Kastoria

Like Thessaloniki, the city was part of the
Ottoman Empire until the Balkan Wars in the early
20th century,
when it was liberated by Greece.

There were 900 Jews in Kastoria in 1940.
On March 25, 1944, 763 Jews were rounded up for deportation, first to Thessaloniki and

then to Auschwitz-Birkenau. Prior to their deportation, they were enclosed in an abandoned school for days, with no food or water, and the young girls were raped by German soldiers. Thirty-five Jews survived the Holocaust in Kastoria, and only one Jewish family remains after 500 years of a Jewish presence in the city. Recently a Holocaust memorial was erected in Kastoria to acknowledge the loss of the city’s Jews.

Kastoria is located in the mountains between Thessaloniki and Ioannina, on an ancient trade route. The city became famous for manufacturing fur and leather items, an occupation in which many of Kastoria’s Jews were employed. Kastoria was a Sephardic community, although there is evidence that a Jewish
community existed there before the

15th century.