Last week, I wrote about the fact that there is still no crematorium in Athens (the only European capital city without one), two years after permission was granted. Today I read in Kathimerini that the go ahead has also been given for a Muslim cemetery. It should be noted that it might be some time [...]

It is always heartwarming to hear about people who are working in their own way to initiate change for the better. A Greek Orthodox priest and a Muslim imam are working together to promote inter-faith solidarity. Father Timotheos Anthis and Imam Munir Mahmood are holding a series of public meeting around Athens where local residents [...]

Cremation became legal in Greece a year ago although there is still no crematorium. The Greek Orthodox church is now grappling with the issue of cremation for its followers. Yiannis Boutaris, best known for his wine label and a candidate in last years municipal elections has spoken out after he had to travel to Bulgaria [...]

Read this post first
[Part Eleven of Twelve]
Bodies Visible and Invisible: The Erasure of the Jewish Cemetery in the Life of Modern Thessaloniki
LAQUEUR and HESSE

Throughout the 1920 and 1930’s reasonable relations remained possible. The negotiations between the Jewish Community, the municipal government, and indirectly the national government over the cemetery and over other matters remained civil [...]

Read this post first
[Part Ten of Twelve]
Bodies Visible and Invisible: The Erasure of the Jewish Cemetery in the Life of Modern Thessaloniki
LAQUEUR and HESSE

The hard facts of demography were mirrored in culture and politics. Elementary education in Greek became compulsory, replacing for many Jews an education in French sponsored by the Alliance Israelite and [...]

Read this post first
[Part Nine of Twelve]
Bodies Visible and Invisible: The Erasure of the Jewish Cemetery in the Life of Modern Thessaloniki
LAQUEUR and HESSE

The hard facts of demography were mirrored in culture and politics. Elementary education in Greek became compulsory, replacing for many Jews an education in French sponsored by the Alliance Israelite and [...]

Read this post first
[Part Eight of Twelve]
Bodies Visible and Invisible: The Erasure of the Jewish Cemetery in the Life of Modern Thessaloniki
LAQUEUR and HESSE
Matters stand differently in Thessaloniki. The physical destruction and more importantly the cultural erasure of the enormous Jewish cemetery is only in part the result of Nazi aggression and the Holocaust; it [...]

Read this post first
[Part Seven of Twelve]
Bodies Visible and Invisible: The Erasure of the Jewish Cemetery in the Life of Modern Thessaloniki
LAQUEUR and HESSE

Cemeteries were not to be spared in this march of progress. A Turkish lycée and a new road, as we noted, were built on land from the old Jewish burial ground already [...]

Read this post first
[Part Six of Twelve]
Bodies Visible and Invisible: The Erasure of the Jewish Cemetery in the Life of Modern Thessaloniki
LAQUEUR and HESSE

Cemeteries have never been permanent resting places of the dead; over the millennia they, like everything, fall prey to the “lone and level sands” of time. But even in historical time [...]

Read this post first
[Part Five of Twelve]
Bodies Visible and Invisible: The Erasure of the Jewish Cemetery in the Life of Modern Thessaloniki
LAQUEUR and HESSE

The Nazis wanted the Jews dead; they had no compunction about desecrating graves. But in day-to-day reality they had only a peripheral interest in the burial places of the ancestors of those [...]

Read this post first
[Part Four of Twelve]
Bodies Visible and Invisible: The Erasure of the Jewish Cemetery in the Life of Modern Thessaloniki
LAQUEUR and HESSE

The story of the Thessaloniki Jewish Cemetery’s destruction in 1942 and its subsequent erasure from both memory and from the landscape after the Second World War emerges out of three broader narratives [...]

Read this post first
[Part Three of Twelve]
Bodies Visible and Invisible: The Erasure of the Jewish Cemetery in the Life of Modern Thessaloniki
LAQUEUR and HESSE

The cemetery on which the Aristotle University now stands was by far the largest and most ancient of the city’s extant places for the dead. It sat directly in the path of [...]

Read this post first
[Part Two of Twelve]

Bodies Visible and Invisible: The Erasure of the Jewish Cemetery in the Life of Modern Thessaloniki
LAQUEUR and HESSE

They are not just gone; they are forgotten. There is no historical signage on campus that tells the story of the invisible world just below the surface of the visible one, nor [...]

I wrote a short post in September about the destruction of the Jewish cemetery in Thessalonki that generated interest from people (and a heated comment thread). The article Bodies Visible and Invisible was sent to me by a friend and I posted the whole piece that day. Then I was in some confusion as to [...]

Every year the US State Department (Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor) issues an International Religious Freedom Report. The one for 2006 was published on September 15th. The last time I posted one of these reports on Human Rights, the first comment was

That’s all we need, America telling Greece what to do

So I [...]