Greek-Jewish archives return home 80 years after they were looted by the Nazis

An archive documenting Greece’s pre-war Jewish community has been handed back to the country by Russian president Vladimir Putin after Soviet forces took possession of it from the Nazis in 1945.

The Jewish community of Thessaloniki was one of Europe’s biggest before Nazi occupation in 1942 decimated the population.

Its archives were among the many possessions looted by SS officers, but ever since Soviet forces seized the documents from the Nazis in 1945 they have been housed in Moscow.

Early in his premiership the Greek prime minister, Kyriakos Mitsotakis, set out to persuade the Kremlin to return the collection of books and religious artefacts from 30 synagogues, libraries and communal institutions in Thessaloniki, and this week he was able to celebrate the project’s success.

The Central Board of Jewish Communities in Greece said Jews in the country had reacted to the news with “immense emotion” and thanked the Russian president.

Thessaloniki’s pre-war Jewish community was primarily Sephardic until early 1943, when more than 90 percent of the city’s Jews were deported to Auschwitz, where most were killed.

A spokesman for the Central Board of Jewish Communities said restitution “means justice”.

He added that it would “transmit knowledge about a part of the Greek people that contributed to the progress of
the country and no longer exists, that of the 60,000 Greek Jews who were deported and killed”.