Ghost cemetery - Thessaloniki
Following the Reconquista, by the Alhambra decree of 1492, Isabella the Catholic expelled the Jews of Spain. They are welcomed in the Ottoman Empire, especially in the Balkans and Salonica where they represented, in the seventeenth century, half of the city’s population. Until the 1920s, the Jewish population of Salonica was in the majority, compared to the Greek and Turkish communities. In this context, the Jews of Salonica keep their language: Judeo-Spanish or Ladino. The Jewish cemetery was the largest in Europe. It is estimated that it contained between 300,000 and 500,000 graves. In 1942, the Germans had held the city for a year. They offered an unfair deal to the Jewish community. They demanded the Jews pay 3.5 billion drachma in exchange for the release of the 3,500 forced laborers working in very harsh conditions. Two billion in cash, which the community raised and 1.5 billion for the expropriation of the cemetery. The tombstones were used as building material, first by the Germans for a pool, then by the Greeks for the square of the Hagio Dimitrios Church and for the new railway station. But they are also used in a large number of other sites. Today, they can be found throughout the city and beyond. To this cultural erasure is added the physical destruction of the community. In fact, it is from February 1943 onwards, the Nuremberg Laws imposing the wearing of the yellow star and restrictions to circulation were applied. Deportations took place between March and August 1943. About 54,000 Jews of Thessalonica were exterminated, amounting to 96% of the Jewish population of the city. Only the Polish community experienced a higher rate of extermination. Most of the Salonican Jews were gassed in the Auschwitz Birkenau. Today, the campus of the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki replaces the Jewish cemetery. My grandfather, Leon Barzilai was born in Thessaloniki in 1907 (next page : photo on the right). When he was 17, he left Greece with his father and mother and settled in Paris. But in 1940, when the Germans invaded France, Leon decided to move away. After few months in Lisboa, he took a liner to Rio de Janeiro and then to Buenos Aires. He stayed there a few years. He finally decided to move to Montevideo where my grandmother’s family was settled. He died in Montevideo in 1999. Most of my grandfather’s family members who had remained in Thessaloniki were killed in the Nazi death camps. Among them, Mamoute Menahem, his uncle who was a photographer. He owned his studio in the city center until he was deported with his wife Buena and their 13-year-old son Izak in 1943. In our family archives, I found a self-portrait of him in the Jewish cemetery of Thessaloniki. He posed next to his sister Doudoune’s grave in 1926 (next page : photo on the left). The inscriptions are in French, a language frequently used at that time by the Jewish community of Thessaloniki. The other language used is Judeo-Spanish (Ladino) written in Hebrew characters. At first, I though it would be interesting to find this grave. But I quickly understood that the cemetery didn’t exist any more. Even though my grandfather always said: "There is nothing left in Thessaloniki". Indeed, during the German occupation in 1942, this cemetery was demo- lished. Then, after the war, the General Administration of Macedonia used the gravestones as raw material for the construction of various infrastructures. So I soon realized that the cemetery no longer existed. Yet, it was the starting point to try to find these fragments of graves scattered around the city. In 2018, I decided to visit Thessaloniki for the first time. I want to find what has been made invisible, those traces that have resisted time.
the cover of the book published by Creaphis.
Portrait of Mamoute Menahem (my grandfather's uncle) in the Jewish cemetery in Thessaloniki, where he poses next to the grave of his sister Doudoune in 1926.
While in Thessaloniki in October 2021, I ex- plored the area along the fortification wall to try to find new gravestones. With the help of a friend, we were digging in the earth when we seemed to see a stone that looked like a stele. This photo seems to me to symbolize the dif- ficulty of this work. It is a question of finding the traces of this cemetery in this city, which seem to be scattered all over the place wit- hout anyone having ever really bothered to lo- cate them in the urban space, to map them. It is an uncertain quest.
Surrounding wall of the «new» Thessaloniki railway station. In the centre of the picture, we can see that a fragment of Jewish tombs- tone was used for the construction of this wall. One can sus- pect that other stones came from the same source. Work started in the 1930s and 1940s, and this station finally was actually completed between 1958 and 1961.
In the residential neighbourhood of Panorama, a few kilometres from the city centre, the low wall surrounding Paulina's house is mainly made up of Jewish gravestones.
On October 26, 2018, in Thessaloniki, the military and religious authorities take part in a procession in front of the Agios Demetrios church. Jewish stelae were used to reconstruct the church between 1946 and 1949.
Square of the Hagio Demetrios church. We notice that the stones have been scraped, probably to erase the inscriptions correspon- ding to the Jewish tombstones of the old cemetery.
Yiánnis Boutáris "When I was elected, I said: you can't build a future without knowing your past. Before the war, we had the largest Jewish cemetery in Europe, probably the oldest. No one after the Holocaust had put a plaque to indicate the presence of this cemetery."
Not far from the Heptapyrgion in Thessaloniki, in a park open to the public, a large number of fragments of Jewish gravestones are on display.
In reverse-shot to the previous photo, another gravestone from the old Jewish cemetery has been positioned vertically. The circle carved into the top right-hand corner of the stone indicates that it was used as a door threshold: this circle corresponds to the axis of rotation of the gate.
Half an hour's drive from the city centre, below the former royal residence, Iosif Vaena found pieces of Jewish gravestones in the sea in 2016.
If you look closely at the ground, you can find bricks and pieces of marble from Jewish gravestones in this park.
Jacky Benmayor "There are still pieces of tombstones scattered all over the city and beyond. All these stelae were used as building material. All the tombstones that we were able to recover are now in the new Jewish cemetery."
This abandoned house in the east of the city, not far from the Kleán- this-Vikelídis football stadium, was built with many Jewish tombstone fragments from the old cemetery.
The protective wall surrounding the white tower (the emblem of the city) was destroyed in 1917. After the Se- cond World War, a pavement was built to mark its location and Jewi- sh graves- tones were used here. In the early 2000s, this pavement was renovated and the Jewish stelae already present was not removed.
Navarinou square in the city centre, behind a parking space for motor- cycles.
Old locomotive in the former railway station of Thessaloniki. More than 48,000 Jews were deported from this place to death camps between March and August 1943.
Rena Molho "About the cemetery, there is evidence that the Nazis used gravestones to make a pool. When the English arrived, they took pictures that are in the book «In Memoriam: Tribute to the Jewish Victims of the Na- zis in Greece."
View of Thessaloniki from the Heptapyrgion.
Locations of the different places where different fragments of Jewish tombstones from the old Jewish cemetery are visible. (photo : Creaphis)
In the green space between Agiou Dimitriou Avenue and Georges Vi- ziinou Street, north of Aristotle Uni- versity, where the inhabitants of the neighborhood walk their dogs, Iosif Vaena told me in 2019 that I could find fragments of Jewish tombstones. That year, I had wan- dered around without finding any. It is only in October 2021, supported in my quest by a friend, that we re- turn stones that seem at first sight insignificant. We survey the park meter by meter, we dig around the stones that could resemble what we are looking for. And we end up finding several of them.
Upper Town of Thessaloniki.
Not far from the intersection of Agiou Dimitriou Avenue and Olimpiados Street, two steles of the old Jewish cemetery, one of which dates from 1912, are placed on the side of the road just in front of a fire station.
Yannis Megas " When I discovered the Jewish cemetery on postcards, I was very surprised. Knowing that half a million people were buried there was incredible. I didn't even know where it was located. "