Being Leftist and Jewish in Greece during the Civil War and its Aftermath: Constraints and Choices

HTML
Published: Jun 19, 2019
DOI: https://doi.org/10.12681/historein.14601
Keywords:
Holocaust Shoah Resistance Greek Civil War Greece
Eleni Beze
University of Thessaly
https://orcid.org/0000-0003-2879-5370
Abstract
After the end of the Second World War, and as a result of the ensuing Greek Civil War (1946–1949), former resistance members went through a period of generalised, severe persecution. In this context, Jews who had survived the Shoah by taking part in the resistance in some way or by going into hiding under the protection of the resistance forces had to denounce their former comrades or communist rescuers. How did Greek Jews who had been influenced by leftist ideology respond to the politics of the civil war and its aftermath? How were their responses affected by the attitudes of the Greek state, Jewish community and State of Israel towards them? Following the traces left mainly in a) the archives of the Jewish Museum of Greece, the Jewish communities of Athens and Salonica, and the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee; b) the Greek Jewish press of the period; c) personal accounts, essays and literature, I will attempt to explore the multiplicity of responses of leftist Greek Jews to the political and personal dilemmas of the post-Shoah period. I argue that despite different postwar (and prewar) political attitudes and experiences, leftist Greek Jews expressed two main tendencies: a tight relationship with the country’s Jewish communities and, at the same time, a strong tendency to leave for other countries, mainly Israel.
Article Details
  • Section
  • ARTICLES
Creative Commons License

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.

The copyright for articles in this journal is retained by the author(s), with first publication rights granted to the journal. By virtue of their appearance in this open access journal, articles are free to use (with the exception of the non-granted right to make derivative works) with proper attribution for non-commercial uses (licence Creative Commons 4.0). EKT/NHRF retains the worldwide right to reproduce, display, distribute, and use articles published in Historein in all formats and media, either separately or as part of collective works for the full term of copyright. This includes but is not limited to the right to publish articles in an issue of the Journal, copy and distribute individual reprints of the articles, authorize reproduction of articles in their entirety in another EKT/NHRF publication, and authorize reproduction and distribution of articles or abstracts thereof by means of computerized retrieval systems.
Downloads
Download data is not yet available.
Author Biography
Eleni Beze, University of Thessaly

Eleni Beze is currently preparing a PhD thesis entitled “Jews of Greece after the Shoah: Issues of Memory and Identity” (Department of History, Archaeology and Social Anthropology, University of Thessaly) and holds a scholarship from the Fondation pour la Mémoire de la Shoah. She holds a BA in Philosophy and Social Sciences (University of Crete) and an MA in Philosophy (University of Crete). She has worked in secondary education and, since 2010, has collaborated with the Jewish Museum of Greece, where she has conducted interviews with Jewish survivors and co-organised seminars on methodological approaches to teaching the Shoah.

References
“Agreement Between the Greek Government and EAM.” In Foreign Relations of the United States: Diplomatic Papers, 1945, The Near East And Africa, vol. 8. Accessed 11 August 2017. https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/frus1945v08/d63.
“Αβραάμ Μπεναρόγια: Ο άνθρωπος που έγραψε ιστορία στο συνδικαλισμό της Ελλάδος [Avraam Benaroya: The man who wrote history in the trade union movement of Greece].” Chronika 20 (June 1979): 23–24.
Ampatzopoulou. Fragiski. Ο άλλος εν διωγμώ: Η εικόνα του Εβραίου στη λογοτεχνία. Ζητήματα ιστορίας και μυθοπλασίας [The persecuted “other”: the depiction of the Jew in literature. Issues of history and fiction]. Athens: Themelio, 1998.
Assser, Ariella, Odette Varon-Vassard and Steven Bowman, eds. Young People in the Maelstrom of Occupied Greece: The Persecution and Holocaust of the Jewish People, 1943–1944. Athens: Central Board of Jewish Communities in Greece, 2009.
Benaroya, Avraam. “Σε τι οφείλω τη ζωή μου με τους χιτλερικούς [To what I owe my survival in the hands of the Hitlerites].” Anti 126 (15 November 1978): 32–34.
Benaroya, Avraam [Avraham A. Ben Aroya]. “El Mouvimiento de Resistencia.” In Zikron Saloniki. Grandeza I Destruyicion de Yeruchalayim del Balkan, edited by David Recanati. Vol. 1, 43–45. Tel Aviv, 1985–86.
Benaroya, Avramm. Ελπίδες και πλάνες [Hopes and mistakes], edited by Theodoros Benakis. Athens: Stochastis, 1989.
Benveniste, Rika. Αυτοί που επέζησαν. Αντίσταση, εκτόπιση, επιστροφή. Θεσσαλονικείς Εβραίοι στη δεκαετία του 1940 [Those who survived: Resistance, Deportation, Return. Thessaloniki Jews in the 1940s)]. Αthens: Polis, 2016.
Bourlas, Moissis M. Έλληνας, Εβραίος και αριστερός [Greek, Jew and leftist]. Skopelos: Νisides, 2000.
Bowman, Steven. Jewish Resistance in Wartime Greece. Portland: Vallentine Mitchell, 2006.
Carabott, Philip, and Maria Vassilikou. “New Men vs Old Jews: Greek Jewry in the Wake of the Shoah, 1945–1947.” In The Holocaust in Greece, edited by Giorgos Antoniou and A. Dirk Moses, 255–72. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2018.
Chandrinos, Jason. Synagonistis. Athens: Jewish Museum of Greece, 2013.
Dimitriou, Dimitrios N. (Nikiforos). “Η συμμετοχή των Εβραίων στην Εθνική Αντίσταση” [Jewish participation in the national resistance]. Chronika 104 (1989): 4–6.
Eleni Beze, “Εβραίοι αριστεροί και σιωνιστές στη μεταπολεμική Ελλάδα: Αποκλίσεις και συγκλίσεις (1945–1951) [Leftist Jews and Zionists in postwar Greece: divergences and convergences (1945–1951)].” In Εβραϊκές κοινότητες ανάμεσα σε Ανατολή και Δύση, 15ος–20ός αιώνας: Οικονομία, κοινωνία, πολιτική, πολιτισμός [Jewish communities between East and West, 15th–20th centuries: economy, society, politics, culture], edited by Anna Mahera and Lida Papastefanaki, 345–57. Ioannina: Isnafi, 2016.
Elial, Michael. “La langue double: Langue et écriture dans l’oeuvre de Maurice Politi, écrivain israélien de langue française.” L’intersiècle 2 (1989): 89–96.
Evangelou, Eftyhia. “Η απώλεια της ελληνικής ιθαγένειας των Ελλήνων Εβραίων από τη δεκαετία του 1920 έως το 1965 [The loss of the Greek citizenship by Greek Jews from 1920 to 1965]. MA diss., Panteion University, 2015.
Felous, Allegra. “Μετά τη Βάρκιζα. Αφήγηση δεύτερη [After the Varkiza peace agreement: A second account of the events].” In Σιωπηλές φωνές: Μαρτυρίες Θεσσαλών για τον 20ό αιώνα [Silent voices: testimonies of Thessalians about the 20th century], edited by Maroula Kliafa, 175. Athens: Kastaniotis, 2001.
Garidis, Anguéliki. Les armoires du temps. Paris: Petra 2016.
Haralabidis, Menelaos. Δεκεμβριανά 1944: Η μάχη της Αθήνας [December events, 1944: the battle of Athens]. Athens: Alexandria, 2014.
Kostopoulos, Tasos, Ada Psarra and Dimitris Psarras. “‘Τελική λύση’ α λα ελληνικά” [Final solution in Greek]. Eleftherotypia, 31 May 2015.
Králová, Katerina. “‘Being traitors’: Post-war Greece in the Experience of Jewish Partisans.” Southeast European and Black Sea Studies 17, no. 2 (2007), doi/10.1080/14683857.2017.1324277.
Lagrou, Pieter. “Return to a Vanished World: European Societies and the Remnants of their Jewish Communities, 1945–1947.” In The Jews are Coming Back: The Return of the Jews to their Countries of Origin after WWII, edited by David Bankier, 1–24. Jerusalem: Yad Vashem, 2005.
Matarasso, Isaac. Κι όμως όλοι τους δεν πέθαναν: Η καταστροφή των Ελληνοεβραίων της Θεσσαλονίκης. Αναμνήσεις από το γκέτο, edited by Fragiski Ampatzopoulou, Athens, Alexandria: 2018. Originally published as “And yet not all of them died: The destruction of Salonika’s Jewry during the German occupation.” In The Holocaust in Salonika: Eyewitness Accounts, edited by Steven Bowman. New York: Sephardic House & Bloch, 2002.
Morin, Edgar. Τα δαιμόνιά μου. Athens: Eikostou Protou, 1999. Originally published as Mes démons. Paris: Stock 1994.
Nachmani, Amikam. Israel, Turkey and Greece: Uneasy Relations in the East Mediterranean. London: Taylor and Francis, 1987.
Patrikiou, Alexandra. “Το ζήτημα των ισραηλιτικών περιουσιών στο Iσραηλιτικόν Βήμα της Θεσσαλονίκης (1945–1947) [The question of Jewish properties in the Israilitikon Vima of Thessaloniki].” In In Την επαύριον του Ολοκαυτώματος/The Day After the Holocaust, edited by Evanghelos Chekimoglou and Anna Maria Droumpouki, 153–65. Thessaloniki: Jewish Museum of Thessaloniki, 2017.
Politi, Maurice. Les faubourgs d’Athènes. Paris: Gallimard, 1954
Politi, Maurice. Les evadés du paradis: Chronique de la vie dans un kibboutz. Paris: Gallimard, 1963.
Roussos, Mordohai. “Ένας τυχερός Εβραίος” [A fortunate Jew]. In Σιωπηλές φωνές: Μαρτυρίες Θεσσαλών για τον 20ό αιώνα [Silent voices: testimonies of Thessalians about the 20th century], edited by Maroula Kliafa, 162. Athens: Kastaniotis, 2001.
Sakkis, Moissis. “Σαράντα περίπου χρόνια από τότε [About 40 years after].” Chronika 86 (1986): 13–14.
Saporta, Isaac. Επάγγελμα αρχιτέκτων: Μια αφήγηση ζωής [Being an architect: The story of my life], edited by Giorgos Simaioforides. Athens: Untimely Books, 1996.
Sariyiannis, Georgios. “Ο αρχιτέκτονας Ισαάκ Ηλία Σαπόρτα: Από τους τελευταίους του μοντέρνου κινήματος [The architect Isaac Elias Saporta: One of the last representatives of the modern movement].” Rizospastis, 22 November 1998.
Stroumsa, Jacques. Διάλεξα τη ζωή: Από τη Θεσσαλονίκη στο Άουσβιτς. Salonica: Etz Haim, 1997. Originally published as Violinist in Auschwitz: From Salonica to Jerusalem, 1913–1967. Constance: Hartung-Gorre Verlag, 1996.
Vaena, Iosif. “Ιστορία και μικροϊστορία: Οι περιπέτειες του πολυελαίου της συναγωγής Σαρφατή πριν και μετά τη λεηλασία του κατά τη διάρκεια της Κατοχής [History and microhistory: the adventures of the chandelier of the Sarfati synagogue before and after its plunder during the occupation].” In Την επαύριον του Ολοκαυτώματος/The Day After the Holocaust, edited by Evanghelos Chekimoglou and Anna Maria Droumpouki, 188–205. Thessaloniki: Jewish Museum of Thessaloniki, 2017.
Varvaritis, Dimitrios. “Greek Antisemitism and its Perceptions by Greek Jewry 1945–1949.” Paper presented at the Department of Byzantine and Modern Greek Studies, University of Vienna, 18 October 2017.
Voglis, Polymeris. Becoming a Subject: Political Prisoners during the Greek Civil War. New York: Berghahn, 2002.
Voglis, Polymeris. “Το παρελθόν ως διαρκές παρόν: Τα Δεκεμβριανά στη δημόσια σφαίρα, 1945–1956 [The past as a constant present: The December events in the public sphere 1945–1956].” In Δεκέμβρης 1944: Το παρελθόν και οι χρήσεις του [December 1944: the past and its uses], edited by Polymeris Voglis, Ιoanna Papathanassiou, Τasos Sakelaropoulos and Menelaos Haralabidis, 239–55. Athens: Alexandria, 2017.