Ghost Cemetery

A photo exhibition by Martin Barzilai
Thessaloniki PhotoBiennale 2023

Jewish Museum of Thessaloniki (11 Agiou Mina st.)
17.10-10.12.2023
Opening: 17.10.2023, 18:00

Coproduction: Jewish Museum of Thessaloniki, Jewish Community of Thessaloniki, Goethe-Institut Thessaloniki, Heinrich Böll Foundation – Thessaloniki Office
 

After the reconquest of Spain from the Arabs (Reconquista), Kings Ferdinand and Isabella expelled the Jews from the country by the Alhambra decree of 1492. They were welcomed in the Ottoman Empire, especially in the Balkans and Salonica where they represented, in the seventeenth century, half of the city’s population. Until the 1920s, the Jewish population of Salonica was the majority, compared to the Greek Orthodox and Turkish communities. The Jewish cemetery, dating back to 2nd century CE, was the largest in Europe and it is estimated that it contained between 300,000 and 500,000 graves. In 1942, during the German occupation, an unfair deal was offered to the Jewish community. The Germans demanded the Jews pay 3.5 billion drachmas in exchange for the release of the 3,500 forced laborers working in very harsh conditions - two billion in cash, which the community raised, and 1.5 billion for the expropriation of the cemetery. Conveniently it also pleased the local Christian population who had tried before the war to develop the highly sought area for their own goals.

To this cultural erasure is added the physical destruction of the community, from 1943 onwards, through its deportation and extermination in the death camps, especially in the Auschwitz Birkenau. About 54,000 Jews of Thessaloniki were exterminated, amounting to 96% of the Jewish population of the city.

The tombstones of the Jewish cemetery were used as building material, by the Germans, then by the Christians for public squares like around the White Tower, the renovation of 24 churches including the Agios Dimitrios Church and generally public works like the wall around the new railway station. They were and still are used in a large number of other private sites. Today, they can be found throughout the city and beyond. On the site of the Jewish cemetery is the campus of the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki.

Photographer Martin Barzilai, of distant Thessaloniki descent, searched throughout the city, located and photographed many of these lost traces. He thus brings to light this dark case, which completes an essential piece in the puzzle of the history of the city and beyond.