Saloniki

'Jerusalem of the Balkans': Exploring Thessaloniki's lost Jewish history - opinion

I had long wanted to visit the city where the port once closed on Shabbat, and where Jews were both longshoremen and leaders in commercial development.

|ByBARBARA SOFER
Thessaloniki, Greece
Genesis Prize Foundation Chairman Stan Polovets, left, with German President Frank-Walter Steinmeier at the groundbreaking for the Holocaust Museum of Greece in Thessaloniki, Oct. 29, 2024.

Thessaloniki breaks ground on new Holocaust museum

The 9,000-square-foot museum occupying eight floors in an octagon-shaped structure will be located at the site of Thessaloniki’s Old Railway Station.

|ByLARRY LUXNER/JTA
ARCH OF Galerius.

Salonika – Echoes from the Jewish past

The first Jews arrived in Salonika in the 2nd century BCE from Alexandria, giving rise to the city's rich Jewish history, one also filled with tragedies.

|ByNAHUM SCHNITZER
Israeli movie receives award at Thessaloniki Film Festival

80 years later, Thessaloniki’s documentary film festival to pay tribute to deported Jews

The city’s documentary film festival is paying tribute to Jews killed during the Holocaust and to the Jewish community’s enduring importance to the city.

|ByELISE MORTON/JTA

The story of Jewish Salonica

Historian Prof. Sarah Abrevaya Stein follows the Sephardi Levy family of Salonica from the end of the 19th century through the city’s transformation into present-day Greek Thessaloniki.

AUGUST 12, 2020ByYAËLLE AZAGURY
Family Papers: A Sephardic Journey Through the Twentieth Century

Greek Jewry and the Holocaust

Before World War II, approximately 80,000 Jews lived in Greece in 31 different communities. By war’s end, only 10,000 Jews survived.

MAY 8, 2019ByALAN ROSENBAUM
INVASTION OF German army into Greece.