History of The Jews in Greece

History Of The Jews In Greece

There have been organized Jewish communities in Greece for more than two thousand years. The oldest and the most characteristic Jewish group that has inhabited Greece are the Romaniotes, also known as "Greek Jews". However, the term "Greek Jew" is predominantly used for any person of Jewish faith that lives in or originates from, or has lived in and originated from the modern region of Greece.

Aside from the Romaniotes, Greece is the home of a historical centre of Sephardic life; the city of Thessaloniki, called the "Mother of Israel" by Samuel Usque. Greek Jews played an important role in the early development of Christianity, and became a source of education and commerce for the Byzantine Empire and throughout the period of Ottoman Greece, until suffering devastation in the Holocaust after Greece was conquered and occupied by the Axis powers in spite of efforts by Greeks to protect them. In the aftermath of the Holocaust, a large percentage of the surviving community emigrated to Israel or the United States.

The Jewish community in Greece currently amounts to roughly 5,000 people, concentrated mainly in Athens, Thessaloniki, Larissa, Volos, Chalkis, Ioannina, Trikala and Corfu, while very few remain in Kavala and Rhodes. Greek Jews today largely "live side by side in harmony" with Christian Greeks, according to Giorgo Romaio, president of the Greek Committee for the Jewish Museum of Greece, while nevertheless continuing to work with other Greeks, and Jews worldwide, to combat any rise of anti-Semitism in Greece.