The Holocaust Museum of Greece ( el, Μουσείο Ολοκαυτώματος Ελλάδος), officially the Holocaust Memorial Museum & Educational Center of Greece on Human Rights, is a proposed

museum A museum ( ; plural museums or, rarely, musea) is a building or institution that cares for and displays a collection of artifacts and other objects of artistic, cultural, historical, or scientific importance. Many public museums make these ...

The Holocaust The Holocaust, also known as the Shoah, was the genocide of European Jews during World War II. Between 1941 and 1945, Nazi Germany and its collaborators systematically murdered some six million Jews across German-occupied Europe; a ...

Thessaloniki Thessaloniki (; el, Θεσσαλονίκη, , also known as Thessalonica (), Saloniki, or Salonica (), is the second-largest city in Greece, with over one million inhabitants in its Thessaloniki metropolitan area, metropolitan area, and the capi ...

Greece Greece,, or , romanized: ', officially the Hellenic Republic, is a country in Southeast Europe. It is situated on the southern tip of the Balkans, and is located at the crossroads of Europe, Asia, and Africa. Greece shares land borders with ...

Construction and funding

Its construction was proposed in 2016 and is partly funded by the

Federal Republic of Germany Germany,, officially the Federal Republic of Germany, is a country in Central Europe. It is the second most populous country in Europe after Russia, and the most populous member state of the European Union. Germany is situated between ...

(), with support from the Municipality of Thessaloniki and mayor Yiannis Boutaris. The total construction cost is estimated at

€ The euro sign () is the currency sign used for the euro, the official currency of the eurozone and unilaterally adopted by Kosovo and Montenegro. The design was presented to the public by the European Commission on 12 December 1996. It consists ...

25 million ($ million). The

foundation stone The cornerstone (or foundation stone or setting stone) is the first stone set in the construction of a masonry foundation. All other stones will be set in reference to this stone, thus determining the position of the entire structure. Over time ...

was placed on 30 January 2018. In 2022,

Albert Bourla Albert Bourla ( el, Άλμπερτ Μπουρλά; born ) is a Greek-American veterinarian and the chairman and chief executive officer of Pfizer, an American pharmaceutical company. He joined the company in 1993 and has held several executive ro ...

, a native of Thessaloniki and CEO of

Pfizer Pfizer Inc. ( ) is an American multinational pharmaceutical and biotechnology corporation headquartered on 42nd Street in Manhattan, New York City. The company was established in 1849 in New York by two German entrepreneurs, Charles Pfizer ...

, directed his $1 million award from the

Genesis Prize The Genesis Prize ( he, פרס בראשית) is a $1 million annual prize awarded to Jewish people who have achieved significant professional success, in recognition of their accomplishments, contributions to humanity, and commitment to Jewish val ...

for his leadership in delivering the

Pfizer–BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine The Pfizer–BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine ( INN: tozinameran), sold under the brand name Comirnaty, is an mRNA-based COVID-19 vaccine developed by the German biotechnology company BioNTech. For its development, BioNTech collaborated with Amer ...

towards the Holocaust Museum of Greece and Holocaust education, with the particular emphasis on the fate of Greek Jewish community.

Location

The site chosen for the museum in the city is on an open plaza located at the endpoint of the rail lines and extends the walkway along Thessaloniki’s seashore, connecting the city’s harbor, the historic White Tower and the old railway station, which was used during the war for the deportation of the local Jews.

Background

In 1942 the German forces started implementing the

Nuremberg Laws The Nuremberg Laws (german: link=no, Nürnberger Gesetze, ) were antisemitic and racist laws that were enacted in Nazi Germany on 15 September 1935, at a special meeting of the Reichstag convened during the annual Nuremberg Rally of th ...

in the city and ordered male Jews to register at

Eleftherias Square Eleftherias Square ( el, Πλατεία Ελευθερίας, ''Platía Eleftherías'', ) is a central square in downtown Thessaloniki, Greece. It takes its name from the Young Turk Revolution, which began in the square in 1908. The square is curr ...

, where they were publicly

torture Torture is the deliberate infliction of severe pain or suffering on a person for reasons such as punishment, extracting a confession, interrogation for information, or intimidating third parties. Some definitions are restricted to acts c ...

d and humiliated before being forced into labour. A

Jewish Ghetto In the Jewish diaspora, a Jewish quarter (also known as jewry, ''juiverie'', ''Judengasse'', Jewynstreet, Jewtown, or proto-ghetto) is the area of a city traditionally inhabited by Jews. Jewish quarters, like the Jewish ghettos in Europe, were ...

was established near the train station. In 1943 the city's 56,000 Jews were deported, by use of 19

Holocaust train Holocaust trains were Rail transport, railway transports run by the ''Deutsche Reichsbahn#1939-1945: The Reichsbahn in the Second World War and the Holocaust, Deutsche Reichsbahn'' national railway system under the control of Nazi Germany and Co ...

s, to

Auschwitz Auschwitz concentration camp ( (); also or ) was a complex of over 40 concentration and extermination camps operated by Nazi Germany in occupied Poland (in a portion annexed into Germany in 1939) during World War II and the Holocaust. It con ...

and

Bergen-Belsen Bergen-Belsen , or Belsen, was a Nazi concentration camp in what is today Lower Saxony in northern Germany, southwest of the town of Bergen near Celle. Originally established as a prisoner of war camp, in 1943, parts of it became a concentrati ...

concentration camps, where 43,00049,000 of them were murdered. The train journey from Thessaloniki to the concentration camps was the longest of all Holocaust trains, and Jews had to buy a ticket. Between the 15th and early 20th centuries, Thessaloniki was the only city in

Europe Europe is a large peninsula conventionally considered a continent in its own right because of its great physical size and the weight of its history and traditions. Europe is also considered a Continent#Subcontinents, subcontinent of Eurasia ...

where Jews were a majority of the population. However, only 2,000 Jews returned after the war and less than 1,000 remain today. Overall, 80,000

Greek Greek may refer to: Greece Anything of, from, or related to Greece, a country in Southern Europe: *Greeks, an ethnic group. *Greek language, a branch of the Indo-European language family. **Proto-Greek language, the assumed last common ancestor ...

Jews, or 85% of the total Jewish population, were murdered in the Holocaust.

References

External links

Museum website
{{Holocaust Greece, state=collapsed Museums in Thessaloniki Jews and Judaism in Thessaloniki The Holocaust in Greece Holocaust museums Museums established in 2018

Construction and funding

Location

Background

See also

References

External links