The President of Germany Frank-Walter Steinmeier has begun a three-day official visit to Greece, with a focus on addressing crimes committed during World War II.
On Tuesday, Steinmeier visited the site of the future Holocaust Museum in Thessaloniki with Greek President Katerina Sakellaropoulou. The museum is being built with German support.
The German president offered the Museum an album with photographs from Ioannina (Yannena) that show the transport of Greek Romaniot Jews living there to the Nazi concentration camps. The album’s first photograph, he said, shows a young woman crying, foretelling her fate.
President of the Central Board of Jewish Communities in Greece (KIS) and of the Jewish Community of Thessaloniki, David Saltiel, said on receiving the album that it will be the first historical document to be placed in the new Museum.
Steinmeier and Sakellaropoulou talked with two female survivors of the Holocaust from the Jewish Community of Thessaloniki – Rina Revah, 85, and Rosi Saltiel, 89 – and planted symbolically two pomegranate trees.
Holocaust Museum in Thessaloniki, Greece
The municipality of Thessaloniki finally approved the construction of the Holocaust Museum in December 2023, a decade after the project was conceived.
The location of the Holocaust Museum near the rail station is symbolic as nearly 50,000 Jews were sent from there to their deaths in German concentration camps during World War II.
Some 46,000 Thessaloniki Jews were transported to Auschwitz-Birkenau between March and August 1943, said the president of the Jewish community in Thessaloniki David Saltiel. Just 1,950 returned, he said.
“The community lost 97 percent of its members, around 50,000 people,” he added, noting that Jews comprised a fifth of Thessaloniki’s population at the time.
Before the deportations started, the Jewish community in the city, which mainly comprised Sephardic Jews whose ancestors had been chased out of Spain in 1492, had flourished to the point where it had earned the nickname “The Jerusalem of the Balkans.”
But then came the horrors of 1943, when virtually all of the town’s Jews were deported.
Germany’s crimes in Greece
Speaking to German media on the site of the future Museum, Steinmeier said, “It is not enough to remember and think – which is undoubtedly important – but we must also see this Museum as a mission for democracy in our era, when democracy is not protected by challenges, is being doubted more than in any other recent decade. We must see this Museum as a mission to assume action for democracy.”
He added that “whoever stands and speaks here as president of the Federal Republic of Germany feels ashamed,” and underlined the decision of the German state to contribute to the Museum’s construction.
Memory cannot be limited to words, President Steinmeier said but must become real for future generations, and the Holocaust Museum will be dedicated to Jews from all over Greece.
Steinmeier will also visit Kandanos on Crete, which was almost destroyed by German forces in June 1941.
The village was burned to the ground and Nazi troops massacred all its 180 residents on June 3, 1941. It was one of the worst atrocities committed by the occupiers and has haunted Crete and Greece for decades.
Greece demands reparations from Germany
Greece is seeking more than three hundred billion dollars for damage incurred by occupying Nazi Germans during World War II. This figure is based on the country’s material losses during the war, including the destruction of infrastructure, loss of property, and death of over three hundred thousand civilians.
Greece’s claims were formally renewed in 2019 under the previous SYRIZA left-wing government. The current conservative administration, while not publicly pressing Berlin, has said it considers the issue unresolved.
Steinmeier is also to pay tribute to Greek efforts in taking in refugees. Around 46,000 people have reached the country by sea this year so far, more than in the whole of last year.
The German president is to visit the Malakasa Reception Facility near Athens which provides for the registration and temporary accommodation of refugees.
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