More Anti-Semitism in Greece
Published by deviousdiva August 25th, 2008 in Anti-Semitism.Abravanel writes about the latest disturbing incident of anti-Semitism in Greece that was captured on video and posted to YouTube last Friday. The video shows a young man urinating on a holocaust memorial on the island of Rhodes. It was posted by a “group of students from the Venetokleio high school of Rhodes”. The headmaster from that school has denounced the act, saying
I bet my life that they are not students of our school. This kind of malicious acts does not represent our school. Be assured that if students of our school are involved I will send them for prosecution
Whatever the case, the message that accompanied the video reads
Hi, we are a secret group of students of the “Venetoklio” High School of Rhodes, that does not dig at all the Jews who wish to turn the island (of Rhodes) into a second “Land of Canaan”. After all the propaganda fed even in Religion school books, over the “chosen people” and other bullshit, we have decided to take the situation into our own hands and show to everyone with deeds of how much do we really agree with this view. There follows a video with the appropriate music soundtrack from a song we found on the Internet and we loved it. We hope you’ll love both the video and the song, as much as we loved them. Auf Wiedersehen!
Abravanel has also posted the lyrics of the song that plays on the video. In his post about the incident, he gives a detailed history of the memorial including the abuse suffered by those working on it and the vandalism that followed its completion. There are also links to the message and other articles about the incident in the media. Please note: The video has been removed by YouTube.
Read Abravanel’s post here. The comments are mostly in Greek but I’m sure Abravanel would be happy to discuss the issues in English over there (or over here, if you are worried about replies that you don’t understand).
Technorati Tags: anti-Semitism, greece, rhodes, neo-nazi
12 Responses to “More Anti-Semitism in Greece”
- 1 Trackback on Aug 25th, 2008 at 11:48 am
- 2 Pingback on Aug 26th, 2008 at 2:51 pm
Indeed I apologize for the greek language in comments but although the blog is in english I felt it wouldn’t be correct enforcing it as the only language in comments - after all it’s with Greece I want to interact, despite the need to make it available also to greek jews abroad.
abravanels last blog post..Neo-nazi group urinates on the Shoah Memorial in Rhodes - a video (Updated 25/8)
The question i have is where are the authorities?????
In civilized countries, there would be a manhunt until they found these criminals and they would be punished very severely.
In Greece, what happens??, hand-wringing and shrugs.
Sadly, unless the international media gets a hold of this, nothing will happen. Can’t CNN or other media outlet get a copy of this story to get the Greek authorities moving on it?
Absolutely no need to apologise, Abravanel. It is vital that this discussion is had here in Greece in Greek. I am happy to facilitate the discussion for those who don’t speak Greek or to direct people over to you. I am very aware though that people want to be able to follow the whole discussion and feel unable to do that if all of it is in a language they do not understand. Don’t change a thing. The work you are doing is so important. Thank you.
@George
The problem is that the authorities don’t see this as important.They don’t see hate speech and acts like this as being connected to what is widely seen as an acceptable prejudice (ie being antisemitic). There is no willingness to act because they don’t see it as a problem.
Many people here say they are not prejudiced but somewhere deep down they mistrust Jews and in some way believe that there is a Jewish conspiracy to do away with Greece. The love of my life told me recently that someone actually said that they believed that last years devastating fires were caused by the Jews ! Unbelievable.
Imagine if this was some other important memorial. There would be an outcry then wouldn’t there ?
I post the following as it shows that:
a. KIS did react rather quickly
b. The Greek authorities confirmed with their resounding silence that antisemitism is just another tolerable form of hooliganism that is not worth their attention.
I would disagree with KIS filing a direct complaint (eglisi) and not a complaint report (minitiria anafora) as it is the duty of an alerted prosecutor to open an ex officio file, as we have him do with Eleftheros Kosmos, Plevris, Chrysi Avgi, Alpha Ena, Apollonio Fos, Maria Tzani
Panayote Dimitras
LeMonde.fr
Les juifs de Grèce protestent contre une vidéo antisémite sur internet
http://www.lemonde.fr/web/depe.....699,0.html
AFP 26.08.08 | 11h21
La communauté juive de Grèce a annoncé mardi avoir protesté auprès des autorités après la diffusion sur internet d’une vidéo montrant la profanation d’un mémorial de la Shoah à Rhodes (sud-est de la mer Egée) sur fond de chant antisémite, revendiquée par un groupe de lycéens local.
“Nous avons saisi vendredi le ministre de l’Intérieur et lundi le ministre de l’Education, mais pour le moment ni l’un ni l’autre ne nous ont répondu ni n’ont procédé à des condamnations”, a déploré auprès de l’AFP le président du Conseil central juif de Grèce (Kis), Moisis Constantinis.
Les images, diffusées depuis vendredi sur le site YouTube, montrent un adolescent urinant sur le mémorial de la Shoah de l’île de Rhodes sur fond de morceau rock aux paroles violemment antisémites.
La vidéo émane au départ d’un site intitulé “Vénétokleios”, du nom d’un lycée de Rhodes dont les auteurs affirment, sous une photo d’Hitler, être un “groupe secret n’aimant pas du tout les juifs”.
“Nous sommes déçus par l’absence de réactions” des autorités, a commenté le président du Kis, indiquant qu’il allait déposer dans la journée un signalement au parquet de Rhodes pour l’ouverture de poursuites contre les auteurs de la vidéo. Le Kis a aussi réclamé une protection policière des monuments et bâtiments juifs de l’île.
Le directeur du lycée, Iannis Papadomarkakis, a indiqué à l’AFP avoir prévenu la police dans la matinée, après la révélation de l’affaire la veille par une télé grecque, mais jugé “très improbable” l’implication d’élèves de son établissement dans l’affaire.
Longtemps florissante, la communauté juive de Rhodes comptait avant la seconde guerre mondiale 1.800 membres, dont seuls 150 survécurent à l’extermination dans les camps nazis.
Au total, 86% de la communauté juive de Grèce a été assassinée par les nazis, mais cette extermination reste largement un tabou historique dans le pays, à peine évoqué dans les livres de classe.
Greece has always been an antisemitic country, although there have been quite a few individuals as well as some greek othodox priests and bishops, who had taken it upon themselves to save and hide some jewish men women and children from the brutality of the nazis in world war two.
Why don’t they educate greek children about the shoah and what happened to the jewish community of greece during world war two.
This anti-semitism is imbued in their mother’s milk and it will take a very long time to eradicate.
In reply to Samir: the Greeks know very well what happened in WWII, and choose to blame it all on the Germans. They accept no responsibility for anything that happened, and on the contrary, claim that all of Greece was busy trying to protect Jews from the Germans.
I can tell you, as a non-Greek, that all of Greece is preoccupied with falsifying history in order to proclaim the wonderful superiority of Greeks over other ethnic groups. They will tell you that black is white, or day is night, to suit their own ends: there is no hope for a culture which is so determined to lie and cheat even about reality (I won’t mention money etc in this post).
Xenos:
“The Greeks are the smartest, greatest, superior people in the world. Just ask them and they’ll tell you.”
Although, a professor in college once told me that greatness needs no mouthpiece…..
Yet non one will talk about the anti-hellenism here. Pitty.
But of course. Yes, the Greeks are the plague of the Balkans, the exterminators of People, etc etc etc.
While I don’t like the anti-semitism here in Greece, I can understand how it was born. When the two people, greeks and jews, were vying for the top seats and emporium of the ottoman empire, I suppose that both of them did things that weren’t very nice. Except if you’re willing to tell me that greeks are evil and jews aren’t capable of doing things like that. What I fail to understand is why it still continues to exist, but maybe the problem is that with the extermination of the greek jewish community there hasn’t been much contact between the two cultures to even the edges.
On the other hand, when I see someone ranting about the anti-semitism in Greece, I see that they always fail to point out that Greece was the second state to recognise the jews as a people. Or that in Greece there existed a different Jewish community for 2.500 years, distinct and with its own language. Or that when we’re talking about the occupation Greek populations in the urban areas were one of the most hard hitted in the europe.
Nikos,
I think if the Greek Authorities came out with a hammering response to any acts of anti-Semitism, it would go along way to making the rest of the civilized world believe they care.
For example, it may interest you to know that in California, a man assaulted (physically) a woman, and also at the same time was verbally abusing her because she was a lesbian. This man received the normal jail sentence for assault, but was also given an additional mandatory sentence on top of that for the “hate crime” attached to the assault.
When Greece adds “hate crimes” to it’s dockets as American courts do then I’ll feel more charitable with my views.
Nobody here is anti-hellenic. We are merely not impressed by the general arrogance exhibited by most Greek people, who seem to think that they are God’s gift to mankind. This is very different from the anti-semitism under discussion here, or the issue of racism that is also a frequent topic on this blog. If you don’t get the point, then that is your problem.