Like Leaves In The Wind: The Destruction Of The Salonika Jews
Book Details
Author(s)Andrew Claybrook
ISBN / ASINB017GDK2TW
ISBN-13978B017GDK2T0
Sales Rank198,271
MarketplaceUnited States 🇺🇸
Description
In the spring and summer of 1943, the Nazis deported 47,000 Jews from the city of Salonika, Greece to the Auschwitz-Birkenau death camp in Poland. An estimated 1,000 of these deportees escaped death and returned to Salonika to find their properties looted and occupied by Christian "trustees" appointed during the Nazi occupation. Until 1943, Salonika, the second largest Greek city, was the "Jerusalem of the Balkans" thanks to its flourishing Jewish Community dating back to the early times after the birth of Christ.
The destruction of the Salonika Jews was a textbook genocide operation handled by the administrative architect of the Final Solution, SS-Lt. Col. Adolf Eichmann, and his band of trusted executioners like SS-Captains Dieter Wisliceny and Alois Brunner. The Nazi murderers organized this apocalypse in under two months and executed it with deadly bureaucratic efficiency and precision assisted by local Christian collaborators. Salonika possesses the horrific top record of the one city in occupied Europe that lost 98 percent of its Jews during the Holocaust. In 1944, just as the Nazis were getting ready to retreat from Greece, local collaborators shot the handful of Jews remaining in the city.
Like Leaves In The Wind tells the story of this crime of crimes. It traces the historical background of the Jewish Community and its relations with the Christian population. It offers an overview of the Final Solution. It traces the development of the Nazi Aktion to destroy the Salonika Jewish Community up and including the deportations. The book concludes with an assessment of the tragedy and the role of embedded Greek anti-Semitism, which remains very much alive today.
Like Leaves In The Wind is not a scholarly research work. It is rather a journalist's long report aimed at a broader reading public interested in details and the historical and political context behind them, all presented in compact form. Its writing made use of a substantial mix of secondary sources out of an abundant bibliography, not to mention the review of many visual records now available online. Ultimately, it is an effort to honor and remember the innocent victims and keep their memory alive.
The destruction of the Salonika Jews was a textbook genocide operation handled by the administrative architect of the Final Solution, SS-Lt. Col. Adolf Eichmann, and his band of trusted executioners like SS-Captains Dieter Wisliceny and Alois Brunner. The Nazi murderers organized this apocalypse in under two months and executed it with deadly bureaucratic efficiency and precision assisted by local Christian collaborators. Salonika possesses the horrific top record of the one city in occupied Europe that lost 98 percent of its Jews during the Holocaust. In 1944, just as the Nazis were getting ready to retreat from Greece, local collaborators shot the handful of Jews remaining in the city.
Like Leaves In The Wind tells the story of this crime of crimes. It traces the historical background of the Jewish Community and its relations with the Christian population. It offers an overview of the Final Solution. It traces the development of the Nazi Aktion to destroy the Salonika Jewish Community up and including the deportations. The book concludes with an assessment of the tragedy and the role of embedded Greek anti-Semitism, which remains very much alive today.
Like Leaves In The Wind is not a scholarly research work. It is rather a journalist's long report aimed at a broader reading public interested in details and the historical and political context behind them, all presented in compact form. Its writing made use of a substantial mix of secondary sources out of an abundant bibliography, not to mention the review of many visual records now available online. Ultimately, it is an effort to honor and remember the innocent victims and keep their memory alive.
