that the weight, the burden he is carrying doesn’t hurt him. More workers here, these are wood cutters, and here we have fruit sellers. So they worked in the markets, and they were water porters. Remember there was no water system. Water had to be carried from fountains or pipes, but no private on the whole, no private water systems. Now this is the modern Modiano Market to show how Jews continue to work in as grocers, green grocers, merchants, vendors of cluff material, nuts, fruit. The Modiano Market is interesting. It’s a modern building. It was built in 1930, but the architect Modiano came from one of the most important Jewish families in Thessaloniki. And if you had visited it like I did some 10 or 15 years ago, it would be full of throngs of people buying their fish, their cheese, their meat, and it would be very noisy and there would be smells and people shouting out their wares. When I went last month when it had been re-modernized, as you can see, it was in comparison, very subdued. It had lost that Sephardi heart, if you like. Now, not everyone was involved in menial work. There was a certain affluent class. On the left, we see a drawing of merchants in the street. And on the right we have a studio portrait and we know it’s a studio. They’re carefully posed, they’re staring carefully at the lens. The reason they stare like this and don’t smile is first of all, not everyone was accustomed to having the photograph taken.
This was quite a new venture in the late 19th century. And also they had to hold their gaze. They couldn’t move because that was the way the cameras worked. And you can see that they’re not outdoor. They’re in a studio. And if you look at several postcards, you’ll find they’re nearly always post against the same background. You might wonder what they’re holding in their hands. And those are not rosaries, they’re actually worry beads, which they would click and feel during the day. And also note these wide sashes, the sashes were where they would keep their tobacco and also their money, the coins or the notes that they would use for going back into the market. Because until the 20th century, women did not rarely ventured out into the street. They certainly did not do the shopping. It was the men of the household who went to buy food or material for clothing. And in one of the accounts, but memories of a woman from Salonika that I have edited, she went to Paris. The family moved to Paris in the early 20th century. And that was the first time she had ever ventured out and bought her shopping by herself. So quite an achievement. Now the women normally stayed at home, they stayed at home, they looked after the family, they took oil to the synagogue to light the lamps on a Friday night. But in the late 19th century, they begin to work. This is a scene inside the Tutun, the tobacco factory. Tobacco was grown in the Balkans, widely grown in the Balkans, and it was brought to Thessaloniki and the workers who separated the leaves from the stems, which was quite tricky, delicate work, that work was done by women. So as you can see, this scene in a factory, almost mainly women and only a few male supervisors. And this tradition of women working continued because with the introduction though, towards the end of the 19th century, into the beginning of the 20th century, women began to, the girls began to have an education.
And here we have a sewing class using the ever, the sewing machine that you find throughout the Mediterranean, the Singer sewing machine. Now, I’m jumping ahead of myself because I want to go back to those Sephardim as they arrived in Salonika. There had already been Jews who had arrived after pilgrims or disturbances at the beginning of the 15th century, from Hungary and from France, from Provence, from Sicily. But when Jews, when Sephardi Jews arrived from 1492 onwards, they had mainly travelled in groups, in family groups, probably groups from villages. And they founded their own congregations. And which increased, and you can tell from the names of the synagogues in the late 15th century, 16th century, when there were up to 20 and then 30 and 40 separate communities. So they were the synagogues of Castile, Mallorca, Catalonia, Portugal, the new Lisbon, and then the old Lisbon, because congregations fell out. And each of these communities was autonomous, independent with its own rabbi, its own welfare institutions, its own heder, its own religious classes. It was, and it was basically during the 16th century that you have what we might call the golden age of Salonika. And the Jews were basically occupied in textiles. And particularly those who were not sailors, or fishermen, or porters. They were occupied in textiles and in the wool and trade. Wool was particularly important in Salonika. Salonika was in a strategic position on the Aegean Sea with a vast hinterland from which the wool would be brought in, and chemicals such as alum, which would set dyes.
And so the Sephardi Jews would be occupied in the textile industry, either in workshops, but very often at home, in their own homes, where the daughters, to a certain extent might quietly be weaving and dying, dying the wool. I mentioned in the session on the Ottoman Empire, that as you know, Jews under in the Ottoman Empire had to pay a special tax, the jizya. But in Salonika, the pole tax came not in the form of money, but of cloth, broad cloth. This was a cloth, a woollen cloth that was very hardy, that could sustain the men, that could stand harsh weather, that could be cut without fraying. This was used for the army, the Janissaries. This was the standing army which protected the Sultan. And this continued to be the case until the early 19th century when Janissaries the were disbanded. Now, the 17th century sees the beginning of political and economical decline. This was general in the Ottoman Empire, not just for Sephardi Jews. Part of the problems were natural disasters, the repeated continuous epidemics and famines. But particularly in 1665 with the arrival in Salonika of the false Messiah and whom you’ve had a session with Trudy of Shabbetai Tsevi, this is when the community drastically split up with 300 families, well, many conversions, much anxiety and wondering, one wonder, and when Shabbetai Tsevi converted to Islam, 300 families did so became Donmeh and remained in Salonika where there was an important Donmeh congregation, followers of Shabbetai Tsevi until the Greek, until when Salonika became Greek in 1912, 1913. So not only did you have economic and material decline in Salonika, there was also intellectual decline.
And fortunately, in the late 18th century, the Rabbi Yaakov Culi began to produce a book known as the Me'am Lo'ez, which was like a sort of encyclopaedia of Jewish practise, Jewish stories, Jewish account stories from the Bible. And it was so popular, the facilities were there in Salonika. There was enough finance to print them, or to have patrons to print them by the 18th, 19th century. Well, there was some learning, some people could read, although the custom was very often to read a book aloud in small circles. And the Me'am Lo'ez was a book that you would find in almost every Jewish household, it was particularly popular as a wedding present or a Bar Mitzvah. Well, I’d think it would be too expensive for a Bar Mitzvah present. So we have a population in Salonika, a Jewish population that was mainly poor. From the 18th, 17th, 18th century onwards, a series of catastrophic earthquakes and also fires. Don’t forget that the buildings were made of wood. Oh, here we have a group of women outside the synagogue. You may wonder why they’re not inside for prayer. It’s actually, it was thought that if any of them were menstruating, they would be too impure to enter the synagogue.
But there they are sitting and listening to the service. And you can see the peculiar well, when I say peculiar, I mean the idiosyncratic costume with that headdress, the keffiyeh, which was a piece of cloth hanging down their back. And here we have a group of three Sephardi women, again from the Albert Kahn archive. And you can see they’re very distinctive costumes. Now where did they live? Well, they lived, most of the Jews lived in very poor impoverished quarters, cobbled streets, sewage in the streets, dark. These streets, I think these photographs or these posters particularly flatter the accommodation. You’ll notice how the protruding balcony is. This would be so that there could be some light into the living room. The houses were built out of wood, which made it disastrous in the case of fire. Most of the Jews would live naturally in Jewish quarters near their synagogue. And they didn’t have gardens, which is why you often saw the women outside in the street. But because the houses were so inflammable, so often destroyed by fire, every few streets would have its own fire brigade. This applies to the whole of Salonika, not to Jewish districts. And here we have a picture of the Jewish fire brigade or one of the Jewish fire brigades. And you can see they’re wearing badges. And those badges would be the badge of the Jewish insurance company to which they belonged. And you can imagine how it was almost impossible to put out a fire when they were having to well push and pull these vehicles with filled little tanks of water. But really they could not cope with the fires at all. The most disastrous fire took place in 1917. But having seen the poor accommodation in the swamp areas, the poor areas, particularly near the port where there would be malaria and disease near the swamps, there were also, by the mid to eight, mid 19th century, it was an affluent section of the population. Many of these were known as Francos.
They were the Jews who came via Italy, via Tuscany, and then immigrated to Salonika. And they were the leaders of the community from the point of view of education and commerce. And here we see one of their homes right on the edge of the water. This of course, is no longer the case because from the end of the 19th century, all the area near the bordering the sea was drained. And I’ll show you pictures of what became of it. Now we’re going back to the Albert Kahn archive, and here we see four women visiting the cemetery. The two reasons why I find this of great importance, one, it is showing us that the women were definitely illiterate. They couldn’t read Hebrew, well, they couldn’t read any language. They might know some prayers by heart, a few prayers, and they would not have been able to walk around to find the graves of their family because they could not read what was written on the tombstones. So they would therefore have to employ a . The man in the black robe. were people who had not quite been ordained as rabbis on the whole, they had not achieved that status, but could read. They knew the prayers and they knew the way round the graveyard. And they could take, show the women and those men who couldn’t read, ‘cause not all were literate where they had to go. The second reason that this is an important photograph is that in the background you can see the sea.
So this is the original position of the cemetery, the Jewish cemetery in Salonika. The Jewish cemetery, the Sephardi Cemetery was the largest cemetery in Europe, the largest Jewish cemetery in Europe. You had up to 350,000 graves in it. And of course, it would’ve been difficult to find one’s way around. And in fact, people walked over the gravestones and sometimes tombs were built one another above the other. And this would become, but the cemetery would become the scene of conflict in the beginning of the 20th century. Here you see the women climbing, or a woman climbing onto a tomb and the reading the prayer to her. So a more general view of the cemetery. Now we’re returning back to the waterfront. In the left hand photograph, which would’ve been taken the late 19th century. We see once again, the white tar in the distance. And we can see that modernization is arriving. You have the cobblestones. In the cobblestones, there are tramways tram tracks and also horse drawn carriages. So gas and electricity had not arrived till fairly late in the 19th century. The gas would provide the electricity to make the carriages eventually switched from horse drawn to electric carriages. And again, quoting from a men memoir, people were first afraid to climb onto these machines as they saw the horse drawn carriages, horse pre-carriages. They were frightened.
How could the carriage move along? And you see also, we have got now the introduction of street lighting. You also in the 19th century get water systems, sewage and water into the homes. This is a scene at the end of what is now the Liberty Square. And you can see here the distinctive dress of Sephardi women walking to towards the boats. And a couple of kiosks, which were on one of the earlier photographs, but have now disappeared. I mentioned that Jews were very much involved in the cinema and in photography. This is as you can see, reading from left to right, cinema palace, the palace cinema. And if we could see to the right two buildings to the right was the Splendid or the Splendid hotel. And to the right of that was the palace cinema, not the palace, the Olympic cinema. So always this fascination with the image. Now let’s move to the poorer districts. I can’t overstress the poor living conditions in which the majority of the Jewish population lived. Narrow dark streets, poor sanitation, if any, malaria vested swamps. And later that area became the ghetto near the railway station. And we can also learn about the conditions when we listen to popular songs in Judeo-Spanish. These are the songs about the young women who work as maids in the homes of affluent Jews. We learn about the Jews as caterers, as waiters, working in the taverns, in the coffee houses. There was also, as you can imagine, or perhaps not a Jewish brothel under Jewish prison, but on the whole, the people, the Jewish family were made, were impoverished and could hardly subsist. If it were not for people like Moses Allatini from the important Allatini family. It was, as we were always found in Jewish communities, the more wealthy always supported the poorer families. And Moses Allatini was instrumental with in setting up the Alliance Israelite school in Salonika, he was an industrialist on a big scale. He had brick factories, spinning factories, helped found the Bank of Salonika. His first name was Moise.
And Moise was one of the most popular names amongst the Jewish of Salonika, by the way, because one of the greatest philanthropists for Salonika was Baron Maurice Hirsch, who only visited Salonika for half a day, but he funded many of the schools. He funded the railway that joined Salonika with Istanbul and much of Europe. And his name became a particularly popular one for Jewish young men. So we have a number of wealthy Jews investing in the community. And industrialising, they had international connections. In fact, the Sephardim ever since their expulsion, many of them would be able to a certain extent, maintain links with family abroad. And they became particularly involved with Jewish enlightenment. Now, another philanthropic institution, there were so many of them, there would be soup kitchens everywhere, dormitories for the four. And this is the May Amnoab orphanage. And you can see here the little girls, how clean they look, how tidy, they have clothes, they are wearing shoes. They’re not running around barefoot when many of the photographs of the children or family show children barefoot. And this is because of the influence to, this is because education is also now beginning to spread throughout Salonika and throughout the Ottoman Empire, partly because of Allatini’s desire to educate the masses. And he wrote in one of his diaries, he wrote that it was not unusual for a man of 30, age 30 to have 10 or 12 children.
So can you imagine that the poverty and the heart, just the heart life that those families would lead. And so education became particularly important. And what the Alliance Israelite Universelle did is not only did it educate them, so they learned and could read newspapers and learn about the world, learn about hygiene, it also taught them trades and skills. There were trade schools. And you’ll notice that just as today, many schools have to put on fairs and festivals. So here we have a Kermesse, a big fair asking the ladies committee and their patrons and friends to support this particular fair of the Moise Allatini Alliance School. And with the introduction of schools such as the Alliance, that was the main school in Salonika. The first one was founded in 1873, and by the end of the first World War, there were nine to 12 schools. But there are also very many foreign schools, including this school run by a Scottish missionary. There’s the Reverend Grasby, whom it is said, never managed in converting any of the Jews, but was so well liked that it was thought that he might eventually convert to Judaism. The mid 19th century, we have the beginning of education schools, the introduction of the Jewish press, which would have a tremendous effect on the population. Some examples of these, you can see Greek Jewish newspapers and newspapers written in this is, these are Meruba square, Hebrew letters. But the other letters are on the whole in Solitreo, which is a particular form of writing peculiar to the Sephardim. So with the mid 19th century, we have so much happening in Salonika, the city walls that had separated the town from the sea and within which the Jews lived were demolished. So Jews could move to different quarters, but they left Salonika for a variety of reasons at the beginning of the 20th century.
Now, if you look at this photograph, which would probably have been late 19th century, because the men are still wearing the fair, so typical of the Ottoman Empire, and you see how sad and glum even they look. That’s because this woman is following a tradition that was very prevalent in Salonika amongst the devote Jews. This woman, I don’t know her age, but she felt that it was customary when one felt that one’s life was near its end to leave the family and Salonika and take one little money or possession one had and make one’s way to Israel, to Eretz Yisrael, to the Holy Land. And one would get a boat there, and it was likely that the family would never meet up again. But here is a happier occasion. I don’t know if Maurice Molina is watching, but this is his grandfather in 1911. And he is leaving Salonika because to go with a cousin to London, to the Anglo British, Anglo French fair in the White City, because this was the time, 1912, 1913, when Salonika, it becomes part of Greece, no longer part of the Ottoman Empire. And so the men were eligible for military service. So here we have on the left, the Ottomans admitting defeat to Prince Constantine in Salonika. And a photograph of the Greek armies entering into Salonika from 1912 onwards. And the crowds of people watching them. Now, this had a tremendous impact, not just on Salonika in general, but on the Jewish population in especially. Up to the beginning of the 20th century, at least half of the population was Jewish. There was nothing unusual in that.
But in 1912, 1913, the cabinetry becomes part of Greece. So Ottoman rule ends, and here we hear have the last, see the last Sultan leaving his more or less prison, which incidentally was a house on the waterfront, which originally had belonged to a Jewish Franco family. So here is the last Ottoman emperor leaving Salonika. And then we get to the catastrophic year, 1917. And it’s catastrophic because of the terrible, an extraordinary fire that broke out. This was the fire that engulfed well over all the Jewish quarters in the centre of the city, wiping out domestic buildings, commercial buildings, extraordinary scenes. Extraordinary scenes. The fire itself lasted 12 hours. It destroyed the historic centre, and 52,000 Jews were made homeless, and 10,000 Christians and 11,000 Muslims. So 30 synagogues were destroyed. The great Talmud Torah building that had been built in the 16th century in what was the part of the heart of the Jewish life was burnt down, the city hall, and archives and even manuscripts and safer tours that had been brought out of Iberia. So you can see the fires spreading along. And one of course, those that we’d seen could not even begin to cope with that. One problem was by now, it’s the time of the British and Greek and French armies were in Salonika. And here you can see them. And one thing that happened was they cut off the water supply to the various districts. So they kept the water for the armies and didn’t supply them to the people at large. This is an example of the destruction. And in particular in the corner, we can see what was known as the Flocker Cafe. This was the cafe where the British and French soldiers went.
And it was also a Jewish cafe. And the waiters and staff would’ve been Jewish just as Jews were tavern keepers and also brewers of wine to keep it kosher. And here’s a view of the general destruction, looking down on the water, you see all this area, the destroyed area would’ve been Jewish. And because of that, the Jewish, well everyone but mainly the Jews, had to live in temporary accommodation. In here they are in the tents. And later on, these tents would become what you might call shacks. I mentioned families could possibly have 12 children. And here we don’t know if this is one family, but one picture of these children, again, living in terrible conditions and a family, again, this might have been already when the German occupation was started living in one room. Now we come to the terrible years of the German occupation. And before I do so, I should mention that Greece as a whole had been subject from 1940 onwards to an all-encompassing famine. So there was a terrible shortage of food. It wasn’t just the Jewish community, which was at a loss. Oh, and I also did not, I want to mention also 1924, the Treaty of Lausanne, when there was one of the forced population exchanges, which had a dire effect for the Jewish community. A hundred thousand Muslim Turks were Greek, sorry, Christian Greeks were brought into the city. And the Turkish, the Muslim Turks were removed. So this was no longer a Jewish city. It now becomes a Christian, Hellenized city. The Germans occupied Salonika in 1941 when there were 56,000 Jews. They closed the newspapers, presses, requisitions, homes, public buildings, communal institutions.
Jews could not have radios. And in July, 1942, all the men of working age between 18 and 45 were forced to gather in freedom square, to register for labour, for forced labour. You can see the massive number of people that gathered there. And this was a Saturday, as you can see, some of them addressed to go to synagogue. They didn’t know what to expect, but they spent the whole day under a blazing sun, unable to eat or drink, humiliated by being forced into performing exercises for the Germans and also for the Greeks who crowded onto the balconies around the square. That was July of 1942. And by November that we get Norris carts, not Norris, we don’t have Norris there. They couldn’t have been afforded carts carrying in Jews from surrounding villages and small towns to go to the ghettos in Salonika. Here we have a list of this instructions that were given out to Jews when they went, made their way into the ghetto, and before they were the , which unbeknown to them would, would lead them to their death. They’re told, for example, to take with them blankets and warm clothing, and bottles, and gourds with water. They’re told not to take any Paras, that’s the Greek currency with them to hand it over to the community together with their jewellery. And that money would be exchanged for Polish zlotys, so that when they arrived in Poland, they would be able to buy. So this is all the most terrible lie. And also that year began the destruction of the cemetery, that massive cemetery, which was of such significance to the Jewish community. It was not light by the Greeks, by the 20th century because it occupied so much space.
It made it difficult to get to the centre of the city. And also the Aristotle University. It wanted to, well, there was a need to expand the Aristotle University. So you can see these are in fact gravestones, tombstones are used as paving, used to line swimming pools. Even at the university, these tombstones were used extraordinarily as dissection tables. And here we have a photograph of one of the rooms in the Jewish community archives where the wonderful Aliki Arouh looks after visitors and helps trace back families. And here’s an example of the registro, I’ve had to divide it, registro of the register of births that were in the archives. The registers would give the name of the mother, the father, the synagogue to which they lived. And really, these birth certificates are the only way, the only means we have of knowing who was born during certain years prior to the final years. The wonderful French photographer, Frederic Brenner, visited Salonika shortly after the end of the war. And this is the, he went to photograph the community. But this is the one photograph that he could bring himself to have published in his magisterial work diaspora. And it’s a group of Holocaust survivors. You can see the numbers tattooed onto their arms, their look of stoicism, their perhaps the strength also in their faces. And despite all this, the wonderful horizontal vertical lines of the composition, a very touching photograph.
And here we have a group of survivor, a small group out of 96% of the Jewish population of Salonika that had been deported and underwent the five month journey from Salonika and the cattle waggons to Auschwitz, the small group, less than a thousand that survived and came back bewilder to a city denuded without any Jewish past, no Jewish, no Judeo-Spanish to be heard in the streets, unwelcome in many cases by their Greek neighbours. Here they are saying, caddish. This is the memorial that is now present are on the sea front. And you can see it’s twisted burnt bodies, the bodies of those who died in the crematoria, in Auschwitz. But after this terrible tale, one little gleam of hope, one little flame of light, this is the concentration camp record of Jacob Masserano, who was 39 when he was taken into Salonika. His wife was a young woman of, I think she was 31. But shortly before being moved into the ghetto, she had given birth to a child. And a few of the women took their children to the, before going into the ghetto and being deported, took their babies to the foundling home that was nearby. After the war, there were four little boys who were circumcised. So four of those Jewish children that who had been taken, had survived the famine and been well looked after and survived. And thanks to the work of various individuals, and I will mention Aliki Arouh and we know that that little baby is alive and well today. I can’t end, however, without mentioning also the work of the wonderful mayor, Yiannis Boutaris who was, been very eminent in promoting and reminding everyone of the Jewish and Muslim past. And on Holocaust Day in the past, the and a photograph of the pyjamas worn in the camps was displayed on the white tar, which was the, and remains to be the iconic symbol of Salonika. Thank you very much.
Q&A and Comments:
Q: Where were the women in all this?
A: I think I mentioned that they were at home. This was the norm in the Sephardi world and in fact in the world in general, up to modern times, it’s only really late 19th century onwards that they would be allowed out.
And we have a letter from, a question from Rita. The children also work in these factories. Yes. We know that from the age of eight onwards, many of the children, they had no childhood. They worked in the factories in very poor conditions. For example, in the tobacco factories, you had to keep the light down. You had to have, the atmosphere had to be humid, so that the leaves didn’t dry out. Their descriptions, Jews were very active in the socialist movement, very prominent in the Socialist Federation. And there are descriptions of children joining in the processions are of protest. I don’t know why the coffins are above the ground, probably that is just the practise. But I don’t think they could have dug very far down would’ve been difficult to fit all the graves. And it is rather a puzzle. The seclusion and exclusion of women. That’s very much the Ottoman Empire. You’ll find it throughout the ottoman, throughout Muslim lands in North Africa, quite normal. What else do we have?
Yes, this tradition being carried out in Canada of someone reciting the prayers. The Jewish cemetery was on the out, very much on the outskirts. It wasn’t centrally located. You don’t have a Jewish cemetery in the centre of a Jewish community. It was further out. But what happened was, at the beginning of the 20th century or the late 19th century, they drained the land around the white tower and began to build around there. Became more residential and the whole appearance of that area changed. And the cemetery, of course, you can’t see a cemetery now where there is a new cemetery to which the Rabbi Molho, managed to remove certain, or write down the inscriptions on many of the tombs. Where there homeless Jews in Salonika? Oh, there were homeless Jews in Salonika. There were all sorts of welfare institutions to look after them. And when the Jews came back, those Jews who came back after the war who were homeless, they lived in the Allatini dormitory. Right to the community.
Yeah, I should have said that the lingua franca continued to be Spanish or as it was known Judeo-Spanish or Judezmo. Talking about being multilingual. Well, the Greek Empire or Turkish inhabitants also had to know Turkish, had to know Judeo-Spanish to communicate with the Jewish community. Judeo-Spanish was the lingua franca, right up until, well, the be the 1920s when it became compulsory for Turkish to be used more commonly.
Q: When/how was French introduced?
A: In the schools of the Alliance Israelite.
The Greek takeover of Salonika affected the Jews because in many ways, well, up to that time under Turkish Muslim rule, we don’t really have incidents of anti-Semitism. Now, the Greeks came from 1912 onwards and 1920s. In terrible circumstances also, they came as refugees to Salonika. They did not have homes. They were starving like everyone else. But the fact is that, that’s when hostilities began between Jews and their neighbours. We can’t get away from that fact. Lots of antisemitism compulsory, they did not help the Jews perhaps as much as they could have done during the German occupation. Obviously, there were wonderful people who hid the Jews and helped them. But there was a lot of complicity as well. Yes, the opening of the first Holocaust Museum. Yes, there has been talk for years now of this new museum that will be funded by the state and by Jews. I was in Thessalon. I went to the Jewish museum about a month ago and spoke to the scientific officer there and she assured me that it looks as if everything is going hope, and let’s hope that will be the case. The Jewish population now. I can’t answer that because every time I add, sadly it goes down. I have been told that at the present it’s 800. I’m not sure if it is still as many as that. Well, that would be a percentage that is insignificant.
Q: What was the proportion of Romania and Sephardi Jews?
A: We don’t have figures. Remember that when people, you know, one didn’t have senses or you didn’t count the population that the Romanian Jews, the original Jews of Salonika became gradually absorbed by the Sephardim. So the Jews of Salonika are Sephardi. If you go further north to the town of Anina, however, Anina is still Romania and there is an important active Romania at community in New York. Yes. Childhood is certainly a modern phenomenon. It was over a period, oh, I’m just trying to remember the dates, it would’ve been just a short number of years. Salonika was without Jews for about 30 years, and then Sultan Bayezid brought them. He welcomed Sephardi Jews into the Ottoman Empire. Perhaps I gave the wrong name before, he welcomed them into Salonika. He didn’t remove the Jews. He replaced the Jews who had been removed by his father some 30 years beforehand and sent to Istanbul were brought back or those community in Istanbul.
Oh, the photographer Frederic Brenner. I’m sure it would’ve been very hard ground. Yes as I say, there is this small Jewish community, possibly about 800 and I say that because, every time I ask the number there is a minyan on Friday evening. This a service. When I was there, there was a service, but not all of the minyan were there for reasons of faith. Some were paid to attend, but thank goodness that is possible. Yes, of course the Bola family was so so important. I mean, thank goodness they helped us survive. There was a large Donmeh community, but they emigrated when Salonika became part, became Greek and the Muslims left.
The Donmeh who were also Muslim or followed their own form of Islam left as well. No, they had already, as far as I know, they had all left. There still a Donmeh, the former main synagogue is now an exhibition hall in Salonika. I doubt very much whether the women who were sewing would’ve earned enough to provide totally for their family. That would’ve been a little bit of extra income. We do know, however, that as early as after 1492 when the Jews were expelled from Spain and families split up, that women became very often became providers. Often they arrived without a husband because the husband stayed behind, or converted to Christianity. So there was a certain tradition of women providing. Well, I’m sad to say that you’ll find some of the tombstones in buildings on the walls of buildings.
There is many of you will have written Mark Mazower’s book, “Salonika City of of Ghosts.” And along that lines a new book appeared last a book of photographs by the photographer Martin Barzilai, and he has called his book. He’s a French photographer, well lives in Paris. He’s called it “Cimetière fantôme.” So phantom of ghost cemeteries, a cemetery of ghosts. He has shown pictures of various tombstones that can be found in public buildings. Judeo-Spanish is the academic term for Ladino, indeed. It slips my memory as to why the white tyre was painted white.
French, was French spoken Salonika? Was it a cultural aspiration? It wasn’t a cultural aspiration because it became the norm for those who were educated in the French schools to speak French. And they spoke it extremely well. So that’s why there were newspapers written in French and in Judeo-Spanish. The story of the Ashkenazi rabbi, Rabbi Zvi Koretz. This is a very delicate topic. Until recently, Koretz was thought to have, to a certain extent betrayed the Jewish community by, for example, doing whatever the German occupies wanted by almost appearing to facilitate the deportations. But now, the feeling seems to be that he did what he could and didn’t know what would happen and was helpless in such a terrible situation. Judeo-Spanish still, I wouldn’t say Judeo-Spanish, but Latino is common use in Istanbul. Yes, there is a newspaper Shalom, which has a news Yiddish section and there is the Ottoman Culture Centre. I’m on the educational board of that which promotes Judeo-Spanish. So people are not speaking it because they’ve heard it in their family. It’s a language to which they learn. People are returning to Judeo-Spanish as an academic language.
The Albert Kahn archive is in the . It’s at the end of the line. Now I forget the number of the line and in beautiful gardens, and of course there are lots of men of kosher cafes around, but it’s, I think you would, when I went, it was shut to the public and I would recommend, suggest that you find out first, whether it is generally open, if you want to visit elsewhere. There’s a strong, reasonably strong Jewish community in Athens, but not elsewhere. No, I don’t agree, the language of the community, the spoken language wasn’t French, it was Latino. But what you find, for example, when I go to Istanbul and speak with Latina speakers, we all lapse into French, 'cause everyone has learn it at school. This is the code switching, moving from one language to another and a very common in that phenomenon. Yeah, perhaps those acquaintances you knew in Israel had been very much brought up in the French system.
Oh, the Matalan family were very well known in Salonika as their mid nineties. Yes, there would’ve been holes in the mezuzah. This was a common practise. You know, you’ll find throughout, in Spain and Portugal, you can all often see where signs of, where mezuzah had been removed from the door shots. Thank you. When the symbolic gesture of purification. Norman, thank you very much for that, I completely forgotten. No, no, I don’t agree with the latter explanation that it was a prisoner. I think it was a symbolic gesture. Well, thank you everyone for attending and for your many questions. Thank you so much.