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Thessaloniki is taking a historic step toward finally commemorating the city’s Jewish community with the construction of a Holocaust Museum, following decades of devastation and silence. On Friday, the Jewish Community of Thessaloniki signed a key agreement with construction firm METKA, paving the way for the €40 million project.
The museum will be built on the site of Thessaloniki’s old railway station, the same location from which more than 50,000 Jews were deported to Nazi concentration camps during World War II. For David Saltiel, president of the Jewish Community of Thessaloniki, the project is “a national project of memory and responsibility,” aimed at ensuring the history of the city’s Jewish population is never forgotten.
Thessaloniki’s Jewish community, once numbering around 90,000 and forming nearly 60% of the city’s population, was one of the most prominent centers of Sephardic Jewry in Europe, with a rich 450-year history of culture, trade, and language. By the early 20th century, the population had already faced poverty, fires, and political upheaval, and the Nazi occupation dealt a devastating blow: in March 1943, the deportations began. Eighteen convoys would carry nearly the entire Jewish population to Auschwitz, and fewer than 2,000 survived.
Jewish family from Thessaloniki, Greece seen in 1917. (Wikimedia Commons)
The Germans didn’t just destroy the population; they wiped out its cultural imprint. Synagogues were destroyed, property looted, libraries shipped to Germany, and even cemetery headstones were repurposed for construction. Today, only a small community of fewer than 1,000 remains, determined to preserve the memory of what was lost.
“This is the fulfillment of a historic responsibility for Thessaloniki,” said former mayor Yannis Boutaris, who has been a driving force behind the project. His efforts helped secure the land from the Greek railways and political backing for the six-story, 5,000-square-meter museum, which is designed to educate as much as it commemorates.
METKA CEO Dinos Benroubi described the museum as “a modern beacon of memory and culture,” while funding comes from a mix of Greek and German governments, the Stavros Niarchos Foundation, the Tavma Foundation, and Pfizer CEO Albert Bourla, a Thessaloniki native, through the Genesis Prize Foundation.
International architects are leading the design, including Israel’s Efrat Kowalsky Architects, Germany’s Heide & von Beckerath, and Greece’s Makridis & Associates. Museological guidance will be provided by Atelier Brueckner and Andromache Gazi, ensuring exhibitions balance history, remembrance, and education.
The museum will not only memorialize the Holocaust victims of Thessaloniki but also highlight the city’s vibrant Jewish past, including Sephardi and Romaniote communities. Saltiel says it will also serve as a center for human rights and tolerance, educating future generations about the dangers of extremism, racism, and anti-Semitism.
“It’s important now, as we see the rise of the extreme right in Greece and across the world,” Saltiel said. “We want students and teachers to understand what happens when democracy fails and hatred takes hold.”
With construction now officially underway, Thessaloniki is finally taking a long-overdue step to honor its Jewish heritage, a story of culture, loss, and survival that has shaped the city for centuries.
*With info from ekathimerini and Times of Israel
