Greeks and Jews

What is the fate of the Jews in Salonica during and after the First World War?

The Jews of Salonica went to a few different places a minority went to Palestine, some did emigrate to France and the United States. The vast majority, their home was the city, and if asked they would have naturally described their nationality - as one emigrant did to the French authorities in 1916 - as "Salonicans".

From the Greek point of view, the key to turning Jews into full citizens of their new country was language. Before 1912, a few Jews in Salonica had bothered to learn Greek. From 1915, however, all Jewish community schools in receipt of public funds were obliged to teach it. Jewish children were not forced to attend what greek civil servants called "our schools" whose instruction was described as "rather classical" and "incompatible with Jewish customs and nature" and instead Athens invested in the Jewish schools themselves, providing language teachers, and later actual buildings. In this way, the younger generation learned Greek quickly and by the Second World War, many Jewish children were fluent, having taken part in school productions of such Greek classics as "Golfo and Shepherdess", or the stirring story of Leonidas and the 300.

The language question reflected the spectrum of attitudes to assimilation more generally among the city's Jews. French remained the language of the cultured eite, especially among those of the wealthy enough to send their children to foreign schools. Local communities stood up to the continued use of Judeo-Spanish, the vernacular of the workers. But a middle-class minority stressed the need for fluency in Greek in order to "give Greece good Greek citizens who will, at the same time, be no less good Jews."

"If I speak about assimilation", wrote one, "I do so not out of Greek patriotism but for the sake of Jewish interests. I believe that in order for the Jews to be able to live here, they need to assimilate to the environment in which they live. The fewer barriers there are between Greeks and Jews, the easier it will be for us to live here. Our purpose is not to be obstentatiously patriotic, but to safeguard the existence of the Jewish population. If assimilation is not the correct means of doing this, let us suggest another way."

This view was opposed mainly by the zionists. They accused the alliance of betraying Judaism and demanded a prominent place in the school curriculum for Hebrew. Jews began to emigrate from 1910 onwards, they went mostly to France and Italy, or across the Atlantic. The figures are uncertain, but by 1930 htousands of Salonican Jews had settled in Paris, and there were smaller communities everywhere from New York to Naples.