The United Nations designated January 27 as International Holocaust Remembrance Day to commemorate the victims of the Holocaust. The date was chosen as it also commemorates the date when the Auschwitz concentration camp was liberated by the Red Army in 1945. The following books highlight the experience of the Greek Jews of Thessaloniki.

The Jewish community of Thessaloniki (Salonica) thrived for centuries until the horrific events of World War II, the Nazi occupation, and the subsequent transportation of 46,000 people to the concentration camps decimated the community. Only 2,000 survivors returned to the city. The harrowing events are recounted in Talking until Nightfall: Remembering Jewish Salonica 1941-44 by Isaac Matarasso, a doctor who witnessed the oppression and recorded its stages as well as eyewitness accounts of those who returned to the city from the concentration camps.

The memoir was originally published in French and is also available in English with contributions from Matarasso’s family members, his son, Robert, his daughter-in-law Pauline, who translated the book and also wrote the introduction, and his grandson Francois, who wrote the book’s afterword, titled Listening to the Witnesses. The Greek text of the book was published in Athens in 2018.

The book vividly brings to life the Jewish community of Salonica and is a powerful reminder to never forget. Dr. Matarasso and his son escaped imprisonment and torture at the hands of the Nazis and joined the resistance. After the city’s liberation they returned to rebuild Salonica and, along with the other survivors, to grapple with the near-total destruction of their community.

Sarah Abrevaya Stein is the Sady and Ludwig Kahn Director of the Alan D. Leve Center for Jewish Studies, as well as Professor of History and the Maurice Amado Chair in Sephardic Studies at UCLA. She is the author or editor of nine books, including Extraterritorial Dreams: European Citizenship, Sephardi Jews, and the Ottoman Twentieth Century and Plumes: Ostrich Feathers, Jews, and a Lost World of Global Commerce. The recipient of the Sami Rohr Prize for Jewish Literature, three National Endowment for the Humanities Fellowships, a Guggenheim Fellowship, and two National Jewish Book Awards, Stein lives with her family in Santa Monica, CA. Her book Family Papers: A Sephardic Journey through the Twentieth Century begins in Salonica, the bustling port city that for centuries was home to the Levy family. As leading publishers and editors, they helped chronicle modern life as it was experienced by Sephardic Jews across the Ottoman Empire. The wars of the 20th century, however, redrew the borders around them, in the process transforming the Levys from Ottomans to Greeks. Family members soon moved across boundaries and hemispheres, stretching the familial diaspora from Greece to Western Europe, Israel, Brazil, and India. In time, the Holocaust nearly eviscerated the clan, eradicating whole branches of the family tree. With meticulous research and care, Stein uses the Levys’ letters to tell not only their history, but the history of Sephardic Jews in the twentieth century.

The Greek novel To Vrahioli tis Fotias (The Bracelet of Fire) by acclaimed author, screenwriter, and playwright Beatriki Saias-Magrizou recounts the dramatic journey of a Jewish family in the dark times of the 20th century, inspired by her own family’s history. Beginning with the great fire of Thessaloniki in 1917, the book follows the family through the subsequent traumatic events of the war, the Nazi occupation, and the Holocaust. A precious piece of jewelry is saved and connects people in spite of their disparate cultures and views of the world. The book has been adapted into a television series by the Hellenic Broadcasting Company ERT and highlights the harrowing story of a community that crumbles and then rises from the ruins.

The books mentioned above are available online. The ERT series, To Vrahioli tis Fotias (The Bracelet of Fire), is available on ERTflix.