A Jewish gravestone in a house entrance

The destruction of the Jewish cemetery of Thessaloniki began on December 6, 1943. It was carried out by Greek workers under orders from the Municipality of Thessaloniki and had been sanctioned by the city’s Nazi command. The Jewish cemetery, situated at the current location of the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, covered an area of 35 hectares and contained more than 300,000 graves. The relocation of the cemetery had been suggested as early as 1912 when the Greek army seized the city, the population of which at the time was 50% Jewish. After the Great Fire of 1917, the zoning plan proposed by the French urban planner Ernest Hébrard called for the creation of green spaces and the establishment of a university campus in the location of the Jewish cemetery.

During the interwar period and particularly under the Metaxas regime, several decisions concerning the cemetery were rescinded thanks to the efforts of the Jewish community. The decisions had stipulated the forced expropriation of parts of the cemetery and their subsequent conversion into a residential area to house 1922 refugees and accommodate the expansion of the university. In 1930, refugees living to the east of the cemetery vandalized 70 graves ‘because, due to a decision by the Cemetery Committee of the Jewish Community, the cemetery gates closed at 9 p.m., preventing people from using the cemetery as a shortcut on their way home’. In 1931, after the pogrom against the Campbell Jewish Quarter, members of the nationalist organisation ‘3E’ ‘charged into the Jewish cemetery and destroyed hundreds of graves’.

The final destruction of the cemetery took place during the Nazi occupation of Thessaloniki. While the city’s Jewish residents were confined in ghettos, the cemetery was looted and the stolen bricks and marble gravestones were used as building materials for houses, Christian churches, roads and squares, with the results still visible today in various parts of the city. In the words of Ilias Petropoulos: ‘At first, the looting took place after dark. But when the rabble learned that the “Holy” Church and the Municipality of Thessaloniki had officially joined the plunder, the whole city got to work. You could see whole families stealing bricks and marble pieces. Even today, I can find and photograph marble gravestones built into yards all over Thessaloniki’. The gravestone in the photograph is located on the landing of a residence on Limnaiou Street, a street in Ano Poli that crosses Eptapyrgiou Street.