Jewish leaders from Greece will seek over €25 million in reparations from Germany , according to Russian news agency RT.
In 1943, an estimated 58,585 Jews boarded trains from Greece’s second-largest city of Thessaloniki to concentration camps in Poland. The Jews were forced by the Nazis to pay for their train fare, which exceeded 2 million reichsmark - about €25 million today. David Saltiel, president of the Jewish community of Thessaloniki, said German reparations could finance a Holocaust memorial on the site of the train station from which Jews departed for Poland during World War II.“We think it’s a big opportunity that if the German government decides they want to help, it would be a very good coincidence that this money goes for this purpose,”Saltiel told Newsweek.
The Jewish community in Thessaloniki was thriving before the Nazi occupation in April 1941. The Greek city was nicknamed la madre de Israel (mother of Israel) and the Israeli community experience a golden age from the 16th century and onwards. The community developed the industrial sector in the Greek region and in the 1920s the Jews integrated fully with the Greek society, recognised officially as Greek citizens.
However, approximately 60,000 Greek Jews – about 75 percent of the country's Jewish population at the time – perished in the Holocaust, according to the Yad Vashem Holocaust museum and research center. RT reported that the Nazis deported more than 45,000 from Thessaloniki to the Auschwitz concentration camp in Poland.Only 1200 Jews live in the Greek city today.
Last week, Greek Jews from Thessaloniki, remembered the 72nd anniversary of the first wave of Nazi deportations to Auschwitz.
http://www.neurope.eu/article/greek-jews-will-seek-german-reparations