February 17, 2006
Israel’s president Moshe Katsav has visited a Holocaust museum in Greece, accompanied by his Greek counterpart Karolos Papoulias. The visit by Papoulias to the memorial in Thessalonica was a rare gesture for a Greek official. “The fate of Jewish Greeks during the Holocaust is very close to my heart,” said Papoulias, “and going to Thessalonica with the Israeli president is my way of making sure this does not happen again.” Papoulias joined the anti-Nazi resistance at age 17 and helped Jews from the northern city of Ioannina escape concentration camps by taking them to the mountains. Only a tenth of the pre-war Jewish population in Greece of around 80,000 survived the Holocaust. Today, Thessalonica, once the biggest Jewish community in the country, is home to only 1,200 Jews.
