Poland has agreed to return to Greece 76 Greek Jewish artifacts to be displayed in the Jewish Museum of Greece in Athens, the Greek Culture Ministry has announced.
The ministry had filed a formal request for the repatriation of the historical artifacts before Lina Mendoni, the Greek Minister of Culture who, while attending the Informal Council of EU Culture Ministers, met with her Polish counterpart Hanna Wroblewska in Warsaw to finalize the deal.
The artifacts, currently housed at the Jewish Historical Institute in Warsaw, Poland were discovered in Lower Silesia and hold deep historical and emotional significance for Greece’s Jewish community.
“Preserving historical memory is our duty to the Greek Jewish communities, to the relatives of those murdered in the crematoria and to future generations,” Mendoni said. Acknowledging the bureaucratic challenges of a repatriation, she added that it is “very important for Greece and for the Greek Jewish community for these artifacts to be returned to their home.”
According to the ministry, the repatriation of the 76 artifacts is expected to be completed within 2025. Piotr Rypson, Poland’s Director of Cultural Heritage, and Zanet Battinou, Director of the Jewish Museum of Greece, presented the documentation for the repatriation of the artifacts to the two ministers.
The World Jewish Restitution Organization (WJRO) had initiated and worked closely with both the Greek and Polish authorities to help make the return of the 76 artifacts from Poland possible. These items, according to Gideon Taylor, President of WJRO, including Torah scrolls, silver ritual objects and other sacred pieces, were taken during the Holocaust.
In a joint statement, Taylor and Mark Weitzman, COO of WJRO, thanked the Greek and Polish governments for their commitment to seeing “this long-overdue return through.”
“These treasures are powerful symbols of a once-vibrant Jewish life in Greece and a testament to the resilience of the Jewish people. Their return is not only an act of historical justice, but also a meaningful step in honoring the memory of the Holocaust and preserving Jewish heritage for future generations,” Taylor and Weitzman said.
Polish Minister Wroblewska on the other hand, echoed Mendoni’s sentiments about returning cultural treasures to their places of origin as an act of historical and cultural justice. She also reaffirmed Poland’s firm stance on the reunification of the Parthenon Marbles in Athens, calling for the permanent return of the sculptures to their homeland, after Mendoni seized the opportunity to raise the issue.
“We are grateful for the Polish government’s consistent backing of Greece’s request, as expressed by Prime Minister Donald Tusk during his meeting with our Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis a year ago here in Warsaw,” Mendoni said.
During the meeting, the two culture ministers also discussed the growing cultural partnership between Poland and Greece, extending beyond the repatriation to include potential exchanges in cinema, contemporary art exhibitions and craftmanship.
Most of Greece’s once-thriving Jewish community perished during the Holocaust
Once part of thriving communities in several Greek cities, approximately 59,000 Greek Jews were victims of the Holocaust—at least 83 percent of the total number living in Greece at the time of World War II and the German Occupation.
Thessaloniki was the cultural hub for Sephardic Jews who had been expelled from Spain in 1492. The city counted 50,000 Jews, about two thirds of Greek Jewry. Thessaloniki Jews were politically, economically and socially well-integrated into Greek society after hundreds of years living there.
During the German Occupation (1941-1944), Thessaloniki’s Jews suffered a terrible fate. The Nazis confined them to ghettos, forced them to wear a yellow star on their clothes and banned them from public spaces. Jewish newspapers were closed, and synagogues, businesses and hospitals looted.
In 1942, German authorities, with the assistance of local authorities, demolished an ancient Jewish cemetery. Today, it is the site of the campus of the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki.
On July 11th, 1942, a day that would come to be known as “Black Shabbat,” Jewish men aged 18-45 were called to Eleftherias Square for forced labor and made to perform humiliating physical activities at gunpoint. One year later, some 54,000 Jews were sent to Nazi extermination camps, mainly Auschwitz-Birkenau. More than 90 percent of the city’s Jewish population was murdered.
In Thrace in 1943, the Bulgarian authorities that had allied with the Germans deported Thracian and Macedonian Jews to the Treblinka death camp and fewer than 10 percent of the total of 4,000 survived. They even arrested and deported the three Jews who were living on Samothrace Island.
In Ioannina there were the Romaniote Jews, who called themselves Yanniote Jews. They were a thriving community of about 4,000 to 5,000 at the beginning of the 20th century. By the time World War II started, there were only 2,000 left because the rest had emigrated, mostly to America. By the end of the Nazi occupation, only 50 survived; the rest had met a horrible fate in the death camps.
Some 59,000 Greek Jews perished during World War II, murdered by the Nazis, representing about 83 percent of the total Jewish population. It was one of the highest percentages in Europe. There are very few Greek Jews who survived the holocaust that are still alive today.
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