Situation Update: Greece 2012

Transcription

1 Situation Update: Greece 2012 Nazi victims and Jewish Community Out of an overall population of 10.8 million people, there are an estimated 4,500 Jews in Greece. Approximately 510 are Holocaust survivors, of whom 80 percent live in Athens and Thessaloniki with the remaining 20 percent divided among six other Jewish communities. Following are the approximate number of Nazi victims in each of the country's eight Jewish communities: Athens: 243 Thessaloniki: 160 Larissa: 55 Volos: 19 Halkis: 13 Ionnina: 9 Trikala: 7 Corfu: 4 Pensions for elderly survivors have been reduced by up to 30 percent. Medications now need to be paid for upon receipt, fully out of pocket, and it is not clear if recipients will be reimbursed by their insurance or pension plans. Survivors savings invested in Greek treasury bonds lost 75 percent of their value. Until 2011 any citizen who earned less than 12,000 per year did not have to pay income taxes, but now taxes are required for all income. Most Nazi victims own their 1

2 own apartments and previously did not have to pay property taxes, but with the recent legislation of drastic austerity measures in Greece, all property owners must now pay a new tax on electricity usage based on the size of their property and the particular location in the city. Finally, like in Eastern European countries, we have been told that elderly who are admitted into state-run hospitals now need to bribe physicians to receive acceptable care. On a Jewish communal level, additional hardships have also been introduced. Religious institutions were formerly taxed on their property at only a two to five percent rate, but now they are taxed at a 40 percent rate. The poor economic environment has shuttered many businesses, significantly diminishing the rental income the community collected through leasing space in its properties. Those tenants who can still pay rent have negotiated much lower lease payments. Finally in such a depressed climate, the communities cannot sell any of their properties to generate income to support the needs of their members. In this dire social and economic situation, Holocaust victims have particular difficulties, as many of them have ended up abandoned or without the financial support of their families and find themselves forced to live alone even when unable to fully care for themselves. Each retired person now receives on average about 400 a month from the state, and with the new taxes, seniors receive even less than that amount. This reduced pension is expected to cover all expenses, though it is substantially less than what is actually needed. Claims Conference Compensation Payments Claims Conference negotiations with the German government in late 2011 resulted in substantial changes in eligibility criteria for Claims Conference pensions. Some of these changes will have a direct and immediate impact on Greek Holocaust survivors, allowing them to now receive 300 monthly payments from the Article 2 Fund. Many Greek Jews survived the war in hiding during the Nazi occupation. Under Article 2, previously a survivor had to have lived in hiding for 18 months to be eligible for payment. The Claims Conference negotiated to change that minimum period to 12 2

3 months, bringing into the program many Greek Jews who had lived until September 1943 under the relative safety of Italian occupation. As of the end of 2011, 156 survivors in Greece were receiving Article 2 Fund pensions. Claims Conference Liaison Representatives The Claims Conference now has one representative working in each of the country s eight Jewish communities to contact every single survivor, inform them of their potential eligibility for pensions or one-time payments from the Hardship Fund, and help them apply as soon as possible. This new initiative has, over the past few months, resulted in approvals of 125 new applications to the Article 2 Fund. That represents roughly 25% of the entire country s survivor population. Senior Claims Conference staff is working with the Greek Jewish community to thoroughly and clearly explain the new criteria and the application process. The community has expressed its gratitude for the Claims Conference s close involvement in this process and its concern that as many Greek survivors as possible receive payments (a letter is attached at the end of this document). Claims Conference Allocations To help meet the new and urgent needs of survivors in Greece, the Claims Conference more than tripled its allocation to the Central Board of Jewish Communities in Greece (KIS) for 2012, allocating a total of approximately $272,000 for homecare, emergency assistance, medical equipment, medicine, and transportation for Nazi victims. Sara Miskatel, Athens Sara Miskatel, recovering from a broken arm and leg, anxiously awaits her pension payments from the Claims Conference, which help her to pay for a now-necessary homecare aide in the midst of Greece s economic catastrophe. 3

4 Sara, a lively Athenian of 84, fell recently in her simple, spotless apartment. She also had a pacemaker implanted in February. She lived alone until these setbacks, but now she s had to hire an aide who comes for three hours each day. It s a source of anxiety and stress for Sara to find the money to pay for this necessity. Sara s monthly government pension has been slashed by 30 percent, to 308. Sara has received a pension from the Claims Conference s Article 2 Fund since 2006, which now pays 300 a month, because of her wartime experiences. These two payments, totaling 608, are Sara s only monthly income. Claims Conference allocations to the Central Board of Jewish Communities in Greece helps Sara to partially pay for her homecare aide s cost of 400 a month. But Sara must pay the balance. Sara can t manage without her aide, who cleans Sara s wounds, washes her in the shower, shops and cleans the apartment, and prepares meals. During the Shoah, many Greek Jews were deported to concentration camps. But Sara and her family fled Athens in time, and hid in the mountain suburbs. Non-Jews helped the family to move from place to place, never staying in a house more than a week, Sara remembers. Every day had the possibility of danger. A German soldier once discovered Sara hiding in an attic. The Nazi put his pistol in her mouth, preparing to shoot her. In a quickthinking moment, the teenager made the sign of the cross over herself, which saved her life, as the Nazi thought she was a Christian. Another time, Nazis entered a house where her brother was hiding in the attic. At the same moment, the boy made a noise, which the soldiers heard. Sara quickly told the Germans that the storm overnight must have ruined the attic and the Nazis lost interest. It was a miracle, she said. Sara and her husband, also a Greek survivor, married after the war. The couple never had children, a result of medical experiments performed on him during the Shoah. They lived in Israel for 15 years until he died 29 years ago, when Sara returned to the 4

5 land of her birth. She still speaks fluent Hebrew, and has pictures of Jerusalem and other scenes of Israel hanging on the walls of her apartment. Sara is grateful for the help she receives from the Claims Conference. The children of her brother, who died last year, also help her financially, and she cries with emotion when she talks how important the money is to her. Still, she waits for her Claims Conference pension payments with great anxiety. Greek Jewry During World War II The information below is taken from the online exhibit, "The Holocaust in Greece," on the website of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. More information is available at The indigenous Jewish communities of Greece represent the longest continuous Jewish presence in Europe. These communities, along with those who settled in Greece after their expulsion from Spain, were almost completely destroyed in the Holocaust. In the spring of 1941, the Germans defeated the Greek army and occupied Greece until October The country was divided into three zones of occupation: Bulgaria annexed Thrace and Yugoslav Macedonia; Germany occupied Greek Macedonia, including Thessaloniki, Piraeus, and western Crete; and Italy occupied the remainder of the mainland and the islands. Where Jews resided determined not only their subsequent fate, but also their ultimate possibility of escape. Between 8,000 and 10,000 Greek Jews survived the Holocaust due in large part to the unwillingness of the Greek people, including leaders in the Greek Orthodox Church, to cooperate with German plans for deporting Jews. In addition, the Italian occupying authorities refused to facilitate or permit deportations from the Italian zone of occupation until Italy surrendered in September 1943 and the Germans took over those areas. Even though deportations did not start until March 1943, Greece lost at least 81 percent of its Jewish population during the Holocaust. Between 60,000 and 70,000 Greek Jews perished, most of them at Auschwitz-Birkenau. Only about 4,500 Jews presently live in Greece, mostly in Athens and Thessaloniki. Jews have lived in Athens since the 3 rd century B.C.E., and the remains of an ancient synagogue can be found in the Agora, at the foot of the Acropolis. In 1940 the community numbered 3,500. In Athens, under Italian control for three years, two-thirds of the Jews were saved, in large part due to the issuance of 5

6 false identification cards by the police chief and false baptismal certificates ordered by the archbishop. The Germans took control of the island of Corfu in 1943, after the fall of Italy, and promulgated antisemitic laws. In June 1944, the Nazis deported 1,800 Corfu Jews to Auschwitz, and 200 went into hiding with Christian families. Evidence dates a Jewish presence in Ioannina back to 70 C.E., with an influx of Sephardim in the 15 th and 16 th centuries. With Ioannina occupied by the Italians until 1943, the president of the Jewish community was arrested in March 1944 and learned of deportation plans. He smuggled a note out to a prominent member of the Jewish Community Board, who unfortunately did not relay the warning. Ioannina's 1,860 Jews were all deported to Auschwitz in March There were 900 Jews in Kastoria in In March 1944, 763 Jews were rounded up for deportation, first to Thessaloniki and then to Auschwitz-Birkenau. Thirty-five Jews survived the Holocaust in Kastoria, and only one Jewish family remains after 500 years of a Jewish presence in the city. For centuries Thessaloniki, honored with the title "La Madre de Israel," was the most populous city of Sephardic Jewry in the world. In summer 1942, the persecution began. Men were conscripted for forced labor, forced to stand for hours in the hot summer sun, and were beaten and humiliated. Jews were ordered to wear the Yellow Star and forced to move into an enclosed ghetto. In March 1943, deportations began. Every three days, freight cars crammed with 2,000 Jews headed toward Auschwitz. By summer 1943, the Germans had deported nearly 47,000 Jews. Several factors contributed to the loss of such a large number of Jews from Thessaloniki. It was under direct German occupation, the Jewish community was highly concentrated, Jews had no idea that they were going to killing centers, and the head rabbi reportedly assisted the Germans in organizing efficient roundups. Because the Jews of Thessaloniki spoke Ladino, their spoken Greek was easily distinguishable. While the possibility of escape existed, most Jews, fearing separation from their families, did not take advantage of the available escape options. Thessaloniki lost 94 percent of its Jews in the Holocaust. Only 1,200 live there now, a mere shadow of the once glorious "La Madre de Israel." In 1940 there were 882 Jews living in Volos, who lived in relative safety under Italian occupation until the German takeover in The head rabbi worked with the local Archbishop and the resistance to find sanctuary for the city s Jews in the mountainous villages of Pelion. Due to these efforts, 74 percent of Volos' Jews were saved, while 130 were deported to Auschwitz. 6

7 For 2,300 years, Jews have lived on the island of Rhodes. As with other areas under Italian occupation, the Jews of Rhodes remained relatively safe until the German occupation in In July 1944 the almost 2,000 Jews living on the island were deported, first sent by boat to the Greek mainland where they were incarcerated in the transit camp Haidary, from whence they were deported by train to Auschwitz. Only 151 Jews from Rhodes survived the Holocaust. All 275 Jews of the island Zakynthos survived the Holocaust. In 1944 Mayor Loukas Carrer was ordered at gunpoint to hand over a list of Jews residing on the island. The list was presented to the Germans by Bishop Chrysostomos containing only two names: Mayor Carrer and himself. The bishop bravely told the Germans, "Here are your Jews. If you choose to deport the Jews of Zakynthos, you must also take me and I will share their fate. In the interim, all the Jews of the island were safely hidden in the mountainous villages. While the whole island knew what was happening, not one person revealed their whereabouts. After a devastating earthquake in 1953, the first boat to arrive with aid was from Israel, with a message that read, "The Jews of Zakynthos have never forgotten their Mayor or their beloved Bishop and what they did for us." Support for Countering Anti-Semitism The Claims Conference is allocating 96,000 to the Jewish Museum of Greece for its educational program on anti-semitism. The museum will research and collect photographs, artifacts, and archival material that document cases of anti-semitism in Greece, supplemented by interviews. An exhibition will be created based on the Museum s research with a traveling classroom version of the exhibit s contents circulated among Greek secondary schools. This project is especially significant now because of the votes received by the neo-nazi party Golden Dawn in the recent elections. Due to the Greek economic crisis, the Claims Conference is taking the unusual step of funding this entire project. Recording a Lost Community With Claims Conference support, the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum is reconstructing the archives of the Thessaloniki Jewish community by cataloging and reproducing Thessaloniki archival collections found in various repositories around the world. These records are the only remaining evidence of that centuries-old Jewish community, before its destruction during World War II. 7

8 Since 2008, the Museum has successfully reproduced Thessaloniki Jewish community records held by the Osobyi Archives in Moscow, the Jewish Community of Thessaloniki, the Jewish Community of Athens, the Czech National Archives, and YIVO in New York. Additional Thessaloniki Jewish community holdings that the Museum is planning to microfilm are stored in repositories in Jerusalem and Amsterdam. Through this project, the Museum has reunited the surviving records of this Jewish community for the first time since The Museum plans to give a set of all the materials to the Archives of the Jewish Community of Thessaloniki. 8

9 9