In Chania, Crete, a Ship-Shaped Memorial and the Tragic Event it Commemorates

Chania (Crete), Greece. Tánaïs sinking memorial, 2013. Photo: Samuel Gruber 2022.

Chania (Crete), Greece. Tánaïs sinking memorial, 2013. Photo: Samuel Gruber 2022.

Chania (Crete), Greece. Tánaïs sinking memorial, 2013. Photo: Samuel Gruber 2022.

In Chania, Crete, a Ship-Shaped Memorial and the Tragic Event it Commemorates

by Samuel D. Gruber

This Sunday, July 9, 2022, there will be a commemorative event in Chania, Crete, to remember the  sinking of the Tanais on June 9, 1944 and the complete destruction of the historic Jewish community of Chania. The annual Tanais memorial service will be held at the Tanais Monument at Akti Miaouli, Chania, at 7:00 p.m. with memorial prayers by Gabriel Negrin, Chief Rabbi of Athens; His Eminence the Greek Orthodox Metropolitan of Kydonia and Apokoronos, Damaskinos; and Reverend Lucus Romani from the Catholic Church of Chania. After the memorial service Rabbi Negrin will lead another service at the Etz Hayyim Synagogue for the Cretan Jewish community which perished on the sinking ship.

The monument is not a great work of commemorative art and despite its prominent siting, it is easy to overlook. It does not announce itself in either size or form, but it is good that it is there. It provides a neutral space where Jews, Orthodox Christians, and Roman Catholics, can all join outdoors to remember the lives and deaths of more than 500 people - possibly much closer to 1000 - in June 1944. This is a case when a monument does its work - or some of it - when it is activated by a commemorative or other event.

Chania (Crete), Greece. Tánaïs sinking memorial, 2013. The monument would work better if some bold lettering and meaningful message were inscribed on the base, instead of leaving it blank for graffiti. Photo: Samuel Gruber 2022

In mid-May I visited Chania. My main goal was to spend some quality time at the Etz Hayyim Synagogue, with which I’ve had a long association. I spent a lot time with  Anja Zückmantel who is charge of a small staff and a band of volunteers that keeps the synagogue open for tourists, but also help to maintain a weekly prayer schedule. There is no well-defined Jewish community, but the synagogue is regularly used by Jewish visitors as well as a community of sympathetic supporters who find spiritual and communal strength in its continuing operations. Together, for more than 20 years, they have created a Havurah, Some are resident, some are transient. Some like rabbi, professor, and distinguished scholar Nicolas de Lange come regularly to lead services for Jewish holidays. The synagogue looks good, and there is a lot of educational programming for locals and visitors. 

I’ll be writing more about the history of the building, and the restoration, as well as offering my two cents worth of advice on how this rare place and organization can continue to thrive – being many things to many people. 

Tánaïs sinking monument 

Now, however, I want to present the memorial monument in Chania that will be the site of Sunday's memorial service.  I was not aware of this monument until my visit. 

There is also a small memorial shrine in the synagogue which lists the names of the Jewiswh victims, but the Tanais monument is a public memorial, erected by the municipality and the Central Board of Jewish Communities of Greece.

Chania (Crete), Greece. Tánaïs sinking memorial, 2013. From this angle the sculpture resembles a giant anchor. Photo: Samuel Gruber 2022.

The monument commemorates all those killed when the Greek-owned, but German operated ship Tánaïs was sunk. The entire Jewish community of Chania was on board, on the second leg of their deportation to Auschwitz-Birkenau. They were headed to death but found it sooner than even their German captors expected. Also killed with them were hundreds of Cretan resistance fighters and Italian prisoners of war. the monument was dedicated in October 2013 to commemorate all the victims of the sinking. 

The memorial monument was created under the aegis of The Central Board of Jewish Communities in Greece (KIS) and the Municipality of Chania and sponsored by the the Jewish community of Thessaloniki during the presidency of David Saltiel and by Mr Sabby Mionis. I was told in Chania that Dona-Lilian (Lily) Kapon, whose family had moved from Chania to Athens in the 1930s, was a leading force behind the creation of the memorial. The work is signed by Μ. Παπαστερπου (M. Papasterpou), but I have not yet been able to find out anything about this artist, or how he/she was chosen for the commission. 

The monument is located just outside the eastern walls of the old town of Chania in the Koum Kapu neighborhood. It consists of three parts. First, there is a large triangular concrete base with rounded corners that occupies a good part of the site at the fork of the two roads, one of which runs to the left along the edge of the port, and the other the runs along the line of the old town walls. The platform mimics the shape of the land plot, and the curved front reminds one of a ship’s prow. The front half is a platform that carries the sculptural monument. The rear part of this concrete base is wider and serves as a giant planter filled with greenery. The sides of this base were covered with graffiti when I was there. Leaving the space blank was an invitation - and also a missed opportunity. That low base wall is prime commemorative real estate. Some kind of bold inscription - or even something decorative or symbolic - could have filled that space and made the whole site more eye-catching.

The second part is the sculptural monument itself, which from the water side approximates the form of a sailing ship, but from other angles appears more abstract. From head on, the metal parts look something like a giant anchor. Metal lattice work on the right side resembles ship's rigging, and on this the artist has installed a flock of metal doves who seem to ascend upward - presumably these are the souls of the dead. The ship-specific form and symbolism in the monument only comes out slowly. One sees the form of a hull, an anchor, and ship’s rigging. 

Memorial monuments for shipwrecks are common in coastal towns and port cities. Sometimes, as in the Maine monument in New York City, they are given pride of place for memorial and propaganda purposes. For the Maine monument, the reality of the sailor's deaths is entirely forgotten in the bombastic classism of the work. Despite it shortcomings, fortunately the Tánaïs memorial errs on the side of modesty.

New York, NY. USS Maine National Monument, Columbus Circle. The Maine exploded in Havana harbor and sank on February 15, 1898, killing 268 sailors. The monument was dedicated in New York City in 1913.

But nearby in Chania, there is another monument to a shipwreck (of a terrible ferry sinking in 1966) on the other side of the port. I passed as I walked to the site of the destroyed Jewish cemetery. The monument is much more obvious - and I think more effective in making its commemorative point. The form itself is simple and bold, and the inclusion of an arm raised from the depths immediately informs the viewer that this memorial is about human suffering and loss. That pain is not felt at the Tánaïs memorial.

The third part of the memorial, and perhaps the most important, is a pair of small bronze rectangular plaques with commemorative inscriptions. Unfortunately, these are nearly hidden behind the sculptural monument. They are set low on the base and far from the edges, and thus very hard to read. One is in Greek and the other in English. Given their small size and their location, they are hard to see, and nearly impossible to read in bright sunlight. I had to climb onto the base and around the sculpture to get a good look!

Chania (Crete), Greece. Tánaïs sinking memorial, 2013. Photo: Samuel Gruber 2022.

 

 

Chania (Crete), Greece. Tánaïs sinking memorial, 2013. Photo: Samuel Gruber 2022

  The English text reads:

In Memory

·       Of the Greek Jews of Crete
Men, women and children

·       Of the Christian members of the resistance

·       Of the Italian antifascist servicemen

Who died tragically in the sinking of

SS Tanais on June 9^th 1944 during World War II

·       The Municipality of Hania

·       The Central Board of Jewish

Communities in Greece

Sponsored by

·       The Jewish community of Thessaloniki

during the presidency of David Saltiel                                                                 

·       Mr Sabby Mionis

                                    October 14, 2012

Chania (Crete), Greece. Tánaïs sinking memorial, 2013. Photo: Samuel Gruber 2022

  

It  is good that there is a monument to this tragic event, and as an indirect reminder of the Jewish history of the city which is supplemented and amplified by the presence of the restored synagogue. The design of the monument, however, and especially the way it is sited and landscaped in this very visible site, could be much better. Even at its present size, the monument could be made more visible and to seem bigger. The explanatory and commemorative information could be much more prominent and explicit.  From a distance – and even close – there is little sense that this is any different from any other piece of contemporary abstract art.

This is not just a memorial to the Jewish victims, so it cannot be overtly Jewish, but when I first saw it I was immediately struck by strong Christian iconography. Ships and doves CAN be Jewish – they both figure in important Jewish Biblical stories, but Jewish artists have generally shied away from these themes since they were incorporated into the depictions of Jonah, and of Christ and his disciples, already in Early Christian and Byzantine art (the story of Jonah rarely appears in Jewish art). 

Perhaps a viewer less familiar with art history will see  the imagery from a fresher perspective – and if desired, from a Jewish one. In any case, for a memorial to the victims of the Tánaïs, a ship can be just a ship. The doves on the other hand must be read as the souls of the dead.

 

Chania (Crete), Greece. Tánaïs sinking memorial, 2013. Artist's signature. Photo: Samuel Gruber 2022

Menorah in Flames: Nandor Glid's Holocaust Memorial in Thessaloniki

Thessaloniki, Greece. Holocaust Memorial "Menorah in Flames," Nandor Glid, sculptor, 1997. Photo: Samuel Gruber 2022.

 

Thessaloniki, Greece. Holocaust Memorial "Menorah in Flames," Nandor Glid, sculptor, 1997. Photo: Samuel Gruber 2022.

 

Report from Thessaloniki 1:

Menorah in Flames: Nandor Glid's Holocaust Memorial in Thessaloniki

By Samuel D. Gruber 

One of the most prominent and certainly artistically accomplished Holocaust memorials in Greece is the memorial titled Menorah in Flames by the Serbian Jewish sculptor Nandor Glid installed in Thessaloniki in 1997 and then moved to its present location in 2007. 

Glid, who was a Hungarian Jew from Subotica (now Serbia) lost his entire family at Auschwitz. He was sent to a labor camp in Szeged (Hungary), from which he escaped before joining Tito's partisans with whom he fought for several years and was wounded in 1945. After the war he studied sculpture, and by the 1950s he established himself as one of the most expressive and creative Jewish artists of the post-war generation. He is best known for his sculpture at the Mauthausen (1957) and Dachau (1965-68) concentration camps. Subsequently he made several other Holocaust memorials, which embrace a more symbolic language. The one in Thessaloniki was his last. He died in 1997 before it was cast in bronze, and his sons completed the project.

Dachau, Germany. Holocaust memorial sculpture," Nandor Glid, sculptor, 1965-68. Photo: Samuel Gruber 2006

.

Dachau, Germany. Holocaust memorial sculpture," Nandor Glid, sculptor, 1965-68. Photo: Samuel Gruber 2006.

Thessaloniki, Greece. Holocaust Memorial "Menorah in Flames," Nandor Glid, sculptor, 1997. Photo: Samuel Gruber 2022.

 

hessaloniki, Greece. Holocaust Memorial "Menorah in Flames," Nandor Glid, sculptor, 1997. Photo: Samuel Gruber 2022.

 Glid's striking monuments have come to represent a particular era of Holocaust remembrance that allowed the melding of abstract and representational elements to address suffering and horror more directly without undo distance, sentimentality, or romanticizing. Until a visit in May, I'd only known the Thessaloniki memorial from photos, but most of the photos published of Glid’s work do not do justice to the complex expressive detail that is evident in the patterns of the work and in the emotional power of the abstracted human figures which are caught up in the inextricable net of wire (in the case of Dachau) or fire (in the in the case of Thessaloniki).

The tangle of figures here recalls those in the Dachau Memorial. Both refer directly to the unforgettable images of piles of emaciated corpses found when the Camps were liberated. The title too, encourages the viewer to see a menorah and thus overlook the tortured figures entangled within the work. From the photos, too, I had always imagined this to be a larger work. It is of good size, but it's prominent location and its formal qualities - that is, the way it expands outward and upward from a narrow base - suggested something larger and loftier. In fact, it is set almost at ground level and the viewer approaches and looks at the monument head on. This is extremely effective because we encounter the anguished faces of the victims. Close up, once sees less of the menorah form and more of the thicket of flames and limbs and human heads.

Thessaloniki, Greece. Holocaust Memorial "Menorah in Flames," Nandor Glid, sculptor, 1997. Photo: Samuel Gruber 2022.

 

Thessaloniki, Greece. Holocaust Memorial "Menorah in Flames," Nandor Glid, sculptor, 1997. Photo: Samuel Gruber 2022.

 

Thessaloniki, Greece. Holocaust Memorial "Menorah in Flames," Nandor Glid, sculptor, 1997. Photo: Samuel Gruber 2022.

 

Thessaloniki, Greece. Holocaust Memorial "Menorah in Flames," Nandor Glid, sculptor, 1997. Photo: Samuel Gruber 2022.

 

The work was originally installed in a public square named in 1996 as the “Square of the Jewish Martyrs of the Holocaust.” This was done in anticipation of Thessaloniki holding the title European Cultural Capital in 1997. The city was shamed into remembering. In that year (1997) the Greek government installed Glid’s sculpture in the square as the first public recognition of the deportation and murder of more than 50,000 Jews – a large segment of the city’s population. 

Unfortunately, the monument was often vandalized so in 2005 it was moved to its present more visible location on Plateia Eleftherias (Freedom Square), facing the waterfront. The new setting has some significance to the suffering of the city’s Jews. On July 11, 1942, the German occupiers of the city held 9,000 Jewish men here and subjected them to a degrading registration process in blazing heat. Today, most of the large square is a parking lot, but (unlike Sopron) the monument is screened off from the cars.

Thessaloniki, Greece. Holocaust Memorial "Menorah in Flames," Nandor Glid, sculptor, 1997. Photo: Samuel Gruber 2022.

 

                            

Thessaloniki, Greece. Holocaust Memorial "Menorah in Flames," Nandor Glid, sculptor, 1997. Photo: Samuel Gruber 2022.

 

Two plaques affixed to base of monument refer to the original installation and its removal and new dedication. The first, written in Greek and English, solely remembers the victims:

Thessaloniki, Greece. Holocaust Memorial "Menorah in Flames," Nandor Glid, sculptor, 1997. Photo: Samuel Gruber 2022.

 

The second, in Greek, Hebrew, and English, commemorates a moment in contemporary (2006) Greek and Israeli politics:

Thessaloniki, Greece. Holocaust Memorial "Menorah in Flames," Nandor Glid, sculptor, 1997. Photo: Samuel Gruber 2022.

 

Perhaps the truest form of memorial in the city is the Jewish Museum of Thessaloniki, opened in 2001, the tells the millennia-long history of the community as well as of its destruction. The museum, of which I plan to write more about in another post, culminates in a memorial room fo names created form the decades-long research of Auschwitz survivor Heinz Kounio, who has collected definitive information on 37,000 individual victims, although it is known that thousands more remain undocumented.

Kounio was one of the first Greeks to tell his story of survival. His memoir was published in Greek in 1981, and subsequently in an abbreviated English version in 2003 titled A Liter of Soup and Sixty Grams of Bread: The Diary of Prisoner Number 109565 (Sephardic House and Bloch Publishing, 2003). Kounio is also featured in the 2019 documentary film Heroes of Salonika. Heinz’s daughter Hella Matalon, an expert on Jewish Thessaloniki, was my guide in Thessaloniki for the day. Learning the identities of Salonika victims has been difficult. One needs to know multiple languages, including Greek, Ladino, French, Hebrew, and German. Archives and records were destroyed or are inaccessible This was compounded by the common practice of repeating widely family names within extended families. Thus, it was not enough to know a name, it was necessary to learn birth dates and addresses and other information. Thus, researching victims created many data points that begin to sketch the depth of the Jewish community. Numbers become names and names become individuals with their own biographies. 

Kounio has been at this work for many years, and it will have to continue for years when he is gone. There are several other Holocaust memorials scattered about Thessaloniki. But no amount of commemoration can give a true indication of the size and importance of the Thessaloniki Jewish population which was deported and murdered in 1942. The destruction of Thessaloniki’s Jewish community tore the heart and soul of the Sephardi and Ladino culture. Even though the community had suffered other calamities in the previous half century, the murder of the community marked the end of remarkable Jewish culture and civilization. Yes, there are descendants of Thessaloniki Jews living today around the world, but whatever they create cannot replicate what was lost in lives, language and culture. 

After World War II, so few Jews lived in the city where once they had constituted the majority of the population, that they were hardly noticed, and the Jewish history of Thessaloniki was virtually erased. Jews have lived in the city for millennia. the Christian New Testament records that Saint Paul preached in a synagogue in Thessaloniki in the 1st century C.E. 

Since the 1990s, there have been many efforts by the city of Thessaloniki, the Greek Jewish community, and many Greek Jews living abroad to rectify the situation. Very slowly, monuments and memorials have been erected to Holocaust victims, synagogues have been restored, and new museums and exhibitions have opened. Still while this more evident Jewish presence has informed and educated many, it also regularly provokes resistance. Greek Holocaust memorials have been often vandalized. This does not represent the attitude of most Greeks; but it is evidence of a persistent stream of antisemitism among a section of the population. In the past fifty years, Antisemitism and anti-Israel sentiment have been used politically by both the Greek Right and Left.

 

Czechia: An Unlooked for Holocaust Monument in Kroměříž (Moravia)

Kroměříž (Moravia), Czechia. Holocaust memorial monument. Olbram Zoubek, artist, 1994. Photo: Samuel Gruber 2022.

Kroměříž (Moravia), Czechia. Holocaust memorial monument. Olbram Zoubek, artist, 1994. Photo: Samuel Gruber 2022.

Czechia: An Unlooked for Holocaust Monument in Kroměříž (Moravia) 

by Samuel D. Gruber 

Very close to my hotel last month in Kroměříž (Moravia), Czechia, is an unexpected monument to the Holocaust victims, and a reminder of the former synagogue. This figurative work stands next to the local House of Culture on Tovačovského Street that was built (in the 1980s?) on the site of the destroyed but once impressive domed synagogue of Kroměříž, designed by prominent Viennese-Jewish architect Jakob Gartner (1861-1921) and opened in 1910. The synagogue was a major building in town and appeared on many postcards in the interwar period. It was blown up with dynamite by the occupying Germans on November 5, 1942.

Kroměříž (Moravia), Czechia. Former synagogue (1910) seen in postcard.

Kroměříž (Moravia), Czechia. Former synagogue (1910) seen in postcard.

Kroměříž (Moravia), Czechia. House of Culture, Tovačovského Street on site of former synagogue. Photo: Samuel Gruber 2022

 

Kroměříž (Moravia), Czechia. House of Culture, Tovačovského Street on site of former synagogue. Photo: Samuel Gruber 2022

There was already a matzevah/stele type memorial made by survivors that was dedicated in 1962 at what is left of the Jewish cemetery. The Czech and Hebrew inscriptions on that monument translate into English as: “To honor the memory of three hundred Jewish citizens of Kramerizska who were tormented during World War II, a handful of survivors erected this memorial to encourage tolerance and peace.” 

Kroměříž (Moravia), Czechia. Holocaust memorial at what is left of New Jewish Cemetery. Photo: Samuel Gruber 2022

The monument near the synagogue site was installed in 1994 and is an expressive figurative work by Czech sculptor Olbram Zoubek (1926-2017). Zoubek was a dissident artist under communism who today is best known for his monument to the victims of communism in Prague. I assume the memorial was sponsored by the town. 

The Kroměříž sculpture depicts a woman whose body is a tree trunk, while her arms and head are recognizably human. Her face is anguished; she raises her arms in front with palms out to ward off a terror and evil. It is not clear what the sculpture is suggesting here. Is it just dramatic pathos? Lot’s wife looked back at destruction and was turned into a pillar of salt. Here in Kroměříž, the woman is a tree.

Kroměříž (Moravia), Czechia. Holocaust memorial monument. Olbram Zoubek, artist, 1994. Photo: Samuel Gruber 2022.

Kroměříž (Moravia), Czechia. Holocaust memorial monument. Olbram Zoubek, artist, 1994. Photo: Samuel Gruber 2022.

Kroměříž (Moravia), Czechia. Holocaust memorial monument. Olbram Zoubek, artist, 1994. Photo: Samuel Gruber 2022.

Kroměříž (Moravia), Czechia. Holocaust memorial monument. Olbram Zoubek, artist, 1994. Photo: Samuel Gruber 2022.

Kroměříž (Moravia), Czechia. Holocaust memorial monument. Olbram Zoubek, artist, 1994. Photo: Samuel Gruber 2022.

One seeing the sculpture, my first association was with Bernini’s sculpture of Apollo and Daphne, where Daphne is transformed into a tree before she can be ravished by the pursuing god. Her arms are outstretched in a combination of surprise and fear; she is not aware she is turning into a tree as salvation.  In Judaism, there is the association of the Torah as the Tree of Life. Is this somehow an allusion to survival – even after destruction, deportation, and death, in the way that a Jewish cemetery is often referred to as a House of Life? Or is it just an artistic conceit?

Apollo and Daphne. Gian Lorenzo Bernini, sculptor 1622-25. Galleria Borghese, Rome . Photo: Wikipedia.

The woman’s posture and gestures, however, have no ambiguity. She is clearly terrified and tries to ward off the approaching danger. From a distance it seemed like her hands were raised in the manner of a woman lighting the Shabbat candles on Friday night, but instead of having the palms face her body as she welcomes the Sabbath, here the palms are facing outward to stop (unsuccessfully) the impending doom. About 300 Jews of Kroměříž were deported and died from deprivation or execution. The synagogue was blown to pieces on December 5, 1942, and (mostly) erased from memory, along seven centuries of Jewish history in this town. 

On the ground - I cannot say "at her feet" because she has none - is a bronze version of the tablets of the law (Decalogue), lying flat. Instead of the Ten Commandments a commemorative text is written that mentions the destruction of the synagogue and 300 Jewish fellow citizens who were victims of the Nazis.

The monument is visible but not prominent from the nearby major street. It is easy to overlook. There are benches as part of the installation, all on a path that passes by.  The best view, however, is from the deck of the Cultural Center, and from the tables of the café/restaurant. I’m always curious about who sees monuments and memorials. If I spoke Czech, I might have asked the café patrons what they saw and what they knew of the distraught woman down below them.