For hundreds of years, Thessaloniki was unlike any other European city. It was a place where Jewish life did not sit on the sidelines but stood at the center of everything. Shops closed on Saturdays because most workers were Jewish. Ladino filled the streets. Dozens of synagogues shaped the neighborhoods. And when David Ben Gurion visited in 1910, he understood something powerful. A Jewish majority city could work. He had just seen it.
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| The Jewish workers in the port of Thessaloniki |
A New Home After a Great Expulsion
The story begins in 1492. When Spain expelled its Jews, thousands who spoke Spanish and Portuguese sailed east and rebuilt their lives in Thessaloniki. The Ottoman Sultan welcomed them because he knew they would strengthen his empire. He was right. These refugees brought skills in trade, medicine, printing, and craftsmanship. They opened the first printing press, built dozens of synagogues, and turned the port into a major economic hub.
By the early 1500s, Jews were already more than half the population. By 1613, they were nearly seventy percent. No other European city looked like this. Under the Ottoman system, the community had autonomy, ran its own courts, managed education, and shaped the city’s rhythm.
A Center of Work, Learning, and Culture
For centuries, Jewish merchants traded across the Mediterranean. Tailors, printers, teachers, and dockworkers kept the city running. Wealthy entrepreneurs opened modern factories. Schools produced educated young people fluent in French, Hebrew, Ladino, and often Greek or Turkish. It was a vibrant, confident community that influenced the entire region.
Zionist leaders visited Thessaloniki because it showed what a Jewish society could achieve. It was known as Mother of Israel and Jerusalem of the Balkans.
A Turning Point
Everything changed when Greece took control of the city in 1912. The Jewish population was still large and influential, but now lived under a government shaped by Greek nationalism. Tensions rose, and a massive fire in 1917 destroyed much of the Jewish quarter, including schools, synagogues, archives, and thousands of homes. Many left the city. Then, in 1923, the population exchange between Greece and Turkey brought a huge wave of Greek Christians, making Jews a minority for the first time in centuries.
Still, the community survived. It rebuilt, adapted, and remained active.
The Holocaust Arrives
In 1941, the German army occupied Thessaloniki. What followed was fast and brutal. Jewish leaders were arrested, property was seized, books and artifacts were taken to Germany, and thousands of men were humiliated and beaten in Liberty Square. The ancient cemetery, holding half a millennium of Jewish history, was destroyed.
In 1943, the Nazis forced the Jews into ghettos and began deportations. Nineteen trains carried about 46,000 people to Auschwitz. Almost all were murdered on arrival. Only about 1,950 survived. A community that had once been a majority was wiped out in five months.
What Remains
After the war, fewer than 2,000 Jews returned. Their homes were occupied, their synagogues ruined, and their cemetery gone. Many eventually emigrated. Today, about 1,000 Jews live in Thessaloniki. Only three synagogues remain. But memory work continues. A Jewish museum preserves what survived. Annual marches mark the deportations. A Holocaust museum dedicated to Sephardic history is being built.
Walking through the city today, you would not guess that it was once the largest Sephardic Jewish center in the world. But the story is still told, because it matters.
For 450 years, Thessaloniki proved that Jewish life could flourish, innovate, and lead. And even after almost everything was destroyed, the community holds on to its memory so the world does not forget.
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