Citation

Droumpouki AM. Journal of Jewish Identities 2021; 14(2): 135-154.

Copyright

(Copyright © 2021)

DOI

10.1353/jji.2021.0027

PMID

unavailable

Abstract

The Holocaust claimed the lives of over 85% of Greece's Jews, a percentage among the highest in the continent. As with most of their coreligionists in liberated Europe, in the wake of the Holocaust, Greek Jews found themselves in dire straits. Looking through early 1945 reports, which the Athens-based Central Board of Jewish Communities in Greece (CBJCG) sent to the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee (JDC) and the Jewish Agency appealing for immediate assistance, one is inundated with images of embitterment and desperation. Of some 4,800 Jews in Athens alone, a figure that did not include survivors of the death camps who had yet to return, it was claimed that 85% were completely short of any kind of means to live on, 10% needed partial assistance, and only 5% were entirely financially independent. Severe food shortages, sleeping rough, and the ongoing civil war in the streets of the capital in the winter of 1944--45 had led to a considerable number of deaths. Worryingly, it was also asserted that "owing to their misery" many Jews had attempted to commit suicide.1 The Jewish presence in Greece in the wake of the Holocaust by and large constitutes terra incognita. A key aim of this article is to give voice to the historical subject at the collective and individual level. To this end, a considerable part of the evidentiary material is drawn from the archives of the CBJCG and the Jewish Community of Athens (JCA). The article aims to offer a comprehensive account on the ins and outs ofboth the CBJCG and the reconstituted JCA in the early post-Holocaust era. It examines in detail their activities vis-à-vis reconstruction, rehabilitation, emigration and reparations (the CBJCG at the national level and the JCA at the local level), and seeks to address the extent to which the varied experiences of Holocaust survivors conditioned the two collective bodies' stances on the above burning issues. © 2021 Johns Hopkins University Press. All rights reserved.

Language: en