We came to Northern Greece and southern Bulgaria (aka Ancient Macedonia) in part to explore the Sephardic Jewish history of the eastern Balkans. A bit of background: After the Jews were expelled from Spain in 1492 many moved to Central and Southeastern Europe in the Ottoman empire where they maintained strong ties to their Spanish and Ladino backgrounds and mostly prospered for centuries until World War II.

Thessaloniki.  We arrive in Greece’s second largest city in the midst of a wild rainstorm and plunging temperatures in late May. Fortunately the skies clear to reveal a perfect rainbow – we take this as a sign for the religiosity into which we are about to plunge.

Thessaloniki sits on a wide bay in the north Aegean that is a major shipping port as well as home to the country’s largest university. On a clear day you can see snowcapped Mt. Olympus – a national park – across the bay. We do a long introductory walk through the seafront promenade, visiting ancient churches with the golden glow of Byzantine mosaics, the recently discovered Roman ruins while building the brand new subway and a few remaining Ottoman buildings – former Hamams, bazaars, mosques repurposed but still prominent with their distinctive domed and red tiled roofs. Mention of Turks and Ottomans is still met with awkward silence: the Ottomans did not withdraw from northern Greece until 1912, and the forced and brutal population exchange between Greece and Turkey of 1923 (think Armenian genocide) is still family lore among many of the descendants of the nearly one million Greeks who survived the exodus from Turkey. Mindful of the long reach of this bitter history, we look for the joyful details of being someplace new. Scenes from Thessaloniki below:

From Top L to R: Thessaloniki waterfront promenade: Two nuns eating ice cream: Statue commemorating hometown hero Alexander the Great and his famous horse, Bucephalus: The gold mosaic ceiling of Hagia Sophia built in the 7th century based on the original in Constantinople: Excavations left in situ in the subway (took 30 years to build because of the extensive archeological finds): Pink oleander growing everywhere.

The Tomb of Philip of Macedon

One of the most exciting archeological finds of the recent past is the discovery of the tomb of Philip of Macedon, (died 336 BCE, father of Alexander the Great) in the city of Vergina,(the ancient Macedonian capital of Agai) about an hour’s drive to the south and west. The tomb was discovered intact and un-plundered in 1977 and a museum built on site underground highlights the wealth and beauty of the funerary artifacts found within. Solid gold caskets, delicate laurel crowns of gold leaves and acorns, a complete dinner set made of silver that looks like it was created yesterday, a gold quiver and arrowheads, a massive ceremonial shield, a suit of armor, delicate ivory and gold carvings. (The ivory trio below is no bigger than the palm of my hand). The museum is dark and blessedly quiet; we are among only a few tourists and I hear no English. Remarkable!

An onward stop at the brand new museum reveals many more artifacts found in additional tombs displayed in strikingly modern fashion. It’s a great look and links the ancient to the modern.

Veria
En route to the ancient capital of Vergina, we visit the “restored” Jewish quarter of the town of Veria, (where the Apostle Paul preached to the local Jewish community) dating from the 2nd century BCE. As elsewhere in the region, Jews were a powerful economic force prior to WWII. Today there are virtually none left. As with many (most?) places in Europe, the Jews are gone but their remaining synagogue has been beautifully restored with the Sephardi blue sky ceiling and painted domes. Who visits? Not clear. The synagogue is open only by appointment.

Salonica

The Jewish presence in Thessaloniki was unique in Europe: In the 1800s and early 1900s Salonica (the name under the Ottomans) was a majority Jewish city where the shipyards and the port were closed on Saturday. Ben Gurion moved to Salonica in 1910 to learn Turkish and persuaded several of the port workers to move to British Palestine to help build what would become the port of Haifa. The Great Fire of 1917 destroyed the heart of the old town, and it was rebuilt on a modern plan by a French architect to look eerily like Casablanca. The Jewish population declined after 1917 with an exodus of emigration, and their importance waned after the influx of Greeks from Turkey in 1923.  Unlike Most European cities, there were no Jewish ghettoes in Thessaloniki, as the population was spread throughout the city; and because both Jews and Christians were second class citizens under the Ottomans, there was comparatively little religious persecution by Christians against Jews This came into play as Salonica’s Jews confronted the toxicity of Hitler’s anti-semitism; they did not have the deep-in-their-DNA experience with that level of hatred – unlike their brethren in Poland, Ukraine and the Russian Empire.

Here’s what we are told by our guides from the Jewish community – Hella and Elias Matalon, both residents of the city whose families lived there for generations, survived the Holocaust and remember the events of 1942-43 that led up to the deportations. Prior to WWII there were several dozen active synagogues in the city representing every corner of the Sephardic diaspora.

With such a disparate group, the community decided in the 1930s that they needed a chief rabbi to represent their interests to the Greek government and society at large – a relatively new need after years of living under the Ottomans. They hired a German rabbi, Tsvi Koretz, who spoke neither Greek nor Ladino not well immersed in the community. It is unclear if he was a passive collaborator or a hapless dupe but he followed all Nazi orders to encourage the Jewish population to report to deportation sites to be “relocated away from the war.” There were relatively few German soldiers posted to Northern Greece and it appears that with some encouragement many Jews could have disappeared into the mountains, joined partisans, fled to southern Greece occupied by the Italians or gone into hiding. Alas they did not, and of the 49,000 sent to Treblinka, only 1500 returned.

Two synagogues, one modern (Yad Lazikaron on the left) built in 1984 inside an office building with memorial plaques on the wall listing the 70 former synagogues and the places of origin of their congregations.  The oldest synagogue is the Monastirioton (on the right)– built by Jews originating from Monastir in Macedonia. Because it was used by the Red Cross in WWII, it managed to escape destruction.

There is also an excellent Museum of the History of the Jews of Thessaloniki with a number of items donated by Hella’s family, including the obsessive effort by her elderly father to document as many of the 49,000 deported and murdered as can be found. Even the Jewish cemetery, dating from 300 BCE, containing 300,000 graves was destroyed (by the Nazis with the enthusiastic participation of the local Greek community, evidently) and became the grounds of what is today Aristotle University.

A lengthy conflict between the city and the remaining Jewish community of about 1500 was finally resolved in 2014 by dedicating a small memorial to commemorate the site of the former cemetery. Sadly, many of the thousands of medieval tombstones have been used in building sites throughout the area. I found this simple memorial (below) profoundly moving.

More scenes from Thessaloniki below:

From top L to R: 
1) Memorial on the campus of Aristotle University to commemorate the destruction of 300,00 Jewish graves dating from 200 BCE by the Nazis and (mostly) Greek collaborators in 1942: 
2) The Arch of Galerius (Roman 200 AD), 
3) Icons in a Greek church that I happened to walk into; 
4) A helmet from Ancient Thrace with gold noseplate in the Musuem of Archeology (where we were among no more than 20 tourists in the entire museum); 
5) The apse of the Rotunda built circa 100 BCE as a pagan temple, then early Christian church, Byzantine church, Ottoman mosque (frescoes destroyed, mosaics covered), Greek church post 1912, and finally restored as historic building in the late 20th century; 
6) Old Turkish hamam known as the “Jehudi” Hamam located in the central Jewish business district of old Salonica; 
7) The Rotunda exterior; 
8) The Donmeh Mosque – former center of the descendants of the followers of Shabbatai Tsvi – the false messiah who converted to Islam in 1666. His devoted followers followed him in conversion and their approximately 15,000 descendants  – known as Donmeh – lived in Thessaloniki until the forced Turkish/Greek population exchanges in 1922-23. This elaborate mosque with many Jewish symbols and elements was built as late as 1903. Fascinating story; see signage below.

And on that note, it’s good-bye to the lovely ON Residence hotel and its prime waterfront location and on our way to Bulgaria.