"In March 1943, the sirens marked the beginning of one of the most efficient and cruelest waves of deportation under the Nazis. Nearly 50,000 people... were crammed into cattle trucks and deported from their Greek homeland to the Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp, where they were murdered."
"Thessaloniki was a cultural melting pot. Walking through the city, you could hear a linguistic mix: Greek, Turkish, French and Ladino... spoken by the city's Sephardic Jews."
"At the start of the Nazi German occupation in 1941, the Jewish community in Thessaloniki was approximately 52,000 to 56,000 people, out of a total population of about 260,000 to 300,000."
"From March to August 1943, according to estimates, approximately 48,000 Jews were deported by the Nazis from Thessaloniki by train, primarily to Auschwitz."
Thessaloniki, once a vibrant cultural hub known as the 'Jerusalem of the Balkans,' saw its Jewish population decimated during the Holocaust. In March 1943, Nazi deportations began, leading to the removal of nearly 50,000 Sephardic Jews to Auschwitz-Birkenau. Before the war, Jews comprised about 50% of the city's population. By August 1943, the community was almost entirely wiped out, with only around 2,000 survivors, primarily those who hid from the Nazis. The old train station remains a poignant reminder of this tragic history.
Read at www.dw.com
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