History

The first significant influx of Greeks into Omaha took place in 1904, when they arrived as replacement workers in South Omaha's large meatpacking industry. By 1907 an estimated 2,000 Greeks were living in the greater Omaha area, largely concentrated in South Omaha, and they had flourished economically: by 1909 more than thirty-two businesses were owned by and largely catering to the Greek community. That same year the need for a church was formally discussed, and by 1908 the original Saint John the Baptist Greek Orthodox Church was built at 16th and Martha Streets, a building still in service today as a Ukrainian Catholic parish.

The early history of the Omaha Greek community was marked by great hardship. On February 19, 1909, a Greek worker shot and killed a police officer, an incident that ignited one of the most violent anti-Greek riots in American history. A mob descended on the Greek quarter of South Omaha, attacking residents, destroying property, and driving most of the Greek population out of the city entirely. The community rebuilt itself slowly and steadily from that traumatic dispersal. The parish was not officially incorporated until 1927 and was consecrated in 1928 by Archbishop Vassilios. For a brief period the political divisions between royalists and Venizelists that split Greek communities across America gave Omaha two competing Greek Orthodox churches, a schism eventually healed when the community reunited under a single parish.

World War II and its aftermath resonated deeply within the Saint John's community, as the ferocity of Greece's resistance to Italian and German occupation was a source of pride for Greek Americans everywhere, while the subsequent civil war against communist forces and its devastating toll on the homeland weighed heavily on Omaha's Greeks. On December 16, 1951, the parish made a pivotal decision, purchasing the former Temple Israel synagogue at Park Avenue and Jackson Streets for $80,000. The coincidence was remarkable: Temple Israel had been built in 1908, the same year as the original Greek church, and its Byzantine-style architecture made it a natural home for an Orthodox congregation. In 1953 the original South Omaha church was sold and the new building occupied after extensive renovations. Bishop Ezekiel of the Chicago Diocese consecrated the new home of Saint John the Baptist on May 4, 1958, a day that coincided with both the fiftieth anniversary of the parish and the fiftieth anniversary of the building itself.

Saint John the Baptist Greek Orthodox Church at 602 Park Avenue in Omaha serves the Orthodox Christian faithful of Nebraska as a parish of the Greek Orthodox Metropolis of Chicago within the Greek Orthodox Archdiocese of America, the city's only Greek Orthodox Byzantine church and the home of the annual Omaha Greek Festival, one of the most beloved cultural celebrations on the Great Plains.