Wednesday, September 7, 2022

Greece: A New Holocaust Monument in Xanthi Fills Greece's Modern History in Stone

Xanthi, Greece. Holocaust Memorial Monument, 2022. Photo: Samuel Gruber 2022

Xanthi, Greece. Holocaust Memorial Monument, 2022. Photo: Samuel Gruber 2022

Xanthi, Greece. Holocaust Memorial Monument, 2022. Photo: Samuel Gruber 2022

Xanthi, Greece. Holocaust Memorial Monument, 2022. Photo: Samuel Gruber 2022

Greece: A New Holocaust Monument in Xanthi Fills Greece's Modern History in Stone 

by Samuel D. Gruber

The most recent Holocaust memorial monument in Greece was erected in the northern town of Xanthi to commemorate the 526 local Jews murdered in the Holocaust, and the total destruction of the community. The memorial was sponsored by the Central Board of Jewish Communities of Greece (KIS) and dedicated in February, 2022, in a ceremony organized by KIS in cooperation with the Municipality and the Cultural and Development Center of Thrace (PAKETHRA), and within the framework of the Greek Presidency of the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA).

The big boulder sits at the end of some (installed) railroad tracks set in Eleftherias (Liberty) Square, a small park in the center of town. It joins the ranks of other monuments commemorating heroic and tragic events in modern Greek history. 

In 2021 a monument on the other side of the same square dedicated to the Sarakatsani Fighters of 1821 and more monuments are built across the narrow but major Oktovriou Street which runs by the square.

Monument to the Sarakatsani Fighters of 1821 in Eleftherias Square, Xanthi, on Sunday July 11, 2021, at 12:00 noon, as part of the festive events organized by the Sarakatsani Association of Xanthi "The Lepeniotis" for the 200 years since in 2021.

Πηγή : www.paratiritis-news.gr [ https://www-paratiritis--news-gr.translate.goog/koinonia/apokalyptiria-tou-mnimeiou-sarakatsanon-agoniston-tou-1821-stin-xanthi/?_x_tr_sl=el&_x_tr_tl=en&_x_tr_hl=en&_x_tr_pto=sc ]
Monument to the Sarakatsani Fighters of 1821 in Eleftherias Square, Xanthi, on Sunday July 11, 2021, at 12:00 noon, as part of the festive events organized by the Sarakatsani Association of Xanthi "The Lepeniotis" for the 200 years since in 2021.

Πηγή : www.paratiritis-news.gr [ https://www-paratiritis--news-gr.translate.goog/koinonia/apokalyptiria-tou-mnimeiou-sarakatsanon-agoniston-tou-1821-stin-xanthi/?_x_tr_sl=el&_x_tr_tl=en&_x_tr_hl=en&_x_tr_pto=sc ]
Xanthi, Greece. Holocaust Memorial Monument, 2022. Photo: Samuel Gruber 2022

Xanthi, Greece. Holocaust Memorial Monument, 2022. Photo: Samuel Gruber 2022

Xanthi, Greece. Holocaust Memorial Monument, 2022. Photo: Samuel Gruber 2022

Xanthi, Greece. Holocaust Memorial Monument, 2022. Photo: Samuel Gruber 2022

A metal menorah is affixed to the front of the boulder, under which are plaques in four languages - Greek, Hebrew, Ladino and English. The plaques in Greek and Hebrew are on the front and those in Ladino and English on the sides.The English inscription reads:

The City of Xanthi remembers the

Shoah of 6,000,000 Jews, all killed 

at the hands of the Nazis, and 

dedicates this monument to the 

memory of the Jewish Community of  

Xanthi and its 526 members who

were all exterminated during the 

Bulgarian occupation at the

Treblinka extermination camp in

March 1943

The synagogue of Xanthi, built in the 1920s was demolished in 1995.  The Jewish cemetery lies outside of town. 

Xanthi, Greece. Gate of Jewish cemetery. Photo: Samuel Gruber 2022

Xanthi, Greece. Jewish cemetery. Photo: Samuel Gruber 2022

Other Monuments

Also across the street from the new Holocaust monument is a large marble monument to the Greek Refugees of Eastern Thrace. The refugees crisis, and the culture created by Geeks fleeing Anatolia,  culminated what is now widely referred to as the Greek Genocide, which is defined as the systematic expulsion and killing of hundreds of thousands of Christian ethnic Greeks of Anatolia by the Turks during the tumultuous years of revolution and war that began in 1914 and ended only with the massive population removals and exchanges in 1922-23. For Greeks, especially in the North where a large percentage of today's population descend from Greeks removed from Asia Minor, this cataclysmic event which upended millennia of history, is also called a "Holocaust." 

For obvious reasons, it is clear this Greek "Holocaust" remains central in Macedonian and Thracian identity. For someone familiar with Holocaust monuments elsewhere in the world, however, there is a striking formal and symbolic similarity in the bronze relief figurative groups affixed to this monument and scenes depicted of Jewish refugees and deportees elsewhere. 

Xanthi, Greece. Monument to Greek Refugees of Eastern Thrace. Photo: Samuel Gruber 2022 
Xanthi, Greece. Monument to Greek Refugees of Eastern Thrace, detail. Photo: Samuel Gruber 2022

There are many more monuments filling public spaces in central Xanthi. This is true in most of the towns I visited in the region. The importance of the new Holocaust memorial monument is not only in that is recognizes the deportation and murder of the Jewish community of Xanthi, but that it inserts Jewish suffering the Holocaust into a long history of Greek heroism and suffering, acknowledging that the history of Greek Jews is Greek history, too. The destruction of the Jews in Xanthi was an attack on Greece itself. While in some cases this acknowledgment comes way too late, in many places in Greece local Christian communities, including church and government officials rallied to warn, organize, and hide Jews in the face of demands of the occupying German forces.

Xanthi, Greece. Monument for Sarakatsani Fighters of 1821 (2021). Photo: Samuel Gruber 2022

Xanthi, Greece. Monument. Photo: Samuel Gruber 2022

Xanthi, Greece. Memorial Monument for Soldiers of World War II and Greek Civil War. Photo: Samuel Gruber 2022

 


 


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