Greece: Correction & More Details on Subway Under Thessaloniki Cemetery

Greece: Correction & More Details on Subway Under Thessaloniki Cemetery

Last month I wrote about concerns in Thessaloniki, Greece, about subway excavations under the Jewish Cemetery, now occupied in large part by the Aristotle University. The U.S. State Department’s Office of the Special Envoy for Holocaust Issues has provided the following details about the situation in Thessaloniki. I thank Ambassador J. Christian Kennedy for this information.

The visit of Ambassador Kennedy demonstrates the importance of outside interest in the treatment of Jewish sites in Greece and elsewhere. Sometimes, it is only under the cover of international interest that the concerns of local communities can be fully expressed. In the case of Thessaloniki, it is important that in addition to Jewish leaders and diplomats, that international academics express their concern. This is especially true for cultural heritage specialists, ancient historians, Byzantinists, and archaeologists who work in Greece or with Greeks, and any other academics with dealings with the Aristotle University. There is a better chance that the University will do the "right thing" when its community knows that people (outside the local Jewish community) care, and that the world is watching.

"Ambassador J. Christian Kennedy, the State Department’s Special Envoy for Holocaust Issues, visited Athens and Thessaloniki during the June 25-28 period to discuss the impact of metro construction on the old Jewish cemetery at Thessaloniki.

In Athens, Ambassador Kennedy met with Aristides Agathocles, Secretary General of the Foreign Ministry; two members of the Greek Parliament; the deputy head of the European Commission Liaison Office; and the head of the Central Board of Jewish Communities of Greece.

In Thessaloniki, Ambassador Kennedy visited the metro construction site, accompanied by the manager of the contracting company responsible for the metro project, representatives of the Greek Archaeological Service, and members of the Jewish community. The construction site includes three proposed entrances to the subterranean University metro station to be located below the intersection of Egnatia and Third of September Streets.

The tunnel for the metro trains, now being bored, is at least fifty feet below the archaeological zone, the stratum with evidence of all human habitation going back to Neolithic times. The tunnel boring does not, therefore, pose a threat to any of the interments. Ambassador Kennedy has briefed rabbinical communities on this aspect of metro construction and none has interposed an objection to the tunnel boring method. The construction of the University metro station has, however, raised some concerns.

Two of the proposed three entrances to University metro station, are close to the boundaries of the cemetery. Detailed maps provided by the construction company show the entrances to be just outside the cemetery boundary. Excavation work on the entrances has not yet commenced, but cement channels for utilities and other facilities have already been dug in areas that appear to be just inside the cemetery, along Third of September Street.

Ambassador Kennedy was told that this work has not resulted in disturbing any graves. He urged the Archaeological Service to continue working closely with the Jewish Community of Thessaloniki, particularly if further excavations should uncover any remains.

As he did in an earlier conversation with the University Rector, Ambassador Kennedy urged during his visit that the University create on the campus an appropriate memorial to the cemetery.

State Department officials will continue to monitor the construction and to coordinate with the Jewish community, the contractor and the government in Athens. We will also continue to brief interested rabbinical communities as events unfold."

Also, Prof Steven Bowman sent in the following correction to my Thessaloniki "history.":

"The Jewish community [of Thessaloniki] 'sold' the graveyard to the city as a result of negotiations to bring back the men in forced labor. The negotiations were in Fall 1942. There are today less than 1000 Jews in Thessaloniki."

Ukraine: Lest We Forget Lviv’s Krakovsky Jewish Cemetery – Now a Bustling Marketplace

Ukraine: Lest We Forget Lviv’s Krakovsky Jewish Cemetery – Now a Bustling Marketplace
by Samuel D. Gruber

Visitors to L’viv (formerly Lvov, Lemberg) for the Urban Jewish Heritage and History in East Central Europe, Lviv (Ukraine), October 29-31, 2008, will have a hard time finding the old Jewish Cemetery of that legendary city of Jewish life and culture. That’s because the famous Krakovsky Cemetery (probably founded no later than the 15th century) has been hidden under an expanding marketplace (known as the Krakivsky Market) since early 1990s (I took these photos in 2006).

The cemetery was devastated during the German occupation of then-Polish Lvov during the Second World War when the Jewish population of the city was killed, and the thousands of gravestones of the cemetery were removed, presumably for building and paving materials. After the war, when Lvov (now Ukrainian L’viv) became part of Soviet Ukraine, the cemetery area was used as an open marketplace. After the fall of Communism and independence of Ukraine in 1991, free-market and black-market commercialism increased on the cemetery site. Very quickly what had been an open space for casual display of fruits, vegetables, and flea market items became a bustling market area of movable stalls, booths and semi-permanent structures.

The small Jewish community of L’viv protested, and asked for the cemetery to be returned to the community, and respected as a burial ground. In 1995 the city cited costs for moving the market at between $1 million and $2 million US dollars. Continued negotiations led to the recognition of the historic character of the site, and the signing of a protocol in 1996 stating the intent that the market should be moved and the cemetery restored in some way, to reflect its religious and historic significance. Several important political figures in the US and Ukraine (including now-New York Senator Charles Schumer) weighed in on the issue, calling for the restoration of the cemetery.

In 1997 US AID prepared a detailed review of the situation, reporting local estimates for the cost of removal of the market to another location, creation of the new market, and some form of restoration of the cemetery at between $4 and 12 million. Part of this was economic realism, but part was probably an attempt at political extortion. The municipality could say they wanted to do the right thing, but could not afford it.

In any case, no agency – private or public - was willing to put up that kind of money. And after a few years without moving, the market began to expand. What was once temporary has taken on a more and more permanent appearance. Part of that has been due to the erection of more and more market buildings, many of which have required some disturbance of the below-ground burials to allow their construction.

Now, a number of circumstances have people looking at the situation again. Some successfully negotiated projects removing structures from cemeteries in Poland have encouraged cemetery preservation groups. Renewed disputes about built-over cemeteries in Thessaloniki (Greece) and Vilnius (Lithuania) have brought the situation in L’viv back in mind to diplomats still pressing for property restitution laws and settlements (there is a big conference on this in Prague in June 2009). There is talk of a new international committee being formed to press to the issue, which some rabbinic leaders and governmental officials have been studying.

For now, the bustling market is more successful than ever, and more an essential, and seemingly traditional, part of L’viv’s urban life. There are absolutely no indications anyway - signs, symbols, memorial – about the history of this site and guide books and on-line tourist sites rarely mention anything more than the colorful produce and handcrafts for sale.

Readers who have information or questions about the cemetery are encouraged to contact ISJM.

Greece: New Excavations for Subway Line Under Destroyed Thessaloniki Jewish Cemetery Raise Concerns

Greece: New Excavations for Subway Line Under Destroyed Thessaloniki Jewish Cemetery Raise Concerns

by Samuel D. Gruber

(ISJM) More than sixty years after one of the largest Jewish cemeteries in Europe was destroyed to make room for a university campus in Thessaloniki (Salonika), Greece; excavation at the Aristotle University for a subway line has spurred new interest in the site’s history, new concerns about the fate of the thousands of Jewish graves, and calls for broader public recognition that the University is built on the site of tens of thousands of Jewish graves. The international community is also showing interest. U.S. Special Envoy for Holocaust issues, Ambassador J. Christian Kennedy, recently visited Greece to discuss the matter, which has been raised by the Greek Jewish community.

Excavations for the university library in the 1960s apparently uncovered many graves. Though tunnels for the trains will run deeper than the level of the graves, there are legitimate concerns that excavations for a station and for access and air shafts will violate burials. Witnesses report that the new excavations have already disturbing Jewish graves – though to what extent remains unclear at this time.

While no one has suggested that the University be moved or that the cemetery be restored, there is a general sense among protestors that any new excavation must stop, the graves must be respected, and that their should be some sort of commemorative gesture. At the very least, all excavation work done on the site should be done under rabbinic supervision so that graves are protected and remains properly removed for reburial. Such care for graves in uncommon in Greece where it is the custom to excavate and remove ancient burials, and where Christian burial is often only temporary – the bones being then gathered up and removed to ossuaries.

In recent years there has been improvement in the Greek response to the legacy of the Holocaust (when I lived in Greece in the 1970s I encountered widespread ignorance and outright denial of thelong and expansive Jewish presence in Greece). In March, Greek president Karolos Papoulias attended the Greek Jewish Martyrs Memory event on the national memory day for Greek Jewish Martyrs and Heroes of the Holocaust. This comes on the heels of Bulgaria's admitting responsibility for the deaths of 11,000 Greek Jews in the Holocaust, probably the major issue that has been pushed in recent years by American-Greek Jewish advocacy groups. While these issues are not specifically related, they speak to a more receptive attitude towards Holocaust history in the Balkans.

The Jewish Community of Thessaloniki has requested (again) commemoration of the cemetery and the community at the University. Moses Constantinis, president of the Federation of Jewish Communities of Greece (KIS) said in a recent interview of Agence France Presse "The entire area was once a Jewish cemetery. In-depth excavation is certain to hit upon graves and remains...We would not want the peace of the dead to be disturbed. In our religion, it is a sin to move the dead after burial...we would like the area studied and if excavation interferes with the cemetery, which we believe it does, then to avoid building (the station) or move it to a different location.”

Bloggers have proposed solutions ranging from naming the new train station after the cemetery, or more constructively, creating a Sephardic Studies program at the University. The cemetery dates back to 1492 when Spain expelled its Jews and thousands found refuge in the small town of Thessaloniki, then under Ottoman rule. As the community grew to be the largest Sephardi center in Europe before the Holocaust – with a Jewish population of over 50,000 - the cemetery became one of Europe's largest, too, with more than 300,000 graves. Thessaloniki, the second largest city in Greece, now has a Jewish population of about 6,000 among its nearly 360,000 residents.

The future of the enormous Sephardi cemetery was already in doubt before the Second World War and the German occupation of Thessaloniki. Actions to expropriate the land for the University had already begun in the 1930s, before the Holocaust. This was not uncommon in the interwar period, as many European cities underwent major growth and tried to expand into "open" or "under-utilized" land. Usually Jewish cemeteries were spared because they were much further from the town centers, but not always. In Thessaloniki, it seems that after initial acquiescence, the Jewish community resisted, and that was the state of things when the war started. Then, with the killing of all the Jews, the problem was solved for the surviving populace, since there were few Jews left to protest the taking of the land.

Prof. Steven Bowman of the University of Cincinnati and an expert on the Holocaust in Greece (he edits the The Sephardi and Greek Holocaust Library published by Sephardi House) reports that
"the Jewish community [of Thessaloniki "sold" the graveyard to the city as a result of negotiations to bring back the men in forced labor. The negotiations were in Fall 1942. Subsequently,
there was no discussion of the graveyard during the postwar return of the heirless property of Greek Jewry to the survivors. When the community "sold" its rights to the cemetery, it was stripped of its marble and stone which was recycled by contractors; and "the bones of ancestors were removed to Stavropolis on the other side of the city where the main Jewish graveyard exists today." But Bowman says that only a few hundred families were able to move bones of their relatives to the new cemeteries granted by the city. Since it is estimated that the cemetery had more than 300,000 burials, many bones must remain buried, or scattered amongst the fragments of stones on the university campus and the environs beyond its border. Today one can see many fragments of stones from the cemetery decorating the gardens and entrances of buildings at the University.

The situation in Thessaloniki was not an isolated case. Many Greek cemeteries have been built over. In Edirne, for example, a road was cut through the cemetery.

For more on Jewish Thessaloniki see:

Steven Bowman, ed., The Holocaust in Salonika, Eyewitness Account, Translated with introductions and notes by Isaac Benmayor (New York: Sephardic House & Bloch Publishing Co., 2002)

Elias Messinas, The Synagogues of Salonika and Veroia. (Athens: Gavrielides Editions, 1997).