Thessaloniki is a special interesting destination for the Orthodox Jewish public, because it was the only city in the Diaspora whose majority of inhabitants were Jews, and the gentiles were only a minority. An official population census in 1734 determined that the population of Salonika numbered 40,000, 20,000 of them Jews, 10,000 Muslims and 9,000 Christians. In another census Done on 1880, 85,000 inhabitants were counted in Salonika, of whom 50,000 were Jews, 20,000 were Moslems and 15,000 were Christians.

There were 73 synagogues, 14 Yeshivas, Talmud Torahs and Jewish schools of various kinds. Today, even in Tel Aviv, there is no such vast world of Torah. In light of the recent public issue of opening supermarkets in Tel Aviv on Shannath, Thessaloniki was a Sabbath-observant city, and all the commercial houses and banks in the city were closed on Saturdays. The largest port of Salonika was the only one in the world closed on Saturdays and Jewish holidays. Most of all the businesses and industrial enterprises and banks operating in Salonika in the 19th century were owned by Jews.

The Jewish bookshelf has many sacred books written by the rabbis of Thessaloniki. Such as the "Leach Tov" written by Rabbi Tobias Ben-Eliezer. "Ein Ya'akov" was written by the Chief Rabbi of Salonika, Ya'akov Ben Haviv. In the introduction to "Ein Ya'akov" the author greets one of the wealthiest people of the city who supplied him space for all the books he used to compose the Ein Yaakov.

The psalm "Lecha Dodi" that we all sing every Friday evening was written in Safed by Rabbi Shlomo Elkabetz from Salonika. The famous Rabbi Shmuel Di Medina (Maharasham) lived in Salonika, etc. Thanks to these and others Torah giants, Thessaloniki was named "Jerusalem of the Balkans" Two of the chief rabbis of Israel , Rabbi Yaakov Meir and Rabbi Meir Chai Uziel, grew up in Salonika.

Even some of the most important people of our generation are from Salonika, such as Minister Ofir Akunis, the Recanati and Karasu families, basketballist Moti Aroesti and others. Former French president Nicolas Sarkozy is the grandson of a Jewish family from Salonika. The Nobel prize winner for Literature in 2014, Patrick Modiano, and the Dassault family, owners of the French aircraft factory that supplied Israel with Mirage fighter jets in the early decades of the country, and many others were born in Salonika.

History

The Jewish community in Greece was established in the prophets times, by Jewish slaves who were exiled from Israel. The prophet Yoel writes: "You sold the people of Judah and Jerusalem to the Greeks, that you might send them far from their homeland." (4: 6) The prophet Yeshayahu said: " And I will place a sign upon them, and I will send from them refugees to the nations, Tarshish, Pul, and Lud, who draw the bow, to Tubal and Javan, the distant islands” (66/19).

Few of the Tanahim and the Amoraim had Greek names such as Antigonus of Succo, Eliezer ben Hurcanos, Rabbi Tarfon, etc. In Christian books it is written that one of the apostles of Jesus Christ Sermons were delivered in the synagogues of Salonika in 50 CE, during the times our Temple still existed.

Throughout history, Jews from the Mediterranean and Europe arrived in Salonika. In the expulsion of Spain at the end of the 15th century, 20,000 Jews arrived in Thessaloniki, and they developed the local economy, as well as Judaism for 400 years.

From this great and glorious Judaism, very little remains to be seen today. A hundred years ago, the Jewish community of Salonika began to decline. On Saturday, Rosh Chodesh Elul 1917, a huge fire broke out in the city, which destroyed most of the lower city. 31 synagogues and 10 Jewish schools were burned down, and 70,000 people became homeless, including 56,000 Jews/ The Jewish community has not been able to recover since then.

When we visit ancient cities in Europe we are used to seeing narrow streets and old buildings in the Old City, and outside the city center we see modern neighborhoods’ with large and wide streets. It is worth noting that in Salonika it is the opposite. In the lower city center you can see high-rise houses with modern-style squares, while in the neighborhoods on the hills outside the city you see older buildings. This is because the Great Fire destroyed the lower city, and it was redesigned in an urban style dating back to the beginning of the century.

The Jewish community suffered another blow after the First World War, when Greek Christians expelled from Turkey also reached Thessaloniki, and became the majority of the inhabitants. Among them were anti-Semitic fascists who attacked the Jews, tried to burn the Jewish homes again, and even murdered young Jews. Because of the fascists, about 20,000 Jews left Salonika and immigrated to Israel. Many of them worked in the field of seamanship in Salonika, and in Israel they contributed their experience to the development of seaports. They worked in the port of Haifa and established the port of Tel Aviv in 1936, and the port of Ashdod in the 1960s. The Jews of Salonika settled in the Florentine and Shapira neighborhoods of Tel Aviv, the Ben Zion neighborhood in Netanya and the Tzur Moshe moshav.

The final blow landed on the Salonika community during the Holocaust. 56,000 Jews were sent to Auschwitz and 95% of them were murdered there. Only about 1,900 Holocaust survivors returned to Thessaloniki, and most of them preferred to leave the city and immigrated to Israel or moved to America. Today there are only about 1,000 Jews living in Thessaloniki, about half of them are old.

Recommended Tourist Sites

The tour of Jewish Saloniki should start at the Jewish Museum. The museum is housed in one of the few buildings not destroyed in the Great Fire. The fire also lapped this building, but like the burning bush, it is not consumed. The first floor is dedicated to the cemetery of Thessaloniki and the left entrance wall is covered with a black marble gravestone engraved with the names of Holocaust victims from the city. On the second floor there is an exhibition of the history of Salonika Jewry. It is very worthwhile to see this exhibition and understand the city before going on a walk. All Jewish tourist attractions are within walking distance of the museum.

It is worth visiting the Monastirot Synagogue, which was built 90 years ago in the heart of the Jewish ghetto. This synagogue is the only one who survived the Holocaust. The Nazis did not destroy it because it served as a warehouse of the Red Cross. In recent years, the Jewish community has renovated the synagogue and today prayers are held three times a day. In June of this year, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu also visited there and delivered a moving speech on Israel's relations with the Jews of Thessaloniki.

A wealthy and lonely Holocaust survivor established a “Kaddish fund” that pays salaries to ten Jews, whose work is to come to the synagogue three times a day, in order to complete a minyan for those who wish to recite Kaddish to their beloved relatives. I was told that the fund had enough money for these salaries for two hundred years. On Shabbat and holidays, many local Jews also come to the synagogue, as well as tourists from Israel.

An international tourist attraction nearby is the Modiano Market. Eli Modiano, a wealthy Jew, built a large building with 144 shops and stalls where sellers and shoppers can trade under the roof. It has four entrances as in the tent of Avraham Avinu. It was the most modern "mall" in Thessaloniki at the time, and it operates as a food market and fish until today. Recently, the building was purchased by a company of malls that are about to turn it into a modern shopping mall, while preserving the original character of the exterior walls.

Outside the Modiano market was a small synagogue called Casa de la Plaza, where every day two Mincha minyanim were held there in shifts. The market traders took turns while half of them went to pray Mincha while their neighbors guarded their shop, and when they returned they changed jobs. This synagogue was also destroyed by the Germans. On its ruins, a large office building was built across the street opposite one of the entrances to the Modiano market. A Jewish family purchased the entrance floor and established a synagogue called "Yad LeZikaron" in memory of Holocaust victims. The southern wall has spectacular stained glass windows, and in the northern wall there are names of thirty synagogues that were once active in the center of Salonika. This synagogue was recently renovated by the Jewish community, and although it has not yet been officially inaugurated, it has already attracted many worshipers.

On the parallel street is the “Hamam Yehudi” behind the flower market. It was built in 1492, and operated until 1912, where there was a separation between men and women. The local Greeks also call it a “Hamam Yehudi” in Hebrew, even if they do not know the meaning of the words.

Jewish villas and palaces

The Jews left a mark on the economy and architecture of Thessaloniki, and some of the houses of Jewish wealth in the city now constitute international tourism.

Our walk tour should start at VILLA MORDOCH. It was built as a palace for the the Prince of Greece. The house was purchased by Shmuel Morduch, a leader of the Jewish community, and his family lived there until 1940. Today the house serves as the offices of the culture and tourism department of the municipality of Salonika. WE can get there free maps and brochures of Ssaloniki

Casa Bianka is the most beautiful estate in Thessaloniki, also known as “The decoration of Thessaloniki." It was built at the beginning of the last century as a residence of Dinu Fernandez-Diaz, a prominent member of the Jewish community. He named it on his wife name Banka. The house is also famous for a love story like Romeo and Juliet. The daughter of the owner, Ilana, fell in love with a Greek army officer. The rabbis of Thessaloniki refused to merry them and this created a scandal in the community. The family angrily left to Athens, where Ilana married. A few years later, Ilana and her husband returned to live in the beautiful villa. On the second floor she ran a private school for gifted children, most of them Jewish children. Ilana and her husband died in a good age in this house in 1965. Today it serves as an urban gallery of art. It is worth looking at not only the many paintings, but also the charming rooms and crannies in the ceilings, and to be impressed by the lifestyle of the rich Salonikians in the past.

Nearby is Villa Alatini, home to the family of Jewish industrialist Moshe Alatini and his sons, and nearby his factories. It is an impressive red brick palace surrounded by a beautiful garden. The Ottomans confiscated the building for the residence of Sultan Abdul Hamid II, and after the First World War the house was returned to the Alatini family. The boys donated the building to the University of Thessaloniki. And before World War II he was converted to a military hospital. Today it serves as the offices of Central Macedonia district.

From there you should go to the Villa Modiano where the Eli Modiano family lived, a wealthy banker and contractor who was also the president of the Jewish community. Today it is a museum of folklore and costumes of rural life in Greece. In the front there is a garden with tables and chairs in the shade of the trees, which are suitable for us to rest and eat sandwiches we brought from the hotel.

Another Jewish site is the Hirsch Hospital (IPPOKRATEIO HOSPITAL). It was founded by Mrs. Clara Hirsch, the wife of Baron Morris Hirsch of Austria. During the Second World War the Germans confiscated it for their own purposes, and after the war the British used it as a military base. In 1950 he returned to function as a hospital, and to this day he is considered the largest hospital in Thessaloniki.

Holocaust commemoration sites

Near the seashore is the Freedom Square, where the Greeks celebrated their independence and their liberation from Ottoman rule. But for us it symbolizes the opposite of freedom. During World War II, the Germans rounded up the Jews of this city there, and abused and humiliated them. From this square, the Jews were taken on parade to the railway station, from where they were sent to Auschwitz-Birkenau. Today most of the square serves as a public parking. On the corner of the square is the Holocaust memorial, where you can see an iron tree with seven branches, like the Menorah, and its branches are made of human limbs, and above them are tongues of fire.

From there we will walk to the old train station, on the route where the Jews of the city went to their deaths. In the corner of the terminal at the railway station, a memorial plaque was erected for the city's Jews.

Train wagons are also parked inside the station, such as those used to transport the Jews to the death camps. Currently only two tracks are used at the station. The rest of the iron bars rusted and covered with bushes. White butterflies float among the plants quietly and pastorally, that is in total dissonance to what happened there in the past. The Jews of Thessaloniki were taken from here in 18 transports from March to August 1943. We must stand at attention in their memory, look around, and remember that this is the last sight they saw in their eyes from their beloved city.

A large Holocaust museum is planned to be built in the area of the railway station. The municipality has allocated ten acres to the museum, and EU institutions have already contributed 10 million Euros, and the municipality has committed to allocate the same amount.

About half an hour's walk away is the university that was built on the grounds of the old Jewish cemetery. The Germans blew up the gravestones, and the bones of the Jews dispersed. A monument to the cemetery was erected between the lawns of the university. In the monument you can see a lamp falling on its side, and fragments of tombstones that stood in the past. Beside the monument there are marble signs that tell the story of the place in five languages.

On onne of the tombstones is written:

"This place is a holy place.

You’re stepping on what is left of the largest necropolis of the East. This place was the burial place of the Jews of Salonika for hundreds of years. The most vibrant community in the Mediterranean basin found their last resting place. Their graves reached the surrounding hills.

Until in 1943 the evil forces destroyed the human being. But they were not satisfied with people. They wanted to eradicate even the memory of the Jews. So when they sent the Jews to their deaths, at the same time they destroyed the graves and scattered the bones of the dead. Those who were buried in this cemetery died a second time … During the Nazi occupation, this glorious community was cut off. In the framework of the "Final Solution" most of the Jews of Salonika, some 50,000 souls, were murdered in the gas chambers of Auschwitz-Birkenau. In their attempt to erase every trace of Jewish presence in the city, the Nazis began to demolish the Jewish cemetery in December 1942.

This holy place contained the graves of more than 300,000 Jews. It stretched from Agentia Street to the "40 Accalias" area and included the current campus area.

After the Holocaust, a new Jewish cemetery was set up on the outskirts of the city. In front of the entrance there is a large plaza with an impressive monument for the victims of the Holocaust, and on its front is a large mass brothers-grave where they buried the bones of the Jews that were scattered throughout the old cemetery. On the mass grave there is a tombstone engraved: "Here are the remains of the remains of our forefathers who remained in exile and were gathered in the ancient cemetery that existed in our town from 1495 and was destroyed by the cursed Nazis in 1942."

Behind it there is also a monument to Jewish soldiers in the Greek army who were killed in World War I and in the Balkan War. The place is very clean and well maintained. The gravestones in the new cemetery are uniform and orderly as in a Israeli military cemetery. Along the fences and the passages are standing fragments of tombstones collected from the old cemetery. The visit to the cemetery is very touching. There is a deathly silence, and an atmosphere of sacred melancholy surrounds the visitors. There are many trees growing high and birds flying among them, but even birds do not chirp in this holy place. Glory and splendor and silence.

There are other Jewish sites in Salonika worth visiting. The president of the community, David Shaltiel, is working energetically to renovate and restore Jewish sites and to assimilate the lessons of the Holocaust. He runs classes in state schools, organizes special seminars for teachers, and organizes special workshops for local tour guides. One of his ambitious projects is the establishment of a Holocaust museum on an area of the old railway station. He plans to set up a Jewish school for 1,000 students, knowing that most of them will be non-Jews. They also read a special interview with David Shaltiel.

The symbol of Thessaloniki is “The White Tower" which is the main tourist attraction. It is a tower that was once part of the wall that surrounded the city. Only the watchtower, which is about ten stories high, remains from the wall. The White Tower also has a Jewish aspect. It was once called “The Red Blood Tower”, where death row inmates were imprisoned and they were executed there. Before the prison was closed in 1890, one of the prisoners, who happened to be Jewish, persuaded the prison commander to whitewash the tower in exchange for a pardon. The commander agreed, thinking that the prisoner would not be able to paint higher than the ladders. But the Jewish prisoner tied himself to the ropes the tower and succeeded in painting the entire outer walls. The white paint cleaned the tower's "red blood" and also cleaned the conscience of the city's residents. Today the white color has faded and disappeared, and in the six floors of the tower there is a museum of the history of the city. A must see!

The second popular tourist attraction in Salonika is the Galerius Arch. It is part of an ancient Roman building. The Arch was commissioned by Emperor Galerius to commemorate his victory over the Sassanid Persians in 298 CE and to take over a vast collection of Persian gold vessels. The inner part of the arch is reminiscent of the Titus Gate in Rome. The rainbow is located next to Agentia Street, next to the post tower.

Thessaloniki has a beautiful promenade that reminds me of Bat Yam's boardwalk. Residential buildings adjacent to the coastline. You can also visit Aristoteles Square on the promenade, from which its main street is a city. The promenade begins at the edge of the famous port of Thessaloniki. Along it is the white tower, and other sculptures and attractions. There’re some more tourist attractions along the seashore promenade, that I don’t have enough space to describe all. Please chaeck with your hotel.

After a day's hike we should go for a romantic cruise in the Gulf of Salonika. Opposite the white tower are tourist boats that offer a short cruise with a drink (coffee or ouzo) at a very cheap price. It is a wonderful way to end a day of walking in the city, feel the whisper breeze, listen to the waves, and watch the beautiful promenade from the sea.

When traveling in Greece, you should also experience one of the many taverns. At the ODOS Taverna they offer kosher food some nights, to the music of Greek musicians of bouzouki and organ musicians. The evening I visited there were 65 Jews, almost all were religious tourists from Israel. The Greek music and the sharp drink elevate the soul. During the evening, Rabbi Kaplan of Beyt Chabad dragged to the dance floor a partition (Mehitza) separate the dancing men and women, and I could not believe my eyes that in Salonika were dancing like a religious wedding in Israel.

For religious Jewish tourists, it is recommended to stay at the Astoria Hotel, where a kosher restaurant (alongside a non-kosher restaurant) operates. The kosher restaurant also serves non-guests at the hotel.

On its restaurant floor there is also a Chabad House and a small prayer hall with a Holy Ark. Every day there is a shiur in Ein Ya'akov, which was composed by the Chief Rabbi of Salonika in the past. For me it was an exciting experience. At  the Chabad House you can buy dry food and Canned food to go. There is no grocer in this "grocery store". Buyers can take products from the shelves and are expected to place the payment in a bowl on one of the shelves. The local emissary, Rabbi Yoel Kaplan and his brother Yossi, help each guest, advising about Jewish sites, and help to contact local Hebrew-speaking tour guides.

The way back from Salonika to the airport provokes sad thoughts. This city was once a Jewish power. But the big power did not stand up to its Jews in the face of the historical catastrophe of the Holocaust. I was wondering what lesson can this teach us about Israel's military forces nowadays in a new world catastrophe ever happen?…

For those planning a trip to Thessaloniki, I recommend reading before the trip the book "Thessaloniki City of Ghosts" by Mark Mazower. The book describes in a narrative way the co-existence of the cultures and religions in the city between the years 1430 and 1950.

In Tel Aviv, "Organization of the Survivors of the Extermination Camps of Greek Jews in Israel" is headed by Miriam Masri. The organization takes care of Holocaust survivors and conducts various social activities. They are also happy to help and advise in choosing routes and sites in Salonika. Their phone number: 03-688-4928

The author was a guest of the Greece tourist chamber in Israel GNTO. Special thanks to Mr. Charilaos Kalipidis and Mrs. Maria Poulouktsi for helping collect material for the research for this article.