Romaniotes - Holocaust

Holocaust

During World War II, when Greece was occupied by the Axis powers, 86% of the Greek Jews, especially those in the areas occupied by Nazi Germany and Bulgaria, were murdered despite efforts by the Greek Orthodox Church and many Christian Greeks to shelter Jews. Although the Germans and Bulgarians deported numerous Greek Jews, many were hidden by their Greek neighbours. Roughly 49,000 Jews were deported from Thessaloniki alone and were exterminated.

The Romaniotes were protected by the Greek government until the Nazi occupation. During the occupation, the Romaniotes could speak Greek better than the Sephardim, who spoke Ladino first and whose Greek had a distinct, "singing" accent. The Sephardim were more vulnerable targets, and their language was one of the factors leading to such great losses among Sephardic communities. In Ioannina 1,860 out of 1,950 Jews were deported to Auschwitz and Birkenau in April 1944. Most of them were exterminated by the Nazis.

The creation of the state of Israel in 1948, combined with the violence and anarchy of the Greek Civil War, was the final episode in the history of the Romaniotes in Greece. The majority emigrated to Israel or the U.S.