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United States Holocaust Memorial Museum

Members of the Amarillo family pose outside their home in Salonika. Front, from left to right, are Tillie Amarillo and Sarika Yahiel. Seated behind them are their mothers Louisa Bourla Amarillo and Regina Amarillo Yahiel. Standing are Saul ...
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GREECE

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On October 28, 1940, Fascist Italy invaded Greece from bases in Albania, which Italy had occupied and annexed in April 1939. Within a matter of days, however, the Greek army drove the Italians back into the Albanian mountains, where the conflict reached a stalemate. In order to secure the Balkan flank in anticipation of the attack on the Soviet Union, planned for June 22, 1941, Hitler ordered the invasion of Yugoslavia and Greece. On April 6, 1941, the Germans and Italians, supported by Bulgarian, Hungarian, and Romanian units, attacked. Yugoslavia, already in a state of political disintegration, surrendered on April 17. By April 28, most of the Greek mainland had been subdued.

After the Greek surrender in June, Germany, Italy, and Bulgaria divided the country into zones of occupation. Germany occupied western Macedonia (including Salonika), eastern Thrace along the Greco-Turkish border, the environs of Athens, western Crete, and the Greek islands in the north Aegean Sea close to Turkey. Bulgaria occupied western Thrace. Italy took the remainder of the Greek mainland, eastern Crete, and the Greek islands in the south Aegean, the eastern Mediterranean, the Ionian, and the Adriatic Seas. Germany and Italy jointly occupied Athens, the Greek capital.

Europe 1933, Greece indicated
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At the time of the Axis occupation in 1941, about 100,000 Jews lived in Greece. Their fate was greatly influenced by the differing priorities of Germany, Italy, and Bulgaria with regard to the Jews.

ITALIAN-OCCUPIED AREAS OF GREECE

Despite being allied to Germany, the Italian government refused to implement the mass murder of Jews. In general, Italian military authorities protected Jews. Thousands of Jews residing in the German-occupied zone fled to the relative safety of the Italian occupation zone. Only after the Italian surrender to the Allies on September 8, 1943, did the Germans occupy the rest of Greece and subject all Greek Jews to the "Final Solution".

GERMAN-OCCUPIED AREAS OF GREECE

The largest prewar Greek Jewish community was in Salonika, located in northern Greece and later in the German occupation zone. At the time of the German occupation, Salonika had a Jewish population of about 50,000. In July 1942, 2,000 Jewish males in Salonika were assigned to forced-labor projects for the German army. Another 7,000 were ransomed from the Nazis with funds raised in desperation by the Jewish community, including proceeds from the sale of the ancient Jewish cemetery to the Salonika municipality. In February 1943, the Germans concentrated the Jews of Salonika in two ghetto areas of the city. Between March and August of that year, German officials deported over 40,000 Jews from Salonika to the Auschwitz-Birkenau extermination camp. SS members stationed at Birkenau murdered virtually all of the Salonikan Jews upon arrival.

BULGARIAN-ANNEXED AREAS IN THE BALKANS

Bulgaria sought to annex western Thrace in 1941. In March 1943, in compliance with German demands, Bulgarian military and gendarmerie units concentrated some 4,000 Jews from Thrace at assembly points in Radomir, Dupnitsa, and Gorna Dzhumaya; from there, the Bulgarians sent these Jews to Vienna via train and river barge. By the end of the month, German SS and police authorities had deported the Thracian Jews to the Treblinka extermination camp, where German staff and auxiliary police guards murdered them.

GERMAN OCCUPATION OF THE GREEK MAINLAND

After Italy surrendered to the Allies on September 8, 1943, Germany occupied all of Greece. During 1944, the Germans began deportations from the former Italian zone in Greece: 800 Jews from Athens, almost 2,000 from the island of Corfu, and almost 2,000 from the island of Rhodes. German army and naval units concentrated these Jews at assembly points and deported them to Auschwitz-Birkenau. The overwhelming majority of Jews in these transports were murdered upon arrival.

Romania's decision to switch sides and join the Allies on August 23, 1944, and the Soviet occupation of Bulgaria in early September rendered the German military position in Greece untenable. The German Army High Command ordered the evacuation of Greece through Yugoslavia. By this time, at least 60,000 Greek Jews had died in the Holocaust. Thousands were able to survive by hiding with friends or by joining the partisans.