Sephardic Jews from Thessaloniki in their traditional costumes, in the city’s old cemetery, before the war // a contemporary photo that shows where the destroyed cemetery once was, which is now Greece's largest university, built partially on top of and with land and materials (particularly tombstones) stolen from the razed site.
Thessaloniki or Salonika, once referred to as “the Jerusalem of the Balkans” due to its Ladino-speaking Jewish majority, saw roughly 96% of its Jewish population murdered during the Holocaust. This mass destruction extended to the city's Jewish cemetery, which had been the country's largest, established in the 15th century and housing hundreds of thousands of Jewish graves until its razing by city authorities who had long desired to repurpose the land and resented the inconvenience of Jewish presence. Despite its large-scale destruction during German occupation in 1942, which was initiated and carried out primarily by Thessaloniki authorities with Nazi consent and arrangement, some parts of the cemetery survived intact as late as 1947. Many tombstones were subsequently appropriated and used by city authorities and the Greek Orthodox Church. After the war, people were still carrying away Jewish gravestones each day and regularly looting the cemetery in search of valuables. The city's officials, led by their mayor, completed the cemetery's destruction and sold the tombstones to contractors for use as building materials in various projects; as such many were and are still found in various walls, roads, structures, and churches around the city. A 1992 commemorative book pictures Greek schoolgirls playing Hamlet with skulls and other bones they found in the cemetery.
“[T]he ‘rape’ of the cemetery escalated, marble flooded the market, and its price plummeted. Jewish tombstones were stacked up in mason’s yards and, with the permission of the director of antiquities of Macedonia and overseen by the metropolitan bishop and the municipality, used to pave roads, line latrines, and extend the sea walls; to construct pathways, patios, and walls in private and public spaces though out the city, in suburbs such as Panorama and Ampelokipi, and more than sixty kilometers away in beach towns in Halkidiki, where they decorated playgrounds, bars, and restaurants in hotels; to build a swimming pool – with Hebrew-letter inscription visible; to repair the St. Demetrius Church and other buildings...” Devin Naar, Jewish Salonica: Between the Ottoman Empire and Modern Greece
Most of the efforts to return found tombstones throughout the city are led by Jews, particularly Jacky Benmayor, the curator of the Jewish Museum and last Ladino speaker in Greece, who has personally recovered hundreds of tombstones including his own family's. Surviving Greek Jews never received compensation for the confiscation of the land under the destroyed cemetery, upon which now partially rests Greece's largest university, Aristotle University, which also used Jewish gravestones as building material for its long-coveted expansion finally made possible by the dispossession and annihilation of the city's Jews. In 2014, 72 years after the cemetery's destruction and appropriation, a small memorial was established on campus grounds to acknowledge the Jewish cemetery the school is built on and with; the ceremony just 10 years ago involved the first-ever acknowledgement of the atrocities and apology from a Thessaloniki mayor. The memorial has been vandalised multiple times since its establishment.
119 notes
·
View notes
God save... the president!?
Reincarnation au
Of all places Merlin thought he would find Arthur once he came back, a random American airport was not on the list.
Merlin was running. Not only had his alarm failed to wake him up on time, but he somehow also managed to enter the airport through the ‘arrivals’ instead of the ‘departures.’ So now Merlin ran, willing his flight to wait for him.
He dashed through the groups of people like a madman clutching his briefcase tightly, thanking whatever deities that were still out there for blessing him with the smart decision to only pack a carry-on. If he still had to go through check-in, he would 100% miss his flight.
Merlin kept his unplanned cardio exercise at a fast but steady pace until his eyes landed on a flight monitor. He stopped dead on his track, looking for his flight number, when he felt the sudden shock of a body colliding with him.
“Holy…! Do you not look where you're going?”
Merlin almost ignored the annoyed voice in favour of his fleeting chance of going home, but something – destiny, probably, as it often were – made him turn around to face the rude man that had almost toppled him over.
“Won't you say anything? Do you even know how much this shirt cost?”
Arthur Pendragon glared angrily at him. It took Merlin a while to move his gaze from the familiar face and fully take in the scene. Arthur held his blazer jacket open away from his shirt that was now drenched in something that looked suspiciously like coffee.
“Well then? Are you an idiot or something?”
The familiar insult seemed to rewire Merlin's brain and he found himself automatically responding with a shrug. “Takes one to know one.”
“What?” The blond looked back at him with a frown.
“Besides,” Merlin continued, “you're the one who bumped into me, so you don't get to be a rude asshole over your own mistake.”
“Rude…? My own…?” Merlin's disrespectful attitude seemed to throw him off, leaving him a confused mess. He let go of his blazer and recomposed himself. “Do you know who you're talking to?”
Merlin felt the wave of familiarity rushing through him, it seemed that some things never changed.
“Of course I know,” he felt a little smirk growing as Arthur's expression went back to bad concealed confusion. “I'm talking to a royal prat.”
Merlin was delighted, he could feel the waves of irritation and indignation that seemed to irradiate from Arthur and they made him want to giggle.
“Who do you think you are to…”
“Martin.” Merlin interrupted.
“Wha…”
“Martin Emerson.” He interrupted again, and offered his hand.
Arthur looked at his hand for a few seconds as if it were some kind of criminal offense that it existed, and then looked back at Merlin like he was some lunatic.
“You don't have any idea who I am, do you, Martin Emerson?”
Merlin smiled like it was Christmas as Arthur stared at him.
“I already told you that I do.” Merlin smiled sweetly. “You are the condescending jerk who almost killed me and then tried to blame me for it. Me! The victim of the crime!”
“Killed…” Arthur looked astonished, but the frown of irritation never left his face. “You know what? I don't have time for this. Get out of my way.”
Arthur pushed through Merlin nearly causing his fall. Again. “Who do you think you are? The president?”
“No, I'm his son, Arthur.” Arthur answered without looking back.
Merlin watched as Arthur walked away, leaving him gaping at the back of his head as Arthur went on his way like he hadn't just turned Merlin's world upside down with a five minute interaction.
“Last call for the flight G4014 to London.”
The metallic voice from the speakers shook Merlin out of his daze and his body auto-piloted him back to his mad dash through the airport.
It was only once he was safely sitting on his seat at the economic class – he had barely made it – ready to go home, that the full realization of what had happened dawned on him. Arthur was back, he was a complete prat again, and the most shocking news of all: Arthur Pendragon, the legendary King of Camelot, was American.
128 notes
·
View notes