JEWISH SENTINEL

10 JEWISH WORLD • DECEMBER 20-26, 2024 By LARRY LUXNER F or half a millennium until the Holocaust, the cosmopolitan city of Thessaloniki, Greece, had a unique claim to fame: it was Europe’s only major city with a Jewish majority. But the golden age of Thessaloni- ki’s mostly Sephardic, Ladi- no-speaking Jewish community came to a sudden end with the Nazi occupation of Greece in 1941. It In Memory Of Greek Jewry Thessaloniki breaks ground on new Holocaust museum continued on page 27 HOLOCAUST turned cataclysmic with the depor- tation two years later to Auschwitz of nearly all the city’s Jews. By the end of World War II, some 65,000 Greek Jews — 87% of the total and 96% of those from Thessaloniki — had been killed, leaving barely 2,000 survivors in Thessaloniki (also known as Salonika). Among them were the parents of Dr. Albert Bourla, a veterinarian who would go on to become the chairPan and &(2 oI 3fi]er, one oI the world’s largest pharmaceutical companies. In 2022, Bourla won the Genesis Prize — often described as the Jew- ish Nobel — for leading the devel- oSPent oI 3fi]er’s &29,' Yac- cine. Stan Polovets, co-founder and chairman of the Genesis Prize Foun- dation, said in announcing the re- ward, “Millions of people are alive and healthy because of what Dr. %ourla and his teaP at 3fi]er haYe accomplished.” Now, with global antisemitism at its worst levels since World War II, Bourla is about to realize another milestone: the long-awaited open- ing of a Holocaust Museum of Greece. Bourla donated the $1 million Genesis Prize to the construction of the museum. The Stavros Niarchos Foundation and the governments of Greece and Germany also fund it. The museum's management is cur- rently trying to raise an additional $10 million. “Those who know me know that in addition to being very proud of my Jewish heritage, I am equally proud of being Greek,” Bourla said in an emotional June 2022 speech in Jerusalem accepting the Genesis Prize. “My mother’s courage and optimism came from her experience of narrowly escaping death at the hands of the Nazis. In fact, both of my parents turned their experience surviving the Holocaust into some- thing SositiYe and liIe aIfirPing This clearly shaped my worldview.” The 9,000-square-foot museum, occuSying eight floors in an octa- gon-shaped structure, will be locat- ed at the site of Thessaloniki’s Old 5ailway 6tation, where the first 1a]i train carrying Jews to Auschwitz de- parted on March 15, 1943. But the museum, slated to open in 2026, won’t be just about the trage- dy of the Holocaust. Exhibits and artifacts will tell the story of more than 2,300 years of Greek Jewish history in Thessaloniki and 38 other commu nities, beginning with the an- cient Romaniote Jews who settled in Greece during the reign of Alexan- der the Great. At an Oct. 29 groundbreaking cer- emony in Thessaloniki, Polovets was joined by German President Frank-Walter Steinmeier, Greek President Katerina Sakellaropoulou, and local dignitaries and Holocaust survivors. “I was honored to participate and was moved by the ceremony, during which President Steinmeier said he ‘felt shame’ and that the memory of what was done to the Jewish people on this site ‘cannot be erased.’ That is why this museum is so import- ant,” Polovets said. “The memory of this once-vibrant Greek Jewish com- munity and its near destruction by the Nazis — especially during the current wave of rising global an- tisemitism—must never be erased.” O nly about 5,000 Jews remain in Greece: About 4,000 live in Athens, and the remainder live in Thessaloniki, Ioannina, Rhodes, Corfu, and other communities. Meanwhile, Greece has not been im- mune to the wave of antisemitism The museum will be located at Thessalon- iki’s Old Railway Station, from which the city’s Jews were deported to Auschwitz. Deportation of the 1e^ish community of Ioannina in 4arch . Almost all ^ere murdered at Ausch^ita.