The ghettos of Thessaloniki

The Germans invaded Thessaloniki in April 1941. The first restrictive measures they took against the city’s Jewish population had a limited scope. Then, on July 11, 1942, the German command forced all Jewish men to gather on Eleftheria Square so that they could be conscripted into forced labour. The Germans proceeded to publicly humiliate them by hitting, hazing and shouting at them under the hot summer sun. What followed was a premeditated campaign to annihilate the city’s Jewish community. First, thousands of Jews were sent to do forced labour in various places throughout Greece, where many fell ill and died due to the harsh living and working conditions. The city’s Jewish Community paid an exorbitant ransom to liberate the Jewish workers and was forced to accept the destruction of Thessaloniki’s ancient Jewish cemetery, a process that started in December 1942.

In February 1943, the city’s professional unions and chambers were ordered to expel all their Jewish members. From February 25 onwards, all Jews were forced to stay inside ghettos created for detainment, wear the yellow star and declare all their assets. According to Evanghelos Hekimoglou’s research, there were four ghettos in Thessaloniki: one at the centre of the city (delimited by the church of Panagia Chalkeon, Egnatia Street and Dioikitiriou Street), one in the east (between the axes of Vasilissis Olgas/Vasileos Georgiou Street and Papanastasiou Street/Stratos Avenue, with March 25^th Street as its eastern limit), one in the Jewish quarter 151 (spanning both sides of Kleanthous Street) and one in the area of Rezi Vardar (between Promitheos Street and the intersection of Lagada Street and Monastiriou Street).

From the ghettos, the Jews were gradually transported to the Baron Hirsch military transit camp, a Jewish neighbourhood located between Monastiriou Street and the intersection of Stathmou Street and Anagenniseos Street. The quarter had been established in 1892 initially to house Jewish fire victims who had survived the blaze of 1890. Later, families left homeless by the arson attack on the Campbell Jewish quarter in 1931, which had itself housed victims of the Great Fire of 1917, settled in Baron Hirsch, appropriated unoccupied land and built shacks. The area was chosen by the German authorities due to its proximity to the train station.

At the beginning of March 1943, the area was surrounded with wooden fences and razor wire and residents were prohibited from exiting. On March 15, the first train carrying Baron Hirsch residents departed for the extermination camps of Auschwitz and Birkenau. Over a period of four months, about 43,000 of Thessaloniki’s Jews were loaded onto overcrowded wagons meant for animals, and train after train carried them to extermination camps. Whether it lasted weeks or just a few hours, their stay in Hirsch had been harrowing and, according to testimonies, many affluent Jews were tortured in an effort to extract information about assets they might have hidden.

In the photograph, we can see the entrance to the Baron Hirsch camp. On the wooden fence, there is a sign in three languages (German, Italian and Greek) bearing the Star of David. It is the Italian part that is easier to read: Zona abitata da ebrei (area inhabited by Jews).