This presentation features the story of the Jews from Salonika, Greece. Based on the testimony film about Holocaust survivor Ovadia Baruch, this learning environment delves into the food, culture, and religious aspects of prewar Greek Jewish life, and follows them through their deportation to concentration and death camps, mainly to Auschwitz-Birkenau. Focusing on interdisciplinary tools which can be used in the classroom, students can follow Ovadia through his life via film clips, while reading detailed descriptions of the prewar and Holocaust periods in Greece. In an effort to remember communities that were nearly wiped out by the Nazis, this educational aid will help teachers and students gain a better understanding of one particular community.

2. For almost five hundred years the Jews
of Salonika flourished. Their city was a
hub of European Jewry, a center for
Torah learning attracting students and
new residents from all over the world.
Cultural life also thrived in the forms of
journalism, theater, literature, and
music.
In this famous port city the Jews of
Salonika became renowned as workers
in related industries such as stevedores
as well as being craftsmen and artisans .
On the eve of World War II,
approximately 52,000 Jews lived in
Salonika. After the Holocaust only 2,000
of the Jews from this ancient
community remained alive.
The Jewish Community of Salonika

3. The Jews of Salonika were of
Sephardic heritage and can trace
their ancestry back to Spain from
where they were expelled in 1492
by the Spanish Monarchy.
Their practice of Judaism differs in
many ways from those of the
Ashkenazim (Jews of Eastern
European descent). These
differences can be seen in their
customs and religious liturgy. In
addition they spoke their own
particular language called Ladino, a
mixture of Hebrew and Medieval
Spanish.
The Sephardic Jews of Salonika

4. For the Jews of Salonika, educating their
children was of utmost importance.
The community created their own schools and
schooling system where lessons were
predominantly taught in Ladino. Some schools
were secular such as the Alliance Schools,
where as the others gave children an Orthodox
religious education.
Salonika was unique in comparison to many
other towns in Europe, because Jews were
allowed to attend university without
restriction.
Education

5. Food holds a special place in a Jewish home
and community, as part of ritual, Sabbath,
and holiday customs, and as part of the large
tapestry of Jewish culture and traditions.
Traditional Sephardic foods consist of
borekas and pastelitos (pastry stuffed with
various fillings), and the famous guevos
haminados that can be traced back to the
Jewish age in Spain and were mentioned in
ancient folklore tales.
Food

6. Cultural life thrived in Salonika.
The people expressed themselves
freely, writing newspapers,
fiction, and poetry and by
performing folk songs and plays
written in Ladino, French, and
Hebrew. These songs and poems
written in the traditional Cantigas
style and accompanied by
instrumentation, were also
performed in the theater and
played an important part in
holiday celebrations and at family
gatherings.
Newspapers, Literature, and Cultural Life

7. Early on the morning of July 11, 1942 six
thousand five hundred Jewish men
between the ages of 18‐45 were forced to
congregate at Freedom Square. They were
made to spend hours exercising in the
blazing sun. Those who arrived late to the
Square were nearly beaten to death.
Immediately after the ordeal the Jews were
made to line up outside offices and register
for forced labor camps. The men were sent
away to work for months and many
perished due to the harsh conditions and
lack of food.
Black Sabbath

8. In 1943, the Baron Hirsch neighborhood was
made into a ghetto where the Jews were forced
to live in deplorable conditions until deportation
to Auschwitz. Like their counterparts in Europe ,
the Nazis forced the Jews to wear a yellow Star
of David on their clothing so that they could be
easily identifiable.
Exerpt from an anonymous folksong song written in Ladino
about the ghetto .
All the Jews have been shut up
In the ghettos in the city
To Baron Hirsch they began to move us
And to label us with badges:
Our hearts began to beat
Tick tock tick tock
The ghetto was not a good sign.
And it has leveled us equally
They will not rejoice in it, those who sought to hurt
us
In the end they will spew it out
The Ghetto

9. For five months, transports left from Salonika to
Auschwitz from the station in the neighborhood of
Baron Hirsch. Transports left every few days and the
Baron Hirsch ghetto was emptied and filled before
each transport. According to German records, from
March 20, 1943 to August 18, 1943, nineteen
transports arrived from Salonika to Auschwitz,
including 48,533 Jews. The journey itself to Aushwitz
on the crowded and unsanitary cattle cars with little
or no food or water, often resulted in the deaths of
the captive people before the trains’ destination had
even been reached. However, the Germans would
often not allow the removal of any dead bodies
from the cars, declaring that the same number of
Jews who entered the cars must be unloaded on
arrival.
Deportation to Auschwitz

10. "Cantigas," folk songs sung in Ladino, were an integral
part of Jewish life in Salonika. This unique culture of
singing accompanied the Greek Jews to Auschwitz and
other camps, where, in a world of degradation and
horror, Greek Jews created songs to give voice to their
experience.
Black my dear! Black is the life we lead.
Fear flavours our bread, fear dogs our footsteps.
To the fountain, to the fountain I may not go
Everywhere there is a guard saying you, “You’re a
prisoner,a prisoner of the Germans”.
I have not stolen; I have neither stolen nor killed
I’m just a Jewish girl, that’s why they’ve
imprisoned me here in Auschwitz.
They will rescue us, they will set us free.
They will bury us deeper.
Anonymous folk song, sung in Auschwitz
Greek Jews in Auschwitz

11. After the war ended in 1945 there
were 2,000 Jews in Salonika out of
some 10,000 Greek Jews who
survived the Holocaust. The few
survivors of this magnificent
community, returned to Salonika in
the hope of finding family members,
relatives, and friends, who also
survived. Most survivors did not find
relatives who were still alive and the
harsh realization began to set in that
they were the few survivors from
their families and communities. These
living remnants began rebuilding
their lives mostly in other countries.
After Liberation