Deportation of the Jews of Thessaloniki

Between March and August 1943, the German occupation authorities deported most of the Jewish population of Thessaloniki to the Nazi death camps of Auschwitz-Birkenau and Treblinka, where the great majority were murdered. Thessaloniki had one of the largest and oldest Jewish communities in Europe. Many were descendants of Sephardic Jews expelled from Spain in 1492, and for centuries Jews had formed a large part of the city's population, giving it the nickname Jerusalem of the Balkans. After Germany occupied the city in 1941, the Jewish community faced growing persecution. In July 1942, thousands of Jewish men were humiliated in Eleftherias Square and sent to forced labor. The ancient Jewish cemetery was destroyed, and its gravestones were used as building material. In early 1943, the SS officers Alois Brunner and Dieter Wisliceny arrived to organize the deportations. Jews were forced to wear the yellow star and move into ghettos, and then they were loaded onto trains. Out of around 50,000 Jews in the city, over 45,000 were deported, and very few survived. The community has never recovered.